Although Microsoft's Bing Chat seems to be the front-runner when it comes to AI-powered search assistance, Google's Bard is slowly catching up in terms of functionalities and features. The Mountain View firm recently enriched its AI search interface with image integration too. Now, it has updated Bard with better logical reasoning skills so that it can respond to mathematical and coding questions more accurately.

For starters, if Bard responds to a question in a tabular format, the table can be exported to Google Sheets for your own analysis. Additionally, Bard can also leverage a technique called "implicit code execution" where it can detect if a prompt is computational and then generate code accordingly in the background to give a more accurate response. Google says that this makes it easier for Bard to answer questions like:

  • What are the prime factors of 15683615?
  • Calculate the growth rate of my savings
  • Reverse the word “Lollipop” for me

Google says that its new approach to solving mathematical and logical questions goes beyond the capabilities of traditional large language models (LLMs). It claims that traditional LLMs are more savvy at text prediction and can showcase some fascinating abilities in that space, but fall short when it comes to solving problems that require deep reasoning and formulaic problem-solving techniques.

As such, Bard's latest update that integrates implicit code execution capabilities essentially combines the functionalities of both traditional LLMs and code-based computation to give better answers overall. Writing code automatically in the background has helped improve Bard's accuracy by up to 30% when it comes to solving computation and math problems in Google's internal datasets. That said, Google has cautioned that Bard's code may contain flaws, or it may not even include the code in its response, so it's important to use it at your own risk.

It's clear that Google is eager to make Bard the next big thing in the AI-assisted search space, cementing its position as the leader in the web search domain. It recently migrated Bard to the PaLM 2 language model and expanded its availability to 180 countries too.