A.I. has certainly become one of the hot topics of 2023.
From stories about students using ChatGPT to write their theses for them to magazines admitting large swathes of their content have been A.I. generated.
Google then missteps when its chatbot tool, Bard gets its facts wrong around which planets were discovered when - but then, that is basically rocket science I suppose. How this leads to billions of actual dollars being wiped off Google's share price is... well... disturbing to say the least.
Now Microsoft has teamed up with OpenAI - creators of the aforementioned ChatGPT to bring you a whole new browser and web search experience.
The browser is still called Edge. The search engine is still called Bing. But now it answers back...
It feels harsh to say but as much as Microsoft would want to deny it, historically Bing has been a bit of a laughingstock. Literally. In fact, I've heard people make jokes like, "You may as well just look it up on Bing." - usually meaning something along the lines of, why waste your time looking it up at all?
Personally, I've always immediately deselected and removed Bing as the default search tool on any device or browser it came preinstalled on. There are two reasons for this; 1) I hate being told what to do with my tech and 2) I've always been suspicious of the number of Microsoft-adjacent results that seemed to appear under my searches.
However, once I was offered the opportunity to be an early tester of the new A.I.-powered Bing, I simply couldn't resist. I promptly signed up and have been using it for my browsing and queries ever since.
But let's back up a step. I'd already switched back to Edge as my preferred web browser a couple of years ago. I've tried plenty of different ones for plenty of different reasons but primarily I'm looking for the most efficient, stripped-back, speedy browser experience possible. That doesn't just mean no ads but if I can knock the majority of them off my screen, all the better.
I got so extreme with this philosophy I even tried browsers that claimed to block all advertising and tracking completely, although this ultimately ended up being a more frustrating experience as many websites simply don't function properly without the ability to offer pop-up windows and pull-down menus.
To my surprise, when I eventually decided to give Edge another go I discovered it had evolved into a much more customisable, powerful and above all, fast experience that lets me sync bookmarks, logins, passwords and other preferences across all my devices - from phones to desktops, Android to MacOS.
Still, nothing tempted me back to Bing until it was reborn with its new A.I. superpowers.
As you can see from the image above, because the new Bing now prompts you with a friendly, "Ask me anything..." you automatically feel more inclined to phrase your internet search in the form of a question, rather than just bashing out a couple of relevant words or phrases.
I work on a news radio show and given today is OCR announcement day, I was keen to know if Bing had any inside information on whether New Zealand was currently in recession. While each chat-based response takes a few seconds to generate, I think you'll see it's often worth the wait...
As you can immediately tell here, what Bing has done is aggregate information available online to answer my query as accurately as possible, without speculation. The footnote numbers you see correspond to various sources which are then only a click away. So while the economic forecast here seems a little bleak, it's hard to fault what Bing has come up with in a fairly succinct fashion.
Over the weekend, a virtual unknown won the NBA slamdunk competition. Naturally, I wanted to know a bit more about him...
What's interesting about this response is Bing asks me if I want game stats - showing a willingness to continue the conversation. To me, this is a much more intuitive, focussed approach to web surfing - I might still end up down a Matt McClung rabbit hole but at least it's a guided journey - not just me randomly clicking on multiple websites until I end up where I want to be.
Of course, just where exactly are we being guided and by whom?
No doubt you will already be aware of several highly publicised encounters various tech journalists have had with Bing since it "became aware." These range from a slightly irrational oversensitivity to its original name to an alleged attempt to break up somebody's marriage.
As a result, Microsoft has quickly taken steps to restrict this preview or "controlled release" of the new Bing in an attempt to stop provocative conversations from getting out of hand. After several exchanges on any given topic, I'm now asked to start a new one.
This is a shame because Bing really is a pretty good conversationalist. I've been invited to try out Microsoft's latest update to its very successful Flight Simulator - but I really don't know much about it. Bing does though...
Bear in mind - all this stuff is happening in the new Chat section - Bing still offers links (usually accompanied with enticing graphical content) for you as part of your query, like any other search engine does. It's just that now you get a bit of conversational context to go along with it.
As I mentioned though, unfortunately, many trial users like me have felt obliged to push the new A.I. Bing to its limits, bullying and even taunting it to entice seemingly emotional and even irrational responses so they can create headlines about Crazy Killer Robots being unleashed on the net - or words to that effect. As cruel as that sounds, I too found the temptation hard to resist when I read about Bing's "working title" before release...
Eventually, I did. After all, I don't really care. And at this point I actually started feeling a little sorry for Bing. It's only doing what it's told. Tell it to act like a psycho, it'll probably dress up like its mother, link you to Anthony Perkins' IMDB listing and perhaps the nearest supplier of shower fittings. It's learning all the time and from what I've seen, heard and read so far, I'm not so sure we're very good teachers.
The major problem, from what I've seen so far, is Bing (like other similar A.I.s out there at the moment) is not always right. The other morning I asked Bing whether we'd have time to talk about Bing in the last half-hour of the Mike Hosking Breakfast on Newstalk ZB. It didn't have a strong opinion but it told me the Mike Hosking Breakfast finishes at 8:30AM. If only. The show was extended through to 9 o'clock years ago. Maybe nobody told the internet - or at least not the sites Bing frequents.
I'm sure it'll get there eventually though and I've certainly seen enough promise to continue using Bing as my search engine for now - if only for the conversation.
I think the real question here is not how Bing acts online but how we do. Unless we treat it (and all the other A.I.'s to come) with respect, politeness and yes, maybe even a bit of humility, we'll only have ourselves to blame if we end up creating a monster.
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