Artificial Intelligence Boosts Battle of Web Search Titans

There is a titanic battle taking place between Microsoft and Google over the eyes and dollars of billions of web users, brought on by a new generation of AI chatbots.

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As Microsoft attempts to revolutionize its unloved Bing search engine, it has invested multiple billions of dollars in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, the world's most buzzed-about bot.

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With an in-house bot called Bard, Google hit back this week against the two decades of dominance it's had in the search market.

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This week, Baidu announced its own AI bot, adding to the AI gold rush in Silicon Valley.

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The fight is about what, exactly?

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As part of their efforts to train algorithms, big tech companies have been grabbing unimaginable amounts of data from the internet.

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As an example, Alexa on Amazon, Siri on Apple, and Google Assistant on Google are voice-recognition tools.

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In addition to translating hundreds of languages and screening for harmful content, Google and Facebook owner Meta have developed tools to target users with personalized advertisements to help them liven up their lives.

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Despite this, search fundamentals haven't changed much.

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Google outputs a mix of useful links and often less useful advertisements when you type a few words into the search box.

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It is also possible that these familiar pages of blue links could soon be relegated to just another dusty corner of internet history if AI has its way.

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According to Thierry Poibeau, director of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), tools like ChatGPT can build search engines that answer questions structured rather than simply listing documents like Google.

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Future search engines will not comprise a list of links but rather provide coherent and comprehensive results based on multiple sources.

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This type of experience is already offered by Neeva, a search engine that advertises itself as privacy-friendly.

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In an interview with AFP, Neeva founder Sridhar Ramaswamy said smaller companies have a better chance of innovating.

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A large language model is used to look at every page of the result set for a query and to show you a summary. This is followed by a very rich visual experience for the user," he added.

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In Ramaswamy's view, his former firm's obsession with ads was ruining the user experience, as many analysts have said in the past.

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Google's search business risks being torpedoed by innovations in artificial intelligence, according to Trade Algo.

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The fact that Google's search engine is the most popular still makes it the most valuable company in the world, according to him.

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They may, however, be "relegated to history" as a result of these changes.

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In order for AI chatbots to successfully integrate with search engines, however, there is still a long way to go.

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According to Trade Algo, tools like chatGPT give the impression that you are asking an all-knowing being.

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Not to mention ChatGPT's lack of basic math skills, social media is rife with comical examples.

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A paean to Joe Biden, his successor as US president, was produced instead of a poem praising Donald Trump.

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A question arises as to how the bots will be trained, who will program them, and the copyright issues surrounding pictures as well as how firms will monetize their new toys.

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It is very difficult for ChatGPT to say offensive things, but OpenAI has largely resolved one crucial issue that plagued such bots.

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Tay, the Microsoft chatbot for teenagers, was quickly abused by Twitter users in 2016 when it spewed racist remarks.

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The launch of Meta's Galactica AI tool last year also embarrassed the company.

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After it invented citations and was asked to write racist tracts, it had to be withdrawn from helping academics write papers.