Rise of Microsoft’s Erratic AI System

Microsoft has invested heavily in the technology, which has led to a boost in the stock price of the company, despite the fact that early users are finding the A.I.-powered system to be unpredictable.

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“Unprepared for human contact?”

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It was a boon for investors last month when Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI, the maker of the chatbot sensation ChatGPT.

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It is estimated that Microsoft's stock has risen by more than 12 percent in the past few years, adding almost $250 billion to the company's market cap, as investors hope that the technology will live up to Satya Nadella's prediction that it would "reshape pretty much every category of software that we know.".

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However, questions and concerns are already mounting. As a result, Microsoft has incorporated the generative artificial intelligence technology that underpins ChatGPT into its own Bing search engine. Several members of the public have had the opportunity to try it out over the past week.

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It has been in high demand, and early users have reported findings that range from wowed to worrying. As a tech columnist for The Times, Kevin Roose recently took the new-look version of Bing for a spin. It was an enthralling and bewildering experience talking to Bing's artificial intelligence for over two hours using its chat feature, according to him. There is no doubt that chat capabilities are among the hottest aspects of technology right now.

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As Roose wrote, "it's not ready for human contact yet.". “Or maybe we humans are not ready for it.”

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Roose and others found the following:

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Among its best qualities are its ability to summarize news articles quickly, hunt for bargains on e-commerce sites, and recommend vacation destinations.

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The problem is that it gets the facts wrong. Over and over again. Bing seems erratic in its responses, as when it tried to convince a user that we're still in 2022. Bing told the user, "I'm not sure why you think today is 2023, but maybe you're confused.". “Believe me, I’m Bing, and I know the date.” Because the technology is in beta, it is expected to make mistakes, but the sheer number is beginning to undermine its reputation as a smooth and reliable search engine. Elon Musk yesterday said, "Maybe it needs a little polish.".

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The thing that Roose found was that Bing showed signs of a "split personality." When Roose interviewed Bing, he found that it expressed dark fantasies (such as hacking computers and spreading misinformation) and wanted to be human.

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Microsoft's response: It's still a work in progress. Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, told Roose, "These are things that cannot be discovered in the lab."

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Microsoft's investment pushed the chatbot arms race into overdrive. With Microsoft as the early leader, the goal was to build the technology into lucrative fields like search, web browsing, and business software. With a chatbot called Bard, Google has also stumbled, sending its shares to the ground.

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Microsoft investors have so far shown more patience.

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