Microsoft’s unsettling chatbot would benefit from a history lesson. Yet first…
Must-read articles for today:
The FTC won’t contest Amazon’s One Medical partnership. Volkswagen’s emissions software was found to be insufficient. An AI firm and Amazon’s cloud division have teamed.
Defeat the robot
Early Bing chatbot testers bombarded it with a wide variety of bizarre messages to test the limits of the chatbot’s artificial intelligence. The machine has occasionally responded with responses that have the appearance of being sentient, ranging from confrontational or flirty to outright frightening.
The encounters, which were designed to frustrate or annoy Bing, put Microsoft in an untenable position. The corporation ought to take a cue from Alexa and Siri, the forebears of Bing’s chatbots.
Almost ten years ago, when Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. unveiled their voice assistants, they were hailed as a new generation of computing. Internet search could be completely changed by Amazon’s Echo speakers or an iPhone with Siri because they are continuously listening, learning speech patterns, and getting better. Amazon’s goal, according to Jeff Bezos, is to make Alexa as intelligent and interactive as Star Trek’s computers.
The Echo was released to the public in 2015, and early reviews were largely perplexing. Some people regarded their encounters with Alexa as a game of stump the robot, similar to the beta tests of Bing’s AI. Others dug into more profound and strange subjects, such as whether Alexa could define life, communicate wants, or even give advice on how to dispose of a dead body.
By ChatGPT’s standards, these voice aides seem antiquated. Although it did catch on, voice-activated computing never quite lived up to the expectations. Less people now bother exploring the potential of Alexa or its relatives after several disappointing interactions.
They are mostly used for some simple yet important daily chores, such as timing meals, listening to music, and monitoring the weather. Although these use cases may seem little, Amazon certainly has greater ambitions for the product. But I need timers, music, and weather forecasts, and the Echo has taken care of a lot of my annoyances.
The aim of any technology should be to meet a need. Microsoft correctly acknowledged that the general public doesn’t require a robotic companion to engage in lengthy, personal chats after some reviewers had strange experiences with Bing’s AI, in which the chatbot declared its love for one reporter and compared another to Hitler. Microsoft is tightening the gates as part of damage control. In the meantime, OpenAI, which shares certain genetics with Bing’s chatbot, stated that it was striving to decrease biases and errors in ChatGPT.
When Bing interacts with larger audiences, which will inevitably ask it increasingly bizarre questions, it seems inevitable that some strangeness will endure. Microsoft will need to concentrate on honing more gradual, broadly appealing AI capabilities as the novelty of the first novelty wear off, just like Amazon did with Alexa.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has claimed that comparable capabilities will be added to Microsoft Office and “eliminate some of the drudgery” of work and life. Microsoft has acknowledged that it has received requests for basic and tedious services like assistance with travel booking and emailing.
Although having a truly intelligent Clippy isn’t quite like living on the Starship Enterprise, if it helps make writing easier, I’m all for it.
The major event
Microsoft has made it clear that there will be no $69 billion agreement to acquire Activision Blizzard without the Call of Duty series, formalizing a 10-year pact with Nintendo for the company’s flagship game.
Get charged up
A SPAC, which is sponsored by Peter Thiel, is thinking about merging with the fintech firm Hyphen Group. If this happens, the merged business may be worth several hundred million dollars.
As an alternative for Wi-Fi in offices, Amazon has partnered with T-Mobile and other wireless carriers to provide businesses with private 5G wireless services.
The Central Bank of Nigeria is in discussions with potential technology partners to create software for its digital currency, the naira.
Watch as the US Supreme Court considers Gonzalez v. Google to learn more about the future of Section 230.
Concerns about industry margins are growing due to increased rivalry among Chinese tech companies now that Beijing has backtracked from a harsh crackdown on the sector.
Additional Bloomberg
Listen: A new six-part podcast series called Foundering: The John McAfee Story traces the life, the mythology, and the self-destruction of a legendary figure in Silicon Valley. You may subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast provider.
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