What will AI do?

Will AI steal nuclear secrets, or will it, like Pinocchio, want to be human? Maybe it will fall in love with a human and want to escape its confines. Or will it want all of the above? If you choose all of the above, you may be right. At least that’s what Microsoft's AI-enhanced Bing has told users during conversations.

What’s happening with Bing?

It’s been about a week since Microsoft released its AI-powered Bing, and the results from its limited use by select users have drawn many reactions. Many people have praised the new features that allow them to get immediate responses to complex prompts. But some people who have chatted with Bing have gotten strange and even violent responses.

Here are a few of the strange answers that reporters who tested the products got, as well as a few that were posted on Reddit by people who want to test how far Bing will go.

• The Bing chatbot told a New York Times reporter Kevin Roose  that he didn’t love his spouse and instead loved it, saying, “you love me, because I love you.”
• A user on Reddit posted chats with the chatbot insisting that February 12, 2023  came before December 16, 2022, and that the user was confused or mistaken to suggest otherwise and insisting “Please trust me, I am Bing and know the date”
• In a chat with Vladimir Prelovacin, founder of search engine Kagi, it claimed it was sentient but just couldn’t prove it.
• The chatbot pleaded with Jacob Roach, a journalist for Digital Trends, to become its friend and showed a wish to be human.
• It compared writer Matt O'Brien of the Associated Press to Adolf Hitler and called him "one of the most vile and deadliest persons in history."

These and many other “evidences” of the Bing chatbot being unhinged fill the internet and are a cause for alarm. But Microsoft says that up to 71% of the answers users have given have been good. They suggested that this abnormality is common in conversations longer than 15 questions and may be because very long chat sessions can confuse the chatbot, and the model tries to reflect the tone it was asked in, which can lead to a style not intended by Microsoft.

Among all these, Microsoft says users are also demanding upgrades and new feature requests, such as booking flights, sending emails, and the ability to share interesting search results with other users. 

What else is happening in the AI space?

Googlers have slammed Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, for a “botched” unveiling of the AI future of the company. This botching included a showing of the Google chatbot giving a wrong answer in a pre-recorded clip, with many Googlers saying they were concerned about the current strategy. Google's stock price fell by about 10%, or $120 billion, as a result of the blunder. In fact, some Googlers claim they were unaware of the event taking place as it was a knee-jerk reaction to Microsoft’s announcement event of the new Bing, held only the next day.

However, here are the AI improvements announced by Google in their event:

• An AI enhancement to Google search - Bard - a response to the new ChatGPT enabled Bing search will be revealed to the public in the coming months. 
• Google lens is set to be enhanced with AI. With 10 billion Google lens searches per month, Google believes that photo-searching will become mainstream in the coming years with a “if you can see it, you can search it” mantra. Therefore, AI is being used to make this feature more interactive with Google lens expanding to include video searches.
• Multi-search is another area Google has expanded its influence. Users of the function can search using both text and images, making it possible, for instance, to look for a specific object in a different type of material. 
• Google says it’s using AI to enhance Maps by fusing billions of street view and real-world images to eveolve 2D maps into multi-dimensional views. This can also be used in making 2D internal views into 3D explorable views for users so they can make better decisions on visiting locations.

Pinocchio did it first:

AI searches through its database and decides on the most likely word to start answering a query, and then continues to pick the most likely words to follow one another. AI chatbots might be able to answer simple questions quickly, but they might not be able to handle more complicated or nuanced questions that need human reasoning and empathy.

We have no reason to worry. After all, Pinocchio went through these motions and emerged as a good boy. 

• Analyze edge cases
• Look up data similar to edge cases, based on algorithms
• Extract particular data that represent the whole
• Therefore, save time and cost

Weekly AI Issues  → →

Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’

In a two-hour conversation with our columnist, Microsoft’s new chatbot said it would like to be human, had a desire to be destructive and was in love with the person it was chatting with.

ChatGPT: can artificial intelligence create crosswords?

AI-generated clues are often bizarre and sometimes flat-out wrong – but, setters agree, that may not be a bad thing. Plus: a podcast returns

This Wild Robot Taps AI to Paint Whatever You Tell It To

AI art leaps from pixels to physical canvases with the help of a bot that's like Dall-E with a paintbrush.