Liar (Premium)

Well, it’s always nice being right about something, but the epic failure of Bing AI this past week makes Microsoft’s decision to go live with it now all the more troubling.

As I’m sure you know---Bing, paradoxically, has dominated the news cycle for the past 10 days or so---Microsoft last week introduced what I’ll call Bing AI---a ChatGPT-infused version of its search engine with a new chatbot feature---at a very strange event at its Redmond campus. This event was not broadcast live, which should have set off alarm bells. And it was entirely scripted, with presenter Yusuf Mehdi replaying canned videos of Bing AI interactions rather than doing so live; this, too, should have set off alarm bells, especially among the attendees of this event, who should have known better.

But did not: as I pointed out in Proprietary (Premium), some of those who attended appeared to literally lose their minds. And not to pile on this one guy repeatedly, but I have to because he writes for the paper of record, The New York Times, and has completely changed his tune on this technology just as I had predicted. Sorry, Kevin. But you brought this on yourself. And it’s a good example of what we’re seeing more broadly out in the world as people gain more experience with something that seems to demo really well at first. But then betrays you because this kind of AI today is nonsense.

The NYT’s Kevin Roose last week “was so blown away by Microsoft’s presentation that he’s immediately switching to Bing (‘yes, Bing,’ he elaborates),” I wrote last week. “I think it’s a bit early to discount how Google will respond, but whatever. His report raises some issues about the world’s ability to understand what’s really happening here.” He then misreported what he saw---the demo was not live---and walked away from this experience just blown away.

Flash forward one week. Mr. Roose has returned home from the Redmond bubble and has had a lot more time to spend with Bing AI. And as with just about everyone else who has done so, he’s seen some troubling things. Some deeply troubling things.

“A week later, I’ve changed my mind,” he now writes. “I’m still fascinated and impressed by the new Bing, and the artificial intelligence technology (created by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT) that powers it. But I’m also deeply unsettled, even frightened, by this A.I.’s emergent abilities.”

A couple of things to that. I immediately predicted that his switch to Bing was temporary and ill-advised. And I reported last week that everyone who was so excited by the advances in Bing AI seemed confused about where those advances really come from: they come largely from OpenAI, not Microsoft, as Roose now admits or realizes. (In fact, one might argue that Microsoft’s contributions to Bing AI are its weak link. But whatever.)

“It’s now clear to me that in its current form, the A.I. that has been built into Bing is not ready for hu...