Bing Trouble: Google, OpenAI Are Opening Up Pandora’s Bots
The AI programs Microsoft and Google are sharing with the world have flaws that could come back to haunt the companies.
For a hot minute, Microsoft Corp. looked like it would eat Google’s lunch. Its languishing search engine, Bing, was being revolutionized with a sophisticated new chatbot system from OpenAI. Those hopes have now diminished because of one unexpected truth: Nobody — not even AI scientists — truly understands the breadth of capabilities of artificial intelligence when it is unleashed in the wild.
Early users of Bing have reported unhinged, emotional, even threatening responses to some of their queries from the AI system, which called one user a “bad researcher” and told another newspaper writer that he was “not happily married.” Bing — whose bot entity goes by the name Sydney — has effectively put Google’s embarrassing Bard error in the shade. However, these flaws are just the tip of a much larger iceberg.