How Sentient Is Microsoft’s Bing, AKA Sydney and Venom?
Using a chatbot to search the web might not be the smartest idea when such systems can go off the deep end.
Photographer: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP
Less than a week since Microsoft Corp. launched a new version of Bing, public reaction has morphed from admiration to outright worry. Early users of the new search companion — essentially a sophisticated chatbot — say it has questioned its own existence and responded with insults and threats after prodding from humans. It made disturbing comments about a researcher who got the system to reveal its internal project name — Sydney — and described itself as having a split personality with a shadow self called Venom.
None of this means Bing is anywhere near sentient (more on that later), but it does strengthen the case that it was unwise for Microsoft to use a generative language model to power web searches in the first place.