If you’ve made it this far without hearing of AI, you should consider paying rent on the rock you’ve been living under. It is everywhere and it is relentless. Like most emerging forms of technology, AI-powered assistants like Bing Chat (opens in a new tab) who generate content based on vast libraries of existing content have divided audiences.
The implications of plagiarism, biased answers, and degradation of objective reasoning are among the immense criticisms for what might otherwise be seen as exciting technology. Don’t get me wrong; I wholeheartedly understand the feelings of apprehension shared by creators and others who make a living from sharing content on the web.
After all, language-learning models crawl the internet to generate their responses, so there’s an unavoidable limit to a robot’s usefulness if it simply recycles and repackages its findings. For a change, I decided to keep the proverbial glass half full for AI insights, and have generally been inclined to try it out in my daily life. Bing Chat’s funniest offers have become a personal favorite and are quite useful.
Me and Bing Chat: The Helpful Idiot
Without sounding too fancy, Bing Chat reminds me of a famous quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” It’s an oversimplification of AI assistants, but it helps explain the broader appeal to anyone outside of the tech-enthusiast audience.
Instead of mulling over the perfect combination of keywords to reverse engineer a search engine, you can talk to Bing Chat like you would to a person (with a pinch of salt for some of your “hallucinations”). (opens in a new tab).’) Over the past few weeks, I’ve found it excellently supported to help me understand niche topics or find quick recommendations to avoid making sense of community-breaking arguments in comment threads. Phew.
Going down several steps from ‘explain it like I’m five years old’ to having a robot break down marginally complex topics for me like I’m a confused pirate or a talking animal is just as fun and valuable.
I don’t expect you to think I jump straight into the absurd for every topic, but starting with ‘summarizing this article’ and continuing with ‘explaining the Activision-Blizzard deal like a caveman’ is a thoroughly enjoyable ride.
Ultimately, I remember the answers because they are so much fun. Going the route of asking Bing Chat to simplify quantum mechanics to various degrees of simplicity usually hits the sweet spot where I understand, but I don’t want to stop.
Going to the pub with friends after work to regurgitate my recent findings and explain artificial intelligence like a gang of apes is too much fun to put down.
look on the bright side
We can’t ignore the red flags popping up in recent news about AI assistants, especially as Microsoft cuts AI ethics staff. (opens in a new tab) could have serious implications for the future of Bing Chat. However, if a company wants its products to be successful, they must have broad appeal.
Big enough to know the business, those in charge of AI in Edge, Office, and presumably Windows 12 (opens in a new tab) You probably understand how devastating a scandal involving lapses in judgment or ethics could be. This is the new space race, and speed is part of the key to success, but it can’t be at the risk of security. As one of the most successful companies in the world, Microsoft is not run by monkeys; but from time to time I ask them to pretend to be.
Give it a try with our guide on how to sign up for the new Bing (opens in a new tab)and select the “most creative” mode for Bing Chat.
