And the AI battle begins...
AS MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE LOOK SET TO FACE OFF, WE TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE EVOLVING WORLD OF CHATBOTS
WHEN we look back on this week from the future, we might consider it the moment the artificial intelligence wars really began between the big tech giants.
Microsoft decided to unveil a version of its Bing browser with search augmented by technology created by the makers of the celebrated AI ChatGPT chatbot.
This prompted Google boss Sundar Pichai to rush to reveal details of its own upcoming AI chatbot system Bard.
We’ve surely all encountered chatbots by now – usually online trying to get an issue solved with some service or other that you’re paying through the nose for.
It generally proves a frustrating and fruitless interaction with some online AI entity that is utterly unable to solve whatever problem you have. But these new chatbots are something else, something that has reached such a level of sophistication that some are unnerved by its possibilities.
So what are they? What can they do?
And should we be afraid of them?
WHAT IS CHATGPT?
We call it a chatbot, but it is essentially a language processing tool that uses vast amounts of inputted information and artificial intelligence to allow it to have natural conversations with users.
Made by a company called OpenAI, it can answer questions and perform tasks – you can ask it to write you an email, an essay… and even a song, as we shall see.
WHAT IS BARD?
Bard is the name given by Google to its own inhouse chatbot, which is a direct rival to ChatGPT.
It’s not quite ready for primetime yet, and will be tested by select users to fine tune before launch over the next few weeks.
There are rumblings that Google rushed the reveal of the service following the news that Microsoft was getting involved with ChatGPT – the big launch of the service was something of an embarrassment for Google after Bard got the wrong answer to a relatively simple question about the
James Webb Telescope.
WHAT IS MICROSOFT’S INVOLVEMENT?
The Windows-maker has been an investor in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and this week announced it had partnered up with the company to launch a new version of its Edge browser that will use the next generation of OpenAI’s chatbot to help power the Bing search engine.
Microsoft claims the new AI language model is “more powerful than ChatGPT”, and says it has also been optimised for search.
WHAT CAN AI CHATBOTS DO?
Chatbots like Bard and ChatGPT are much more than search engines – they possess a vast amount of information, and have been trained by human users to interact in a conversational way.
It can understand all kinds of questions and perform some tasks too. You can have a philosophical debate with it, ask it to summarise large texts, even ask it to write a poem in the style of a famous poet.
Microsoft’s AI chatbot, built into Bing, is designed to augment its search engine, so you can follow up searches with questions, and ask for summaries of information.
SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?
There are a number of general concerns around the use of these chatbots – the chief among them being their accuracy.
Although that is improving all the time, it’s important to remember that their principle design feature is being able to appear to hold an intelligent conversation – yet it will prioritise this over accuracy. Yes, it will provide information that sounds plausible but is wrong.
It can also struggle to understand questions phrased in a particular way, and is, of course, limited by the information put into it.
ChatGPT only has info up to 2021, so knows nothing of subsequent events. It can’t search the web for up-to-date answers.
One of the more interesting tests of the system has been in the art world – someone asked ChatGPT to write song lyrics in the style of singer-songwriter Nick Cave.
When confronted with the output Cave described it as “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human,” and more directly, declared: “This song sucks.”
Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists went further – he asked ChatGPT to write a song in the style of his band – words AND chords – and then actually recorded it.
He was reasonably impressed with the outcome – but in the end decided: “I wouldn’t say it’s a terrible song, though it really flirts with terribleness.
“ChatGPT lacks intuition. That’s one thing an AI can’t have, intuition. It has data, it has information, but it has no intuition.”
You can sign up to try ChatGPT at opanai.com (although at the moment the system is at capacity) – it’s free while in its initial stages of testing.
Read Nick Cave’s response to the imitation song on his blog at theredhandfiles.com, and read about Colin Meloy’s experience, and listen to the song, at colinmeloy.substack.com