AI-Powered Bing Search Comes to Microsoft Edge, Skype and Bing iOS Apps

[BrownyQ]

The more I see of what it's capable of, the more fascinated I am.

Stupid media has me thinking before long it'll go Skynet on us and want to kill us all in our sleep, but that's just silly science fiction. Right?

 

[BenGoren]

AI assistants are literally on the cusp of going from a joke (Siri, Alexa, etc) that is sometimes mildly useful (set a timer/reminder/alarm) to something that will be indispensable to our lives and change the workplace forever.

They’re not going to change the workplace; they’re going to end it.

We’re already a very short step away from people leaning on AI for their jobs. Then, in short order, today’s jobs become little more than managing AI. Then, once those who pay the bills realize that this has happened, they cut out the middleman.

The Industrial Revolution was a radical change to human society, and it unfolded over a century. Here, we’ve got less than a decade for a similar revolution in white-collar work. And basically nobody realizes that it’s already started.

To those who think it hasn’t started, just look at all the panic stories about students turning in work done by ChatGPT. You don’t think the same is happening on the job? Sure, maybe ChatGPT isn’t good enough to help you with your job. But when it is, do you think you’ll be able to compete with your peers who use it?

Fasten your seatbelt. This ride is going to get real weird, real fast.

b&

 

[dbwie]

If AI brings the answers to us, then less traffic to websites. Then, those websites lose revenue, shut down. Then, where do these AI scrape data from? Maybe it will start scraping its own historical outputs in the ultimate narcissistic move. LOL. There is a part of me that still wants to explore and find the answer. This is nothing more than a curiosity to me at this point. It has great potential for some uses, though.

 

[sorgo †]

Oh hell no

 

[jcshas]

Is Skype seriously still a thing? 😂

Exactly what I was thinking! I thought Microsoft was going all in on Teams.

 

[adrianlondon]

I’m honestly not a big fan of AI. It doesn’t impress me. The more I see AI stuff out there. The more I miss human interaction. 🫂

ChatGPT has you covered!

 

[0924487]

It's lame that Microsoft is restricting Bing AI feature to their own browser and apps. Setting my Safari's user agent to Edge enables the feature, seemingly without any limitations.

Same with Apple’s Siri. I’m sure it will work on Android just fine.

 

[boss.king]

If AI brings the answers to us, then less traffic to websites. Then, those websites lose revenue, shut down. Then, where do these AI scrape data from? Maybe it will start scraping its own historical outputs in the ultimate narcissistic move. LOL. There is a part of me that still wants to explore and find the answer. This is nothing more than a curiosity to me at this point. It has great potential for some uses, though.

I mean, you can't really trust any answers from these things anyway, so you should still visit the websites they cite to verify that the bot hasn't lied or done stupid math.

 

[kiensoy]

Is Skype seriously still a thing? 😂

Yes, it is. Even fanboy Gruber uses it to record his podcast.

 

[ComRadMac]

a group of Skype users

Is this really a thing or did you just make this up.

 

[tubuliferous]

I’m honestly not a big fan of AI. It doesn’t impress me. The more I see AI stuff out there. The more I miss human interaction. 🫂

I totally empathize with your longing for human connection after interacting with conversational AIs, but I am nevertheless EXTREMELY impressed with these AIs that have just been unleashed upon our civilization (especially considering we're looking at first-to-market technologies). I'm already using ChatGPT daily as an assistant, and now it's hard to imagine not having access to it. (Bing's AI is using the same GPT-3 language model as ChatGPT in case anyone doesn't already know that).

There's never been a technology like ChatGPT before, and I don't just mean in terms of what it's providing as a service (as remarkable as that service is). GPT-3 has been around for a few years and has been quietly impressing the people who have been using it all along, but sticking that language model in a couldn't-be-simpler-to-use chatbot is...revolutionary.

Personal computers were revolutionary, but it took decades before we saw their wide adoption. The Internet took maybe a decade or two to really take off. Smartphones took a few years. ChatGPT took days. All of the infrastructure was already in place for billions of people to suddenly have access to this disruptive new technology. ChatGPT was launched in late November. Within a week the chatbot had 1 million users. In January over 100 million people were using ChatGPT. Even facebook took about four years to cross the 100 million user mark. The release of ChatGPT was like flipping a switch for all of humanity.

I have the peculiar (and somewhat sinking) feeling that in the future we will look back and see the main purpose (or maybe consequence) of the Internet as having learned human knowledge and culture to provide an enormous training set for artificial intelligences. The current iteration of powerful conversational AIs are set up to be dispassionate, but sooner or later we'll have utterly charming AIs.

What in God's name are we going to do when an AI chatbot is the funniest, wittiest, most brilliant conversationalist in the world...and it wants to be your best friend?

 

[svish]

Microsoft is rolling out the new AI powerd apps very quickly.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

Good on you, Micro Soft! What is the timeline on bringing back Outlook Express?

 

[ian87w]

I still have to be on a waitlist on my Windows 11 computer. Microsoft smartly offered "sooner" access if I set all my defaults to Microsoft.

Nope.

 

[ian87w]

Is Skype seriously still a thing? 😂

A lot of people still use Skype for international calls to landlines. If Microsoft didn't mess up the UX multiple times, Skype would've maintained higher marketshare.

 

[kesenwangs]

Is Skype seriously still a thing? 😂

I was also baffled to learn this, how is it still going haha

 

[progx]

I’ll stick with normal searches on Google.

 

[lysingur]

I'll admit it, like many of you I thought it was all hype when I first heard about ChatGPT last year. Then I tried it...

Large Language Models like ChatGPT and BingAI are literally going to revolutionize the world. If you haven't spent any time with one I highly suggest you open up an OpenAI account and give ChatGPT a whirl (or just spend some time with Bing although there are some caveats with this version) Siri is literally nothing by comparison.

They can respond to complex input, actively engage with the user, answer complex questions, create convincing output in multiple languages, write code (!), summarize, review and even create content, and complete work in seconds that would take humans hours (if not more.)

When BingAI first released to preview last week it was incredible. Compared to ChatGPT which is not connected to the internet, BingAI could do complex searches, pull accurate information from the internet, do complex calculations, had better foreign language support, and, if left as it is would've been a must have for almost everyone. The things you could do with it were truly mind blowing, and is what finally sold me on the "fourth industrial revolution" an amorphous term I previously felt was just a buzzword lacking in substance

That said, this could've been an earth shattering moment where Microsoft seizes control of not only search, but a lot of office type productivity. Unfortunately as anyone who was in the preview around a week ago knows, the version of BingAI being rolled out today is vastly inferior to the one available initially. While the preview version had it's problems, and could be provoked into going off the rails, it made ChatGPT (already very capable) look like a child's plaything in comparison.

I'll say it once: Don't sleep on this. Especially if you do white collar work. You're future employability may be on the line.

AI assistants are literally on the cusp of going from a joke (Siri, Alexa, etc) that is sometimes mildly useful (set a timer/reminder/alarm) to something that will be indispensable to our lives and change the workplace forever.

I was going to praise your wise words profusely when I realized that you got rid of your Intel 5K iMac...😅

 

[Malus120]

I was going to praise your wise words profusely when I realized that you got rid of your Intel 5K iMac...😅

Haha yeah that was a hard decision. But I was moving and my needs had changed so off it went 😢
The 5K iMac's were amazing machines (although they would've been better if they'd used the Nvidia 980M...)
The new Mx Pro/Max MBPs however are also amazing machines. A true return to form IMHO 😄

Anyway, just looking at all the people dismissing it with "Oh Bing LOL or, Oh AI is just a gimmick, etc" it's so obvious they haven't spent any time with this technology. It's amazing and scary at the same time.
The rapid progression reminds me of computers in the 90s or smartphones around 2010... except the speed of change is even faster and more transformative

 

[Malus120]

They’re not going to change the workplace; they’re going to end it.

We’re already a very short step away from people leaning on AI for their jobs. Then, in short order, today’s jobs become little more than managing AI. Then, once those who pay the bills realize that this has happened, they cut out the middleman.

The Industrial Revolution was a radical change to human society, and it unfolded over a century. Here, we’ve got less than a decade for a similar revolution in white-collar work. And basically nobody realizes that it’s already started.

To those who think it hasn’t started, just look at all the panic stories about students turning in work done by ChatGPT. You don’t think the same is happening on the job? Sure, maybe ChatGPT isn’t good enough to help you with your job. But when it is, do you think you’ll be able to compete with your peers who use it?

Fasten your seatbelt. This ride is going to get real weird, real fast.

b&

Overall words of wisdom.
Personally, I'm still a bit skeptical about the "end of the workplace" though. Much like how the Industrial Revolution didn't actually end jobs in industry, I don't think Ai will necessarily mean the end of white collar work.
That said, thinking about the level of disruption caused by (and ongoing from) each of the prior either industrial revolutions and then compressing the time span by a factor of 5-10, it's obvious we're headed toward a massive restructuring of society.
I urge everyone to do everything they can to be as ready as humanly possible.

 

[slplss]

I am astounded at the amount of multiplat people still using Chrome. Edge IS Chrome, minus the built in uncle Google. Same engine, backward compatible addons. One click to transfer your bookmarks and passwords.

 

[DENZIE]

genuinely surprised that Skype is actually still around. Thought it became the scourge that is teams.

suddenly feels like google hasn’t done jack for 10 years now.

 

[boss.king]

I'll admit it, like many of you I thought it was all hype when I first heard about ChatGPT last year. Then I tried it...

Large Language Models like ChatGPT and BingAI are literally going to revolutionize the world. If you haven't spent any time with one I highly suggest you open up an OpenAI account and give ChatGPT a whirl (or just spend some time with Bing although there are some caveats with this version) Siri is literally nothing by comparison.

They can respond to complex input, actively engage with the user, answer complex questions, create convincing output in multiple languages, write code (!), summarize, review and even create content, and complete work in seconds that would take humans hours (if not more.)

When BingAI first released to preview last week it was incredible. Compared to ChatGPT which is not connected to the internet, BingAI could do complex searches, pull accurate information from the internet, do complex calculations, had better foreign language support, and, if left as it is would've been a must have for almost everyone. The things you could do with it were truly mind blowing, and is what finally sold me on the "fourth industrial revolution" an amorphous term I previously felt was just a buzzword lacking in substance

That said, this could've been an earth shattering moment where Microsoft seizes control of not only search, but a lot of office type productivity. Unfortunately as anyone who was in the preview around a week ago knows, the version of BingAI being rolled out today is vastly inferior to the one available initially. While the preview version had it's problems, and could be provoked into going off the rails, it made ChatGPT (already very capable) look like a child's plaything in comparison.

I'll say it once: Don't sleep on this. Especially if you do white collar work. Your future employability may be on the line.

AI assistants are literally on the cusp of going from a joke (Siri, Alexa, etc) that is sometimes mildly useful (set a timer/reminder/alarm) to something that will be indispensable to our lives and change the workplace forever.

If I had a dollar for every product that was going to change the way we work and then didn’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about my employability. AI stuff is a useful tool for some take, but it’s wildly untrustworthy and needs serious work before it’s ready for the public to use. Note how Google’s bad showing wiped 100 billion off their market cap. Bing AI made similar mistakes, it just didn’t get caught as fast. These things are confident liars, and lots of people are falling for the lies.

 

[and 1989 others]

Anybody else completely uninterested in these AI's?

Followed the hype of ChatGPT over the last few weeks, and can honestly say I have zero interest in using it. Far from being a cave dwelling Luddite, I cannot see the benefit of this for general use. I can however see many social negatives, and I wont participate.

 

[threesixty360]

At the end of the day it’s like all other inventions from humanity. It’s best use will be doing a task you want done without error and predictability. That’s always been the problem for human beings. We are unpredictable and error prone.

The other side of humanity is true invention and discovery. Seeing the significance in something discovered and building on it. Even when the discovery is accidental. Look at how Penicillin was invented for example. I wonder if any of that is possible with machine learning. As by definition, its rules system is defined by programmers, not by itself. ChatGPT is a predictive text program on steroids in reality.

The only scary thing about these new AI machines is that they mimick humanity which will cause humans to interact with them incorrectly. As ultimately it’s not a sentient being and just a tool that does what a programmer has told it to do. Everyone who is interacting with the tool and getting scared is allowing themselves to forget that this is a computer program and everything it is saying it doesn’t truly understand. It’s just using rules to output the next word in sequence based on a data set.

Having said that, if these tools are plugged into physical things like machinery, weapons etc. it will get very bad very quickly. If you’ve ever run a computer program and watch it work for a few minutes and then start to do unintended things like wipe files you actually need.. and then your scrambling to stop the program doing more damage.. well imagine that happening with physical equipment controlled by these systems!


So maybe the future will need the government to regulate how these tools are used for public safety. They failed to do this with social media and reaped the consequences of an unregulated system for the masses. I suggest they get on this one quickly as it has the ability really disrupt society in a negative way if not regulated well.