REDMOND, United States — It has been
a rough few months for the tech industry. There have been tens of thousands of
layoffs, hundreds of billions in value lost on Wall Street, and a high-profile
scandal at a crypto company that has shaken faith in that young market.
اضافة اعلان
But in a
conference center on Microsoft’s
sprawling campus, Tuesday was a moment for swagger. Executives and engineers
from Microsoft and a small research lab partner called OpenAI unveiled a new
internet search engine and web browser that use the next iteration of
artificial intelligence technology that many in the industry believe could be a
key to its future.
This new artificial intelligence became a
fascination for millions of people two months ago when OpenAI released a
chatbot called ChatGPT. Capable of answering questions, writing poetry, and
riffing on almost any topic tossed its way, ChatGPT provided the tech industry
with a jolt of excitement in the middle of its biggest job contraction in at
least 15 years.
The enthusiasm around OpenAI’s technology —
as well as the work of several competitors expected to hit the market soon —
reminds tech veterans of other moments that have turned Silicon Valley on its
head, from the arrival of the first iPhone and the Google search engine to the
introduction of Netscape web browser that set the stage for the
commercialization of the internet.
Microsoft played catch-up on browsers,
badly missed the shift to mobile computing that came with the iPhone, and its
Bing search engine is a distant second in popularity to Google. But it could be
the first big company to tech’s next big thing if the chatbots and their
technology, called generative AI, live up to their billing.
“This technology will reshape pretty much
every software category that we know,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO. He
added that “a race starts today in terms of what you can expect.”
On Tuesday, in a room crowded with nearly
100 reporters, editors, and photographers,
Microsoft showed off a new Bing search engine. Yusuf Mehdi, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, used a new
conversational interface to search for a 65-inch television suited to video
games. As the service listed televisions, he asked it to pare the list to the
cheapest models. It quickly did.
“This technology will reshape pretty much every software category that we know.”
He then used the chatbot to plan a Mexican
vacation and research Japanese poets. With a short query, he could ask the
system to translate results from Spanish to English or show a particular haiku
poem.
“You see, this is just so much better than
today’s search,” Mehdi said.
The rush to integrate chatbotsMehdi also unveiled a new version of the
company’s Edge web browser that offers its own chatbot service. After loading a
news release, he asked the bot to summarize the document. He also asked it to
write a social media post about the new Bing search engine and had it generate
a snippet of computer code for a new software program.
Microsoft released its new version of Bing
to a limited number of people Tuesday. Each user will be able to run a limited
number of queries and people can join a waitlist for access to the full version
of the service. The company plans to expand access to millions more people by
the end of the month.
Nadella said in an interview that Microsoft
was working at a “frantic pace” to incorporate the technology into its
products. By releasing a new search tool — what he called “the most used
product on the planet” — people will see how their “everyday habit” could lead
to “something magical.”
It is important, he added, that Microsoft
does not act like it is “shackled by our old businesses” when working with the
new technology. But when it comes to search engines, Microsoft, with just a 3
percent share of the global market, does not have a lot to lose.
Other companies also have jumped into the
chatbot race. On Monday, Google announced that it would soon offer a chatbot
called Bard and start adding chatbot technology into its own search engine.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is fast-tracking efforts to release similar
technology in various products. And countless startups are building their own
generative AI products, the name for technologies that generate words, images,
and other media on their own.
Executives, entrepreneurs, and investors
hope the chatbots will not turn out to be what the tech industry has seemed to
churn out for some time now: a curiosity that falls short of big expectations.
When it comes to search engines, Microsoft, with just a 3 percent share of the global market, does not have a lot to lose.
There have been many: Self-driving cars
that cannot quite get the self-driving part right. Wearable technologies that
still need a smartphone nearby to truly be useful. And crypto currencies that
promised to change the world of finance but so far have largely been an asset
for speculators.
A tech ‘bromance’Microsoft has worked closely with OpenAI,
investing $13 billion in the startup and supplying the billions of dollars in
computing power needed to build its AI technology. Microsoft declined to
discuss the specific technology that underpins its new search engine, but it is
likely based on a widely rumored OpenAI creation called GPT-4, the successor to
what the San Francisco company released two months ago.
The partnership is the “best bromance in
tech history”, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in an interview.
Like similar services from startups such as
Perplexity and You.com, Microsoft’s new search engine annotates whaddddddt the
chatbot says, so people can readily review its sources. And it dovetails with
Microsoft’s index of all websites, so that it can instantly access the latest
information posted to the internet. The company also said that its search
engine includes technology designed to identify and remove problematic content
from the chat service.
Last week, Microsoft released its first AI
integration into Outlook, its email service, with a tool that helps salespeople
write custom emails. In the coming months, Microsoft plans to release features
with generative AI on average every week, said Charles Lamanna, an executive
who oversees the applications Microsoft builds for businesses.
The new chatbots do come with baggage. They
often do not distinguish between fact and fiction. They can generate language
that is biased against women and people of color. And experts worry that people
will use them to spread lies at a speed they could not in the past.
“Companies often put these technologies out
too quickly, disregarding their flaws and then trying to fix them on the fly,”
said Chirag Shah, a University of Washington professor who explores the flaws
in chatbots. “This can cause real harm.”
Read more Technology
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
