It’s been a rough few months for the tech industry. Had Tens of thousands of people were laid offhundreds of billions of dong value lost on Wall Street and a high profile scandal at a cryptocurrency company that shook confidence in that nascent market.
But in a convention center on Microsoft’s sprawling campus, Tuesday is a time for swagger. Microsoft executives and engineers and a small research lab partner called OpenAI have unveiled a new internet search engine and web browser that uses the next version of artificial intelligence technology. which many in the industry believe could be the key to its future.
This new artificial intelligence became the passion of millions of people two months before the release of OpenAI a chatbot called ChatGPT. Capable of answering questions, writing poetry, and presenting on almost any topic in its own right, ChatGPT has given the tech industry a boost in the midst of the biggest job contraction in a few days. 15 years at most.
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 transformed Valley. Silicon Valley, from the first iPhone and the Google search engine to the Netscape web browser, set the stage for the commercialization of the internet.
Microsoft caught up with the browser and missed the opportunity to switch to the mobile computing that came with the iPhone; Its Bing search engine is second only to Google in popularity. But it could be the first major company to hit the tech’s next big hit if chatbots and their technology, known as generalized AI, live up to its claims.
“This technology will reshape nearly every category of software that we know of,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. He added that “a race starts today on what you can expect.”
On Tuesday, in a room filled with nearly a hundred reporters, editors and photographers, Microsoft showed off its new Bing search engine. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft, used the new chat interface to search for a 65-inch television suitable for video games. When the service lists televisions, he asks it to cut the list into the cheapest models. It does it quickly.
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He then used the chatbot to plan a vacation in Mexico and research Japanese poets. With a short query, he can ask the system to translate the results from Spanish to English or display a specific haiku poem.
“You see, this is a lot better than today’s search,” Mr. Mehdi said.
Mr. Mehdi also unveiled a new version of the company’s Edge web browser that offers its own chatbot service. After loading a press release, he asked the bot to summarize the document. He also asked it to create a tweet about the new Bing search engine and asked it to generate a piece of computer code for a new software program.
Microsoft released a new version of Bing to a limited number on Tuesday. Each user will be able to run a limited number of queries, and everyone can join a waitlist to access the full version of the service. The company plans to expand to millions more by the end of the month.
Other companies are jumping into the chatbot race. On Monday, Google announced that it will soon offered a chatbot called Bard and started adding chatbot technology to its own search engine. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is working quickly to release similar technology in different products. And countless startups are build their own innovative AI productsThe name given to technologies that create words, images, and other media on their own.
Executives, entrepreneurs and investors hope chatbots won’t become what the tech industry seems to have long ago created: a curiosity that falls short of great expectations.
There are already many: Self-driving cars can’t understand the self-driving part properly. Wearable technologies still need a smartphone by their side to be truly useful. And cryptocurrencies promise to change the financial world but have so far largely remained an asset for speculators.
Microsoft has worked closely with OpenAI, 13 billion USD investment during startup and provisioning billions of dollars in computing power needed to build its AI technology. Microsoft declined to discuss the specific technology underpinning its new search engine, but it is likely based on a widely rumored OpenAI creation called GPT-4, the successor to Microsoft’s new search engine. San Francisco company released two months ago.
“Satya played really well,” said Andrew Ng, a researcher and entrepreneur who previously oversaw the AI labs of both Google and Chinese giant Baidu.
Like similar offerings from startups like Perplexity and You.com, Microsoft’s new search engine annotates what the chatbot says so people can easily review its sources. And it aligns with Microsoft’s index of all web pages, so that it has instant access to the latest information posted to the internet. The company also says its search engine includes technology designed to identify and remove problematic content from the chat service.
Last week, Microsoft released the first AI integration into Outlook, its email service, with a Tools to help salespeople write custom emails. Charles Lamanna, the chief executive officer who oversees the applications Microsoft builds for businesses, said that in the coming months, on average each week, Microsoft plans to release features with generalized AI.
He compares this new wave of AI technology to the rise of the Internet or personal computers. “People are in a room with the lights off trying to get a feel for what the hell this market is all about and what this opportunity really looks like,” he said in an interview last week.
But it’s not clear how much businesses will be interested in these services as technologies like ChatGPT are much more expensive than traditional software to operate.
“The economics of software will probably have to change,” said Mr. Lamanna. “The software might be a bit more expensive, but it does some pretty cool stuff.”
The new chatbots come with luggage. They often fail to distinguish between fact and fiction. They can create language that is prejudiced against women and people of color. And experts worry that people will use them to spread lies at a rate they couldn’t in the past.
“Companies often roll out these technologies too quickly, ignore their bugs, and then try to fix them right away,” said Chirag Shah, a University of Washington professor who discovered vulnerabilities in chatbots. ie. “This can do real harm.”
Google and Meta were reluctant to widely deploy generalized AI because its flaws could damage their reputation. But OpenAI – a new company with no real brand to defend – is ready to push the limits.
in one 2,000 word blog post Announced before the press event, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, called these a “turning year” and acknowledged potential downsides, and called for “deep and broad conversations” about this problem.
Sam Altman, executive director of OpenAI, makes the point that it’s time to release AI to the masses. “We look forward to continuing to learn from real-world usage,” he said. “You have to do it in the real world, not in a lab.”
