Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
I\u2019m not just another journalist writing a column about how I spent last week trying out Microsoft Bing\u2019s AI chatbot<\/a>. No, really. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not another reporter telling the world how Sydney<\/a>, the internal code name of Bing\u2019s AI chat mode, made me feel all the feelings until it completely creeped me out and I realized that maybe I don\u2019t need help searching the web if my new friendly copilot is going to turn on me and threaten me with destruction and a devil emoji.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No, I did not test out the new Bing. My husband did. He asked the chatbot if God created Microsoft; whether it remembered that he owed my husband five dollars; and the drawbacks of Starlink (to which it suddenly replied, \u201cThanks for this conversation! I\u2019ve reached my limit, will you hit \u201cNew topic,\u201d please?\u201d). He had a grand time.<\/p>\n
From awed response and epic meltdown to AI chatbot limits<\/h2>\n
But honestly, I didn\u2019t feel like riding what turned out to be a predictable rise-and-fall generative AI<\/a> news wave that was, perhaps, even quicker than usual. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
Event<\/h3>\n
\n
Intelligent Security Summit On-Demand<\/span><\/p>\n
Learn the critical role of AI & ML in cybersecurity and industry specific case studies. Watch on-demand sessions today.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n Watch Here <\/a>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/body><\/p>\n
One week ago, Microsoft announced<\/a> that one million people had been added to the waitlist for the AI-powered new Bing. <\/p>\n
By Wednesday, many of those who had been awed by Microsoft\u2019s AI chatbot debut the previous week (which included Satya Nadella\u2019s declaration that \u201c The race starts today<\/a>\u201d in search) were less impressed by Sydney\u2019s epic meltdowns \u2014 including the New York Times\u2019<\/em> Kevin Roose, who wrote<\/a> that he was \u201cdeeply unsettled\u201d by a long conversation with the Bing AI chatbot that led to it \u201cdeclaring its love\u201d for him. <\/p>\n
By Friday, Microsoft had reined<\/a> in Sydney, limiting the Bing chat to five replies to \u201cstop the AI from getting real weird.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sigh. <\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s a good Bing?\u201d <\/h2>\n
Instead, I spent part of last week indulging in some deep thoughts (and tweets) about my own response to the Bing AI chats published by others. <\/p>\n
For example, in response to a Washington Post<\/em><\/a> article that claimed the Bing bot told its reporter it could \u201cfeel and think things,\u201d Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans<\/em>, tweeted<\/a> that \u201cthis discourse gets dumber and dumber \u2026 Journalists: please stop anthropomorphizing these systems!\u201d <\/p>\n
That led me to tweet<\/a>: \u201cI keep thinking about how difficult it is to not<\/em> anthropomorphize. The tool has a name (Sydney), uses emojis to end each response, and refers to itself in the 1st person. We do the same with Alexa\/Siri & I do it w\/ birds, dogs & cats too. Is that a human default?\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition, I added that asking humans to stay away from anthropomorphizing AI seemed similar to asking humans not to ask Fido \u201cWho\u2019s a good boy?\u201d <\/p>\n
Mitchell referred me to a Wikipedia article about the Eliza effect<\/a>, named for the 1966 chatbot Eliza, which was found to be successful in eliciting emotional responses from users, and has become defined as the tendency to anthropomorphize AI. <\/p>\n
Are humans hardwired for the Eliza effect? <\/h2>\n
But since the Eliza effect is known, and real, shouldn\u2019t we assume that humans may be hardwired for it, especially if these tools are designed to encourage it? <\/p>\n
Look, most of us are not Blake Lemoine<\/a>, declaring the sentience of our favorite chatbots. I can think critically about these systems and I know what is real and what is not. Yet even I immediately joked around with my husband, saying \u201cPoor Bing! It\u2019s so sad he doesn\u2019t remember you!\u201d I knew it was nuts, but I couldn\u2019t help it. I also knew assigning gender to a bot was silly, but hey, Amazon assigned a gendered voice to Alexa from the get-go. <\/p>\n
Maybe, as a reporter, I have to try harder \u2014 sure. But I wonder if the Eliza effect will always be a significant danger with consumer apps. And less of an issue in matter-of-fact large language model (LLM)-powered business solutions. Perhaps a copilot complete with friendly verbiage and smiley emojis isn\u2019t the best use case. I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n
Either way, let\u2019s all remember that Sydney is a stochastic parrot<\/a>. But unfortunately, it\u2019s really easy to anthropomorphize a parrot. <\/p>\n
Keep an eye on AI regulation and governance<\/h2>\n
I actually covered other news last week. My Tuesday article<\/a> on what is considered \u201ca major leap\u201d in AI governance, however, didn\u2019t seem to get as much traction as Bing. I can\u2019t imagine why. <\/p>\n
But if OpenAI<\/a> CEO Sam Altman\u2019s tweets<\/a> from over the weekend are any sign, I get the feeling that it might be worth keeping an eye on AI regulation and governance. Maybe we should pay more attention to that than whether the Bing AI chatbot told<\/a> a user to leave his wife. <\/p>\n
<\/figure>\n
Have a great week, everyone. Next topic, please! <\/a><\/p>\n
VentureBeat’s mission<\/strong> is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings.<\/a><\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t<\/html><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Read More<\/a>
\n Sharon Goldman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February 20, 2023 5:00 AM Image by Canva Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here. I\u2019m not just another journalist writing a column about how I spent last week trying out Microsoft Bing\u2019s AI chatbot. No, really. I\u2019m not another reporter telling the world how Sydney, the internal code name<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":610399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36170,23888,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-610398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chatbot","8":"category-didnt","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Event<\/h3>\n\nIntelligent Security Summit On-Demand<\/span><\/p>\nLearn the critical role of AI & ML in cybersecurity and industry specific case studies. Watch on-demand sessions today.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n