Bing Is a Trap
A Microsoft spokesperson is typing something into a search engine, and it isn’t quite working. I’m watching this unfold at a Microsoft press event in Manhattan that’s meant to show off new features on Bing, the company’s Google rival. In this demonstration, a chatbot is supposed to respond to a user’s query with an embedded video. Typing on a large computer monitor in full view of several journalists, the staffer asks the program for instructions to tie a tie. But instead of a video, Bing generates an absurd heap of text—so many words about looping and knotting fabric set against a sterile white speech bubble. It reminds me of a Times New Roman resource page you would see on a professor’s old website.
Everyone in the crowd recognizes that this.) Another Microsoft rep makes a joke about how the glitch proves the point—it really would be useful for the AI to show a video in this particular context—and we move on. They try something else, and it works: The Bing bot gives a short answer to a question about skiing and then plops a YouTube video in the chat bubble.
