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Microsoft Technology

Microsoft Plans To Update Bing With a Faster Version of ChatGPT in the Coming Weeks (techcrunch.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Microsoft is working to incorporate a faster version of OpenAI's ChatGPT, known as GPT-4, into Bing in the coming weeks in a move that would make the search engine more competitive with Google, according to a new report from Semafor. From a report: The integration would see Bing using GPT-4 to answer search queries. People familiar with the matter told Semafor that the main difference between ChatGPT and GPT-4 is speed. Although ChatGPT sometimes takes a up to a few minutes to form a response, GPT-4 is said to be a lot quicker in responding to queries. The latest software's responses are also said to be more detailed and more humanlike. The planned incorporation of ChatGPT into Microsoft products is expected to trigger new competition in internet search, which has largely been dominated by Google. By using GPT-4, Bing would be able to provide users with humanlike answers, as opposed to just simply displaying a list of links.
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Microsoft Plans To Update Bing With a Faster Version of ChatGPT in the Coming Weeks More

Microsoft Plans To Update Bing With a Faster Version of ChatGPT in the Coming Weeks

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  • This is great! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @12:34PM (#63257175)

    I know that the basement dwellers here will trash this idea but I think it will be a big improvement in search.
    Imagine getting a clear, concise, and reasonably accurate answer to your queries rather than having to search through a bunch of links and try to piece something together from random screeds.
    My limited experience with ChatGPT is impressive. It does put together a synthesis of the entire internet in a very clear response.

    • Re:This is great! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <hiland@g m a i l.com> on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @12:46PM (#63257221)
      Completely agree here- I've used ChatGPT to answer some specific questions I've had, and then verified the answers through traditional search. ASSUMING that ChatGPT is giving me accurate answers, the ability to ask a question and just get the direct answer without having to go through other websites will be HUGE. It will also have a massive impact on those websites that thrive on traffic from Google: I imagine Stack Exchange takes a hit as developers start to query Bing with development questions. And then if Bing becomes the place to get easy answers to your questions, then the sites that are generating the data ChatGPT uses will see a drop in traffic, and that results in less data to train ChatGPT for future answers. We're about to enter a new, thorny area... it excites me the way I was excited when Google first came on the stage.
      • As ChatGPT gets its data from elsewhere, it can never be dominant and top-used tool at the same time. It now feeds on a long history of data, but what happens when a new programming language or other paradigm comes out for example?

    • Re:This is great! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @12:55PM (#63257275) Homepage
      There is a big but here: Right now all the monetization specialists are working on a way to curate input to influence the results of ChatGPT when it is unleashed on data from the entire internet.

      Eventually half the responses will be riddled with companies trying to sell things. The other half will be religious and political junk.
      • The horror!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Interesting question. No doubt people are working on ways to try to influence ChatGPT for commercial gain.
        You seem to think that somehow "curating input" could influence output. So, in this scenario Bing would modify your question in a way that led to some monetizable output.
        The other way would be to corrupt ChatGPT in some way to insert monetizable links in its output... or Bing could just add a list of selected paid links to the output
        Interesting... we'll see.

    • Re:This is great! (Score:4, Funny)

      by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @02:13PM (#63257633)

      It's really pretty wild that something that everyone was expecting in the 90s - being able to just ask for what you want, is finally coming true.

      I haven't bothered to try it myself but I've seen some experiments and it can definitely get things very wrong while coming across very confident. So I'd be curious to see how MS deals with it. It's one thing if search turns up some junk, it's another if MS tells you to chug horse dewormer to treat a respiratory disease.

    • Re:This is great! (Score:4, Informative)

      by bartle ( 447377 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @02:44PM (#63257779) Homepage

      I think it's fair to say that both Google and ChatGPT are roughly equal when it comes to the accuracy of their responses, but the difference is that Google shows its work. It's fairly easy to look at Google's answer and see whether it came from a reputable source or a letter salad domain. ChatGPT has no such mechanism to confirm the accuracy of what's it's telling you but both its correct and incorrect answers are presented with the same level of confidence.

      I would also suggest that ChatGPT won't be able to compete fully with Google until it can handle requests for commercial information. Currently ChatGPT demurs if you ask it which appliance to buy, wheres Google turns up all kinds of results. If ChatGPT does wade into these waters, it will be both under heavy scrutiny from promotive companies while various interests try to figure out how to affect ChatGPT's results.

      ChatGPT has so far been an impressive technology demo but I question whether they will be able to really make it into a substantially useful product. I think it will be far more complicated and far more expensive than is generally expected.

      Or, as ChatGPT says when I asked:

      Overall, making ChatGPT a resource for researching consumer information would require a significant investment in data collection, preprocessing, and model training, as well as ongoing maintenance and improvement to ensure that the model remains up-to-date and relevant.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mspohr ( 589790 )

        Good points.
        I really don't want to use ChatGPT for advice on stuff to buy so that leaves the commercial arena for Google where it's advice goes to the highest bidder.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      I've been wanting to try it for a while but haven't been able to yet.

      Lately Google search is just really bad for me. It used to really be good at searching for computer-related things. But lately it just fails especially for terms that are pretty generic, but which Google (the company) have given specific meanings, like the names of their Android apps. Google for anything Google-related and you'll find out what I mean, but to be fair the other search engines fail too. When searching for help with Google-r

    • It could be interesting, but playing with the ChatGPT tool it will very confidently give factually incorrect answers to anything mildly technical. That may be a matter of tuning its learning dataset/model but otherwise it may not be quite ready to replace a list of hyperlinks to sources that can be ranked on their authority. I could see it excelling at Voice Assistant type interactions, as well, which is something MS had given up on for the time being.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      Imagine getting a clear, concise, and reasonably accurate answer to your queries rather than having to search through a bunch of links and try to piece something together from random screeds.

      I will not be using Bing if they start regurgitating ChatGPT for search answers (not that I was using them anyway). Getting clear, concise, and reasonably accurate - and sometimes confidently inaccurate - results means I would miss out on all the things I learn while looking up other things.

  • Yes, I have just recently tried the chat. I am impressed. However, it is not too accurate. And this is not just one of, you can get partially correct answers quite easily. So, I am not sure if this is going to be an improvement to a normal search. Do I want easier human-like interaction that may be incorrect, of may be I can keep using the traditional search and actually see the source of the information and judge for myself if this source seems reliable or not. Probably, depends on how to do it. For me Ch

    • Interesting FP branch, but I think it's just another morally neutral technology that will soon be perverted for bad purposes. My prediction? The dialogs generated with ChatGPT technology will be customized to maximize "engagement" of the searcher.

      The real problem is different. DYOR (Do Your Own Research) has become a new kind of lie. What it really means to most folks is "I can websearch for what I want to believe on the Internet, so that means my (and my group's) beliefs are CORRECT when I find the 'eviden

      • "Funny historical note. I want to blame Martin Luther. (Not to be confused with the Junior King.) His idea leading to the Reformation was that you should do your own research into the Bible using HIS new translation."

        Actually, read a good history on that entire period. The explosion of propaganda and misinformation that accompanied the invention of printing sounds a lot like what we're going through now.

        • Anything can be shown to be partially true or false. We have to be careful with labelling something as "misinformation". What does it even mean? I guess, we need a new right, the right to be "wrong". We do not have to be ready to die for something we said or wrote, just because of bunch of self appointed "fact checkers" have a different *opinion*.

          • So tell me, which part of the Jewish orbital space lasers are true? Which part of using horse dewormers to treat Covid are true?

            • Here you are: " Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug. Approved for human use in 1987,[8] today it is used to treat infestations. William Campbell and Satoshi mura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discovery and applications. In 2018, it was the 420th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 100,000 prescriptions. It is available as a generic medicine." From Wikipedia about [[Ivermectin]]. So.. you see there are two sides for the same fact.

              • I see nothing in your quote about its effectiveness for COVID. Also, the formulations of ivermectin being given for COVID are often NOT formulated for human use but are, as I said horse medicine.

                So how about those Jewish Space Lasers?

                • Still, it is a human medicine. Effectiveness against covid is an open question, the very same question we have about the proposed vaccines. Hard to say, but ivermectin is a safe drug and there is no harm if somebody try it if they believe in it. Might work, might work as a placebo. Nothing wrong with this. Clinical trials are expensive and who is going to pay for this for a generic? I know nothing about Jewish Space Lasers, sorry.
        • What is sad is that back then the misinformation was about the Flat Earth, supposed Jewish cabals, and that diseases are actually caused by malodorous vapors. The Confidently Incorrect these days have barely changed the narrative.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          Citation please?

  • Coming next week: 'Ask Google'

    In two more weeks: 'Ask Safari'.

    Somewhere in the middle: 'Ask a Duck anything'.
  • Great to see a breath of fresh air in a decades old method for search queries. But curious to see how in the long term people react to human like response searching and traditional search with direct interaction with source material
    • But curious to see how in the long term people react to human like response searching and traditional search with direct interaction with source material

      People are lazy. If they can ask someone or something the else for an answer, they'll do that instead of taking time to find the answer.

  • .. the also ran of the IT world. Always copying, always too late, always expensive, always bug ridden.

  • I'm 75% convinced Bing failed simply because of the absolutely STUPID name.

    • Yeah, they should have come up with something more serious... like Yahoo! or Google ... or Dogpile... or DuckDuckGo.

      F*ckF*ckNo.

      I'm going to push back on the "bad name" thing, it's gotta be something else... :-)

        Cheers mate... also Bing is as dumb as ... all of the above.

      • 'Google' is at least a play on a scientific word. 'Bing' just makes me thing of Chandler Bing from Friends along with an annoying sound... I think 'Bing' is the reason.

  • People using Google are satified having sponsored results anyway, so the quality of search has never been an issue.
  • Remember how news publishers railed against their content being embedded without compensation? This will be a similar problem.

  • Now that is going to be interesting.

  • Considering Amazon (I think) uses Bing for Alexa searches - when I occasionally try to do a search via Alexa the results are usually really really poor quality. Hope this integration will be actually available and make Alexa searches a lot more useful (as in they will actually produce results I'm asking for).

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