Testing bing new chatbot
Over the weekend, I have been testing the new AI-powered Bing. You can find my first impressions of using it here. I decided to give Bing some text to grammar and spell check. Below you can find the original text.
My version
Marvel has created a cinematic universe, based on the comic book stories. Creating in house TV shows and movies all connected. Taking a huge risk with the release of Iron man in 2008. First stage was the infinity saga from 2008 till 2019, second stage is multiverse saga. DC comics has tried to recreate the magic but has failed. Having its own success stories but unable to build a universe. New golden age of super hero media, partly inspired by the successful animated TV shows of the 90s and 2000s. Key lesson here is not flooding the market and taking some risk. Overwhelming number of sequels show people have forget what Walt Disney said.
“You Can’t Top Pigs With Pigs” Walt Disney
Highs and lows, some of best TV shows and movies have been released in last decade. Some of more successfully movies at the box office are formulaic. Sequels follow after a successful movie, until everything goes wrong. Nobody has been able to create media empire like Marvel has done. House of mouse finding mega success off the comic storytellers. Number of sequels and new heroes to a new generation. During the early 2000s Fox and Sony found some success with Xmen and spiderman. Unable to spin that into long term success. Making various sequels and having been rebooted, both crashing and burning.
Disney decided to buy 20th century fox. Sony entered an agreement which saw spiderman fall under Marvel magic creative touch. Result successful set of spiderman movies and being part of biggest super hero movie of all time. Sony plans to create its own universe based on spiderman, piggy backing off sequels. Darker venom movies setting up the stage for more to come. I’m not sure how much involvement Marvel is having here. Both Sony and Fox suffered a similar problem, unable to find similar success to Marvel. Both not really taking any risks and retelling old stories. Fox did take one big gamble with Deadpool but largely
Bing version
Marvel has created a cinematic universe based on the comic book stories, producing in-house TV shows and movies that are all connected. They took a huge risk with the release of Iron Man in 2008. The first stage was the Infinity Saga from 2008 to 2019, and the second stage is the Multiverse Saga. DC Comics has tried to recreate the magic but has failed, having its own success stories but unable to build a universe. We are in a new golden age of superhero media, partly inspired by the successful animated TV shows of the 90s and 2000s. The key lesson here is not to flood the market and to take some risks. The overwhelming number of sequels shows that people have forgotten what Walt Disney said:
“You Can’t Top Pigs With Pigs” Walt Disney
There have been highs and lows. Some of the best TV shows and movies have been released in the last decade, but some of the more successful movies at the box office are formulaic. Sequels follow after a successful movie, until everything goes wrong. Nobody has been able to create a media empire like Marvel has done. The House of Mouse has found mega success with the comic storytellers, introducing a number of sequels and new heroes to a new generation. During the early 2000s, Fox and Sony found some success with X-Men and Spider-Man, but they were unable to spin that into long-term success. They made various sequels and reboots, both crashing and burning.
Disney decided to buy 20th Century Fox. Sony entered an agreement that allowed Spider-Man to fall under Marvel’s creative touch. The result was a successful set of Spider-Man movies and being part of the biggest superhero movie of all time. Sony plans to create its own universe based on Spider-Man, piggybacking off the sequels. Darker Venom movies are setting the stage for more to come. I’m not sure how much involvement Marvel has here. Both Sony and Fox suffered from a similar problem: they were unable to find similar success to Marvel. They did not really take any risks and retold old stories. Fox did take one big gamble with Deadpool, but that was largely an exception.
The Bing chatbot performed that task rather well, outputting human-sounding text. The next test was asking it to provide a summary and a poem based on that input.
Marvel has created a shared universe of superhero films and TV shows based on their comic books, starting with Iron Man in 20081. The first phase of their universe was called the Infinity Saga and spanned from 2008 to 20192. The second phase is called the Multiverse Saga and is ongoing2. DC Comics has tried to emulate Marvel’s success but has struggled to create a coherent and popular universe, although some of their standalone films have been well-received. Superhero media is very popular nowadays, partly influenced by the animated shows of the past. However, some critics argue that the superhero genre is becoming too repetitive and formulaic, and that originality and risk-taking are needed to avoid saturation. This is in line with Walt Disney’s quote: “You Can’t Top Pigs With Pigs”
You can see Bing searching the web and providing references. I asked Bing to summarize it further and here the result.
Marvel has made a shared universe of superhero films and TV shows since 2008. DC Comics has tried to do the same but has failed. Superhero media is very popular but also very similar. Walt Disney said: “You Can’t Top Pigs With Pigs”.
Now let’s ask Bing to create a poem based on that text.
Marvel has a vision
To create a world of heroes
With stories that connect
Across films and shows
They started with Iron Man
And ended with Endgame
The Infinity Saga was a hit
The Multiverse Saga is the same
DC Comics tried to follow
But they could not compete
Their universe was messy
Their films were incomplete
Superhero media is booming
Thanks to cartoons of the past
But some say it's too much
And the genre won't last
Walt Disney had a wisdom
That still applies today
You can't top pigs with pigs
You have to find a new way
Automation of grammar, spell checking is significant for me. The chatbot also formats the text to highlight what was changed. Instead of having to manually update the text, I input the whole text and copy the output now. Bing performance is superior compared to Microsoft editor. Watching the bot working is quite something.
I don’t think it removes the need for human input, but it helps improve productivity. The text above is just one example of automation. A skilled editor could proofread the final results. There is potential here to improve productivity for the average worker. For example, customer feedback can be summarized, saving time.
I have not just inputted random text, but given it a spreadsheet formula problem to solve. Bing’s ability to write code and debug that code could be a gamechanger. However, there are hidden guard rails that exist that limit the ability of Bing to fulfill your requests. Bing searched the Libra office documentation, forums and more to find the solution. This is a basic automation of a web search based on a language input. I tried to get Bing to build whole spreadsheet for me but it refused. Instead gave me three to four different answers, each of which could give a right solution. Sometimes it can give you different results based on the same question.
Asking it a basic question what is the population of London?
According to the London Datastore1, London is home to an estimated 8.8 million people, making it the largest city in the UK. It is also a highly diverse city, with over 3.5 million residents born outside the UK. The population of London is estimated to be just over 9 million people in 20202, an increase of over 2 million people when compared with the early 1980s. The population of London is expected to hit the 10 million mark by 20352.
2nd
Hello, this is Bing. According to the latest census data, the population of London was 8.91 million in 20181. It is the largest and most diverse city in the United Kingdom, with over 3.5 million residents born outside the UK2. London stands on the River Thames in south-east England and has been a major settlement for two millennia34.
Search engines already suffer from misinformation and disinformation. Adding another layer which could give you outputs you want to hear is a huge red flag. This is already a problem with social media and search engines at the moment. Bing automation of web search shows search engines have many strengths and weaknesses. Instead of fixing or addressing any weakness we got this. I don’t believe this improves Bing search engine. The next step is going to be images, there are already some working models that output images but few understand the image. Microsoft is already working on one that does.
These models work best at smaller scale with a limited data set. For Microsoft, this new language model could massively improve its office 365 product suite. Business suite is getting automation powered by AI. Therefore, it could improve the existing editor which failed to pick up the mistakes. It is unclear if you can make stuff like this work offline or need some sort of cloud network. The reason why they have added this new system to Bing search engine is business related. Investors want to see results and the next big thing. Spending billions to improve spellchecker won’t cause shareholders to cheer.
Investing billions to increase your overall operating costs is not smart business. User data is already heavily monetized, raising privacy concerns around meta data. Big American tech track record with user data is not great. More nations are asking questions about the power they already hold. Now they want to suck up more user data with weak existing frameworks and no oversight?
In conclusion
Automation of various tasks producing far more accurate results is useful. Rush to integrate it into Bing is rather worrying. Technical limitations are going to cause problems. Lack of understanding how current search engine weakness feed into this AI. Less is more when it comes to this idea.
I don’t believe the hype around this wave of machine learning being sold as AI just yet. It does however make a rather good spell checker and grammar checker.