The Chatbot Fight Microsoft Vs Google

The AI race is truly in full swing. Just in case you missed it, Microsoft. had its presentation on Tuesday 7-2-2023 at its headquarters in Redmond Washinton. This was closely followed (monitored) by Google the following day at a conference in Paris. ChatGPT a product of Open AI (now just about owned by Microsoft) recent rise in prominence after only three months in the public domain is like nothing we have seen before.

It has progressed beyond creating something novel and ground-breaking as the artificial intelligence race intensifies. Whoever can better execute and perfect the current models are what matters, and in this competition, nobody is holding back. Microsoft obviously thinks there is gain to be had here irrespective of the margins - considering the fact that it is still lacking behind Google in the lucrative markets of search and advertising. Microsoft refers to the updated Bing and Edge as the user’s web-based artificial intelligence copilot. They are rumored to provide improved search, more detailed responses, and the ability to produce content virtually on any subject matter.

This news came a day after Google unveiled Bard, its own experimental conversational AI service that uses Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). It is hard not to conclude that this marked the beginning of the AI battle between the two tech titans.

Looking at the recent presentation of this nascent technology by the two companies a couple of days ago, Microsoft is currently head and shoulders above Google. Google's presentation in Paris clearly demonstrates that they were doing catchup in a haste. Not only did Bard mess up (gave the wrong answer) which wiped out almost $ 100 billion from Google's stock value, their presentation was just not as sleek as Microsoft's.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said "AI is going to reshape the largest software category on planet earth, which I’ve been working on it for a long time, and we are excited about — Search. It’s a new day in search, it’s a new paradigm for search, rapid innovation is going to come.”

A major problem for AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard is their tendency to confidently state incorrect information as fact. The system frequently "hallucinate" - that is, it sometimes makes up information. And this is because there are essentially autocomplete systems. Rather than querying a database of proven facts to answer questions, they are trained on huge corpora of text and analyze patterns to determine which word follows the next in any given sentence. In other words, they are probabilistic, not deterministic - a trait that has led one prominent AI professor to label them "bullshit generators".

Of course, the internet is already full of false and misleading information, but the issue is compounded by Microsoft and Google's desire to use these tools as search engines. There, the chatbot's answers take on the authority of a would-be-all-knowing machine. Both have tried to preempt these issues by placing liability on the user. "The AI is a machine learning tool so surprises and mistakes will occur. So, make sure to check the facts and share feedback so we can learn and improve!"

Microsoft, unlike Google, is not proceeding slowly. There is no room for complacency given the company’s financial commitment and the urge to reduce Google's domination in Search and Advertisement. The competition has become personal and the stakes couldn’t be higher because both tech behemoths know the ramification as happened in the past, will be very detrimental to the loser. After this week’s activities, more will be revealed.

Who will win the title of greatest artificial intelligence champion is now more important than just technical prowess. The effect this will have on the wider web might not be so clear to profess. What we know for certain is that "web search" has changed irrevocably. Another puzzle is how AI will affect "the Click Advertising model".

In its simplest form, it works like this: AI search engines scrape answers from websites. If they don't push traffic back to these sites, they will lose ad revenue. if they lose ad revenue, these sites will wither and die. and if they die, there is no new information to feed the AI. What happened next is anyone's guess.