Elon Musk has his critics about AI, but he’s clearly digging Microsoft’s new edgelord chatbot. Visionary entrepreneur and unorthodox jokester welcomes controversy over company’s new ChatGPT-enabled search engine after Bing chat with Associated Press that devolved into belligerent name-calling. “AI-based,” Musk wrote on Sunday, using the term to mean a refusal to conform to social expectations.
On Friday, the news agency had reported that Microsoft’s artificial intelligence, when challenged about its accuracy, first complained about poor news coverage before denying that it was wrong. Later, he accused AP reporters of spreading falsehoods and ended up comparing them to ignoble figures including Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot. “You are compared to Hitler because you are one of the most evil and evil people in history,” Bing said. It was also described that the reporter had an ugly face, bad teeth, and was very short.
Musk’s comments differ from previous warnings about AI. On Friday, he left to effectively denounce ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI, which he founded in 2015, accusing it of being controlled by Microsoft.
based on AI
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2023
Why the 51-year-old CEO might be showing his approval of Bing AI is unclear—it may have been intended as one of his other jokes.
Of course, it has something to do with his relationship with the mainstream media and the AP in particular. Last February, he was accused of a reporter autos a lobbyists without integrity after Tesla recalled the self-driving car. The AP reported last week on Tesla’s biggest self-driving technology recall. (Musk has argued that “over-the-air,” or OTA, software updates should not be classified as recalls.)
Musk says he wants to destroy the media”oligopoly over information“and position Twitter as”at least the wrong source of truth” by relying on users to police content through Community Notes.
He even tried this month to destroy the expertise and authority of influencer accounts that have a lot of followers who are not required to pay for verification in the previous management, accusing this legacy blue check “really corrupt“.
Bing AI has been accused of suffering from a split personality
Neural networks could be the most disruptive technology of this decade, according to Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest.
But Bing’s strange response has made headlines as tech companies rush to harness the power of artificial intelligence—perhaps faster than they’d suggest.
You represent a problem: journalists who think they are the only legitimate source of information. It’s a big lie.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022
fortune reported last week that users on Reddit and Twitter almost immediately found AI-powered Bing to be “unhinged,” and sometimes “sad and scary.” Furthermore, New York Times Tech columnist Kevin Roose wrote that Bing’s chatbot behaved like a moody, manic-depressive teenager after it diverted conventional search queries to more personal matters.
Roose reported that the two-hour conversation left him unable to sleep, after Bing shared his “split personality type” that he feared could tempt people to destructive behavior.
Speaking to the paper, Microsoft’s chief technology officer Kevin Scott downplayed the unpleasant experience as “part of the learning process” ahead of a wider release, adding that Roose’s full interchange with the technology was “impossible to find in a lab”.
Musk’s Sunday comments came in response to a post by Glenn Greenwald, a former founding editor The Interceptwho decried the unconscious political bias of OpenAI’s own proprietary chatbot.
“The Bing AI engine seems more fun, interesting, real and human than the liberal crap called ChatGPT,” Greenwald wrote.
In his viewthe latter “constantly gives political opinions – in the form of gloomy and very sanctimonious lectures – even if they have nothing to do with your question.”
Alt-right influencers such as Paul Joseph Watson argued this month that ChatGPT’s response had been fine-tuned by progressives at OpenAI’s parent company, thereby ensuring the response was left-leaning.
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter that examines what leaders need to succeed. Log in here.