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The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#21

Post by mrtksn »

largepeepee wrote: post #19
mrtksn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge is very nice but can't stand the Microsoft's other stuff like auto updater. It gives me notifications that I don't care about and it acts as a malware when try to remove some parts of it as launching it when the system starts(it re-adds itself to launch items and these notifications don't go away for some reason). Now I'm creating a VM om MacOS inside the MacOS and will attempt to extract the browser part. I don…

>Now I'm creating a VM om MacOS inside the MacOS and will attempt to extract the browser part. I don't want microsoft all around my system. The funny part is that apple's telemetry is just as bad as Microsoft's, the modern macOS sends a hash of each and every program you run and if their servers are affected, it has a good chance to pull your apps down with it as long as you are connected to the net. And that is just…

I don't actually care about telemetry, I'm fine with them knowing how I use the apps. That's how better products are made.

The problem is that MS puts me in the loop. Just update without telling me, if you fail I don't want to know and if I explicitly remove you from the log in items don't try to re-add yourself. I don't want to have sidekick apps to be able to run one app.

Microsoft definitely does some things right but I suspect that the incompetent and evil part of the company is still alive and kicking.

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#23

Post by sshine »

mrtksn wrote: post #10

Call it a fall when people stop using it, not when it fails on some queries. ChatGPT is very effective as long as you keep in mind that this is not a sentient all knowing being. Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal because people being wrong on the internet is old as the internet. Also, if people were going to stop using it when it acts as a passive aggressive drama queen people wouldn't be using Reddit, Twitter…

> Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal

I would say that it has become!

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#24

Post by Thorentis »

mrtksn wrote: post #10

Call it a fall when people stop using it, not when it fails on some queries. ChatGPT is very effective as long as you keep in mind that this is not a sentient all knowing being. Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal because people being wrong on the internet is old as the internet. Also, if people were going to stop using it when it acts as a passive aggressive drama queen people wouldn't be using Reddit, Twitter…

> ChatGPT is very effective

Massive [Citation Needed] to be honest. ChatGPT is arguably even worse than Bing at producing factually correct information, since it does not have any ability to source it. It simply predicts the next most likely word in a sentence. Even if that next word makes the entire thing horribly incorrect.

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#25

Post by askvictor »

wkat4242 wrote: post #3

Bing Search is actually not bad if you use it through duckduckgo. It has much less ads than Google and seems to deliver better search results on the first page (mainly because Google's results are now mostly paid ads, not real results) But I'd never use it directly. Before I'll even try their new chatbot someone will have to offer a privacy condom service for it like what duckduckgo does for search. Always use protec…

I tried DDG for a bit and was constantly being fed blog articles and 'developer websites' instead of canonical documentation for queries that I would have thought would go straight to (say) the main Python docs site. So I moved back to Google. Now Google does exactly the same thing. Time to try moving again I guess.

(Also, ads? What ads? Doesn't everyone use an adblocker?)

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#26

Post by college_physics »

Language models feel currently a bit like blockchain: a solution looking for a problem. But unlike the latter where the actual problems are fairly niche and depend on myriad other constraints, its more likely that language algorithms will be adopted more widely. The question is how. People are currently slotting this tool into "search" (as we have come to know it) as it is obviously information retrieval machinery at its core. But the best, most useful, least risky way of using this may be still forthcoming. Remember that "search" is a very recent concept. Most likely this is just another step towards the long journey of "organizing the world's information" :-)

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#27

Post by woefblaf123 »

askvictor wrote: post #25
wkat4242 wrote: post #3

Bing Search is actually not bad if you use it through duckduckgo. It has much less ads than Google and seems to deliver better search results on the first page (mainly because Google's results are now mostly paid ads, not real results) But I'd never use it directly. Before I'll even try their new chatbot someone will have to offer a privacy condom service for it like what duckduckgo does for search. Always use protec…

I tried DDG for a bit and was constantly being fed blog articles and 'developer websites' instead of canonical documentation for queries that I would have thought would go straight to (say) the main Python docs site. So I moved back to Google. Now Google does exactly the same thing. Time to try moving again I guess. (Also, ads? What ads? Doesn't everyone use an adblocker?)

I use an adblocker of course, but Google's top results are basically paid ads. An adblocker doesn't block them because they come from google themselves.

You can just pay google to be on the top for certain search terms, regardless of the actual relevance of your website.

So I'm calling them ads, but they are technically paid searh results. Indeed DDG is also pretty bad lately but I still consider it better than Google. It's just that the quality of both has gone down a lot due to these practices.

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#28

Post by mrtksn »

Thorentis wrote: post #24
mrtksn wrote: post #10

Call it a fall when people stop using it, not when it fails on some queries. ChatGPT is very effective as long as you keep in mind that this is not a sentient all knowing being. Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal because people being wrong on the internet is old as the internet. Also, if people were going to stop using it when it acts as a passive aggressive drama queen people wouldn't be using Reddit, Twitter…

> ChatGPT is very effective Massive [Citation Needed] to be honest. ChatGPT is arguably even worse than Bing at producing factually correct information, since it does not have any ability to source it. It simply predicts the next most likely word in a sentence. Even if that next word makes the entire thing horribly incorrect.

Factual correctness is not very important, you don't have to trust it. ChatGPT is very effective because it acts as an advisor in any topic. Sometimes its very wrong but it gives you an overall picture of the thing you are looking for and from there you can drill down.

It is much better than trying to drill down from spam ridden ad infested results Google would provide. Once you pass the very basic stuff, you are often able to reach the spam-free-lands because the SEO spam hasn't reached the every niche just yet(spammers optimize for certain popular keywords). Once you have the overall picture, you have the roadsigns to the niche lands. You can directly search Stackoverflow, reddit, hacker news, github etc.

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#29

Post by krona »

Thorentis wrote: post #24
mrtksn wrote: post #10

Call it a fall when people stop using it, not when it fails on some queries. ChatGPT is very effective as long as you keep in mind that this is not a sentient all knowing being. Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal because people being wrong on the internet is old as the internet. Also, if people were going to stop using it when it acts as a passive aggressive drama queen people wouldn't be using Reddit, Twitter…

> ChatGPT is very effective Massive [Citation Needed] to be honest. ChatGPT is arguably even worse than Bing at producing factually correct information, since it does not have any ability to source it. It simply predicts the next most likely word in a sentence. Even if that next word makes the entire thing horribly incorrect.

One of my friends was wrong once. I don't speak to him anymore.

Re: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s new Bing

#30

Post by M4v3R »

Thorentis wrote: post #24
mrtksn wrote: post #10

Call it a fall when people stop using it, not when it fails on some queries. ChatGPT is very effective as long as you keep in mind that this is not a sentient all knowing being. Being wrong sometimes is not a bing deal because people being wrong on the internet is old as the internet. Also, if people were going to stop using it when it acts as a passive aggressive drama queen people wouldn't be using Reddit, Twitter…

> ChatGPT is very effective Massive [Citation Needed] to be honest. ChatGPT is arguably even worse than Bing at producing factually correct information, since it does not have any ability to source it. It simply predicts the next most likely word in a sentence. Even if that next word makes the entire thing horribly incorrect.

> It simply predicts the next most likely word in a sentence

So does your brain. And yes, you are correct that at this moment ChatGPT is not very good at producing factually correct information on many topics, but that's not the only reason chatbots exist. It can do many more things, and I personally (as a programmer) and some people I know from different fields use it daily because it provides value for us (enough value in fact to make me pay the $25/mo price for premium).

For example just yesterday it helped me build a proof of concept in Python to test whether a solution to a problem we had at work would work. With its help I've built a working PoC in literally 10 minutes, something that would take me probably more than 2 hours to complete if I didn't have the help because I'm not even a Python programmer (I'm in a different field entirely).

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