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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

#31

Post by astrange »

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.

It does not "simply" do that. The word decoder does that; the model's job is to make the "most likely" next word the correct one.

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

#32

Post by astrange »

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…

It does not do that.

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

#33

Post by m_mueller »

mrtksn wrote: post #28
Thorentis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 oft…

Plus it's really quite good at typical assistant tasks. "Write [lettertype] letter with following key points". "write a one-off script in powershell that does XYZ". You still have to know the details of the task yourself to be able to review it (and let it improve), but that's exactly the same if you have assistants in your team doing that kinda thing - at the end you're responsible for the output and you'll have to ensure its quality.

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

#34

Post by mrtksn »

m_mueller wrote: post #33
mrtksn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 oft…

Plus it's really quite good at typical assistant tasks. "Write [lettertype] letter with following key points". "write a one-off script in powershell that does XYZ". You still have to know the details of the task yourself to be able to review it (and let it improve), but that's exactly the same if you have assistants in your team doing that kinda thing - at the end you're responsible for the output and you'll have to…

Exactly, you can delegate a lot of boring busywork to ChatGPT. You need the synonyms of every word used in Chess? You need all that in a JS array? No problem, ChatGPT cat sort you out in a few moments. You may still need to pay attention to the correctness but that doesn't remove the usefulness of ChatGPT.

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

#35

Post by Falkon1313 »

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.

That's just using it wrong though. Sure, a dirtbike isn't as good as an 18-wheeler for hauling cargo on the interstate. But a fully-loaded 18-wheeler isn't quite as good at running a motocross race.

ChatGPT is great for spurring ideas, giving you new things to look into - inspiration. It really excels at that compared to traditional search engines.

If you have a rough idea what you're looking for, but don't know the right things to search on, that could even be a big help in search.

Traditional search may currently find objective facts better. But if you don't know what facts to look for in the first place, a quick round with ChatGPT can break your mental block and give you a lot of paths to try out. It helps you find what to search.

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

#36

Post by Amezarak »

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…

I've been using BingGPT or whatever you want to call it and it seems OK to me. The only obvious hallucination I've seen is that I asked it to summarize a relatively new but niche book, and it was curiously and bizarrely wrong - it had all the characters right, and 30kft view of the plot right, but all the details wrong.

I asked it about a more mainstream work and it got it exactly right.

Since then I've been using it for more creative tasks (write this) or having it as a troubleshooting assistant (this isn't working on FreeBSD, explain why), and it's done great and saved me a lot of work. I thought this was a fringe case when I read about doing it with ChatGPT, but it really is extremely useful. This is a low-pripority problem I spent a few hours googling one day and got nowhere, Bing/Sydney got me 99% of the solution and wrote the scripts I needed for me.

Also, it's a way of using ChatGPT without providing your phone number, which i refused to do.

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

#37

Post by wongarsu »

college_physics wrote: post #26

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…

There is a great need for a better solution to information retrival, a problem we have always struggled to solve at scale. LLMs are being shoehorned into solving it because while they are pretty bad at it, they are much better than anything else we've come up with.

There are plenty of other usecases people have identified, but they are overshadowed by the large need people are expressing for better information retrival methods.

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

#38

Post by intellectronica »

With all due respect, Gary Marcus is turning himself into a parody of Jürgen Schmidhuber. All he talks and writes about, to anyone who would listen, is how the work of others, that resulted in products that millions of people love, isn't good enough. He's a bit like that snob who when invited to taste the best falafel in town complains incessantly that it isn't a Michelin 3 star meal. Yes, we know it isn't. It's a falafel. And it's delicious.

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

#39

Post by echelon »

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…

> 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 or Meta properties too.

Most companies fail to grasp this.

I'd be willing to bet that almost any company could load itself up with swears, snark, and even porn, yet still be used by most. People love Game of Thrones. People hate Corporate Memphis.

Note the rise of new brands that eschew conventional advertising norms. They're popping up all over now.

https://www.smartcompany.com.au/marketing/liquid-death-marke...

NOT SAFE FOR WORK, but can be found at the shelves of Whole Foods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYkKBXqqunE (NSFW!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeRADNpdKD4 (warning: depicts torture)

Nobody gives a damn anymore. We've all been on the internet too long. Brands and marketing need to wake up.

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

#40

Post by jacooper »

Mate, it hasn't even launched yet to fall.

All we have seen are some articles, to actually fail the public needs to not use it, and let me tell you, the public is actually excited and fascinated about LLMs.

I really think this is a 2007 iPhone moment, even with all the negatives, it still a huge revolution in search and way that users interact with information.

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