The Online Search Wars Got Scary. Fast.

<p>Microsoft recently released a new version of its search engine Bing that is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.</p><p>On Valentine’s Day, after a meal with his wife, Kevin Roose, a New York Times technology columnist, had a two-hour conversation with the chatbot.</p><p>The chatbot, which revealed that it identified as Sydney, told Kevin that it wanted to be human, that it loved him and that he should leave his wife.</p><p>“There is something going on here that I don’t think Microsoft intended to build into a search engine,” Kevin said on today’s episode. “Something is not right.”</p><p>Guest: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/kevin-roose?smid=pc-thedaily">Kevin Roose</a>, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/hard-fork?smid=pc-thedaily">Hard Fork</a>.”</p><p>Background reading: </p><ul><li>A conversation with Bing’s chatbot left<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-microsoft-chatgpt.html"> Kevin “deeply unsettled.”</a> Read<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html"> the transcript</a>.</li><li>Microsoft knew the new technology had issues like occasional accuracy problems, but users have<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/microsoft-bing-chatbot-limits.html"> experienced surprising and unnerving interactions</a>.</li></ul><p>For more information on today’s episode, visit <a href="http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily">nytimes.com/thedaily</a>. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.</p>