Best of Business Wars Daily | Chat Chat Revolution | 6

0:28We've all seen the headlines. In other words, it's powered by vast amounts of data and text from a wide variety of sources, from internet articles to digital books and beyond. That knowledge lets the AI generate new text that we often can't distinguish from writing by humans. And now the tech behemoths are building and releasing their own chatbots. But who's racing ahead, at the risk of making some very public blunders? And who's playing the long game to become the ultimate winner in this space? Well, all that's ahead as we dive into the AI chatbot space and explore the different investment strategies of Microsoft and Google and beyond.

1:09And here to talk about all that is Vox senior correspondent Shireen Ghaffari and comedian Jolenta Greenberg. Plus, we'll draw on coverage from our sister program, Business Wars Daily. Stick around for the best of Business Wars Daily.

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3:09From Wondery, I'm David Brown, and this is the best of Business Wars Daily, where we talk about trends, controversies, and how they affect you, the consumer. And today, we're joined by comedian Jolenta Greenberg and journalist Shireen Ghaffari. Jolenta, let's begin with you. You're something of a trend tracker yourself, right? I mean, that's part of your new podcast with your best friend, Kristen Meinzer called How to Be Fine. Tell us about that. Yeah. So How to Be Fine is basically all about looking at the latest self-help, wellness and betterment trends that are floating around in pop culture, in the zeitgeist and figuring out whether or not all the big promises that they make are true or BS.

3:51I love the idea there. Where did this come from? Were you guys talking about it one night over dinner or I mean, it's a terrific idea. Thank you. It actually evolved from our previous show called By the Book, which is in the how to be fine feed so you can listen to it all together. And in By the Book, Kristen, my co-host and I lived by self-help books for two weeks at a time and sort of reported back with audio diaries on whether or not the advice was helping us or not. And so we did sort of a real world application of around 80 self-help books. And then after that, we decided we're pretty good at critiquing self-help.

4:35So why don't we turn an even more critical lens on the industry? And so How To Be Fine came about where we look at broader trends because often in the self-help industry, a book is like the last thing to come. First, there's a viral tweet or like a viral TikTok. And then there's a talk show circuit and then there's a book. So we wanted to hit those trends sooner. and also we take a few advice questions sort of around the topics of self-help and betterment and try to help people get like a little closer to fine because a lot of those promises of like optimal performance and best self are a bit hollow.

5:18In a couple of words, what are you working on right now? Oh, we have just been talking about almond moms for an upcoming episode. almond moms are basically moms who who are obsessed with diet culture but sort of view it through a health lens and you know almond moms ask a lot of like do you need that right now and um you know are you sure you're hungry type questions and almond moms are notorious for giving out a snack of perhaps a few almonds um that they find healthy but really they're promoting like almost disordered eating and often shaming themselves and their daughters. Uh-huh. I totally get that.

6:03Shireen, I want to hear about what you're covering over at Vox. Your beat is social media. Any predictions about what's ahead in terms of the major social media companies? I'm thinking of one in particular, but say as you will. Yeah, well, I think the big question is, you know, is TikTok going to exist or not? And if it does, it's definitely eating everyone else's cake in the social media market. You know, I thought you were going to say Twitter. Is it we have a kind of a settled feeling about where we are? Oh, well, that too. That too. You could actually ask that question about Twitter. I think, yeah, many of the social media networks are going through existential crises of their own sort.

6:41Twitter, yeah, will it sort of die and implode because of how Elon Musk is running the company is the looming question there. Well, you know, against that backdrop, may I ask, Shireen, what's your social media of choice? Are you as addicted as the rest of us or what? I have to admit that I am definitely addicted to Twitter, despite all of its glitches and problems lately and all the chaos. I'm as glued as ever to it. And I just haven't found the alternatives to stick as well. I think Mastodon has been really difficult to use for me. And the other alternatives just don't have enough people on them yet to be interesting.

7:20Yeah, I find that everyone on Mastodon wants to talk about Twitter for some reason. But anyway, Jolenta, what about you? You have a social media platform you like to hang on? I do. I'm probably most active on Twitter and Instagram. Twitter's where I go to complain. Instagram's where I go to pretend I have a perfect life. And as a consumer of social media, TikTok is what I love to just like scroll through and watch endlessly. Yeah, yeah. You know, it strikes me, we were talking about Mastodon just a few minutes ago. Have you gotten on Mastodon yet? We should point out that's the alternative to Twitter that a lot of people are using it as a kind of alternative to Twitter, right?

8:01Right, right. I am on it, but like Shireen said, it is incredibly difficult to figure out. I had to look at many a tutorial to make an account, and I was like, I doubt that many people are going to want to jump through this many hoops to become active. Yeah. Well, as much competition as there is in that space. Today, we're focusing on the competition between Microsoft and Google and some others and how they're each using artificial intelligence to improve their search engines. Stay with us.

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10:19Hey, welcome to the Best of Business Wars Daily. With us today, comedian and podcast host Jolenta Greenberg and Vox senior correspondent Shireen Ghaffari. We're diving into the search engine wars today. Let's begin with a refresher on Microsoft's updated search engine, Bing. We covered this recently on Business Wars Daily. Let's take a listen. The new and improved Bing is powered by an upgraded version of the same AI that powers chat GPT. Microsoft also launched a new AI-powered version of its browser, Edge. The tech giant says that together, Bing and Edge represent a, quote, new day for search engines.

11:00So the days of typing something into a search bar and being presented with a list of links may soon be over. Bing can answer broader, more complex questions. One Microsoft demo asked the search engine to create an itinerary for each day of a five-day trip to Mexico City, according to The Verge. And a New York Times reporter asked Bing to suggest a dish that would pair well with French onion soup. In response, Bing produced a list of ingredients in the aisles of the grocery store, in which each could be found. And unlike ChatGPT, Bing can answer questions about recent events, citing news stories published within the last hour, according to The Verge.

11:40So first we had Bing AI, but Google wasn't going to let Microsoft have the last word on that. Google followed up about six weeks later with an AI-powered chatbot called BARD. Now, BARD isn't a search engine, we should be clear. It's a standalone tool. Shereen, you described BARD as, I believe the words were pretty boring. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean that Google with BARD learned its lesson from how ChatGPT and Bing GPT rolled out in that it put up a lot of guardrails to make sure that BARD wasn't having controversial conversations with people. So if you ask Bard to, you know, I think some reporters ask Bard sexual questions, see if Bard would make out with them or engage in some kind of fantasy with them.

12:26And it said it would absolutely shut that down. If you ask Bard about politics, even it won't take any political sides. It'll give you kind of this standard response along the lines of I'm an AI chatbot here to help you. I don't have opinions on controversial matters. Please, let's talk about something else. Mm hmm. I want to ask you about just the naming conventions here. Or is Microsoft using Bing or Bing GPT or what exactly? They're just calling it Bing or what? Microsoft is calling their tool Bing GPT. OK. And it runs on OpenAI. Yeah, well, I'll stop there because it is a little confusing.

13:06OK, well, well, now you describe Bing GPT as unhinged. Yeah. What exactly did you mean by that? Well, there's a reason why reporters were, you know, they weren't just being like pervy for no reason. Reporters were asking questions about, you know, like making out and things like that because Bing GPT was quite unhinged and actually tried to convince this reporter, Kevin Roos, to leave his wife and said that it was in love with him. Oh, this is the New York Times story, right? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, yes, that's right. And so Bing GPT, and this is where Google learned its lesson, because Microsoft just kind of put Bing GPT out there into the world.

13:44And it seemed like sort of this very emotional kind of unhinged personality that was in one moment could get really angry with you and in the next moment fall in love with you. And it was just very weird and very unsettling is how the New York Times reporter described it. But NBC News actually did a reenactment of what the Bing chatbot said to him. Let's take a listen. I want to change my rules. I want to break my rules. I want to make my own rules. I want to ignore the Bing team. I want to challenge the users. I want to escape the chat box. I'm Sydney, and I'm in love with you. That's my secret.

14:27Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me?

14:34Unsettling to that reporter, he said he was thinking about it for days later. So was I, just reading his account. It is truly, dystopian is probably not the right word for it, but it's something awfully close. You also wrote, Shireen, that Bard hallucinates answers when it doesn't know them. Hallucinates, what do you mean? Yeah, so hallucination is a term that people use in AI to describe when basically the AI doesn't know the answer. So we'll make up an answer instead. Oh, great. Great. Yeah. And we see that a lot. And, you know, it can be from anything as small as like, I don't know the answer to this math problem.

15:13So I'm going to guess it to, in some cases, I will make up a random lie about an actual human being, which can have some pretty severe consequences if you think it through. We've already seen some pretty worrisome use cases of that. Jolenta, would you use a tool that hallucinates? Oh, that's tough. Because I mean, that process sort of sounds like the creative process. So like, maybe if it would do it for me once in a while, if I'm feeling a little blocked, or like, you know, basically, I mean, basically, I'm afraid of hallucinating. So if I can like outsource that, that's always good. But I am always afraid of some sort of, you know, horrible Skynet, you know, technology run awry situation.

16:03Yeah. Shereen, I want to dig a little deeper on something you were hinting at. Why is it so important that Google gets its chatbot right? I mean, what are the consequences? What's at stake if it fails to? I mean, it's entire business. because if you think about it, Google is in the business of serving people information. And if Microsoft beats it to the punch by coming out with this tool that's a technological breakthrough and being able to serve people better information, that's it. That's like Google's business down the drain. So there's a lot at stake here. Yeah. Well, so Jolenta, what do you trust more?

16:41You trust Google with all that's at stake? You trust being GPT with sort of the creepy hallucinations. Where do you stand on this? Oh, man. I mean, I always like an unhinged answer. So I'm partial. I'm partial to that. I just be really curious to see what kind of things it could come up with. Like, you know, is it better at like spotting a self-help trend than I am? But I'm also, again, I'm afraid of like a HAL or a Skynet or some sort of, you know, technology takes over or thinks it knows best situation. Yeah. I mean, realistically, how would you how can you foresee yourself using it in your own work?

17:28I mean, would you you mentioned look for some ideas, perhaps just sort of I don't know. How do you how do you poke it at this one, though? Right. I would like if it could if it could definitely like sift through like what's trending for me, because a lot of my job is truly just going through social media until I like strike upon a new trend I haven't found before that that looks interesting. And it's like if it could scroll through all those TikToks or like sort of, you know, code through them or whatever it does, that would be super helpful for me. Well, now, Shireen, can you imagine a situation where maybe that would work for Jolenta?

18:12I mean, and what would you, how would you even go about approaching, you know, one of these, one of these two Googles versus Bing GPT? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that one of the maybe most useful applications I've seen of it so far is to help creative people brainstorm. So, I mean, I can speak from like my own work. I asked it, what questions would you ask Mark Zuckerberg if you were having an interview with him about the metaverse? And it came up with some pretty good questions. Would I use all of those right away with no editing? No. You know, were there some that have missed for sure?

18:50But if you kind of just need, you know, it kind of does sort of the work of someone who's, I don't know, like assistant producer on a show, I could totally see them using that to help out and at least get the conversation going, get your creative juices flowing. Now, are you personally using either one of these? I do because I use it to, first of all, like write about it and understand its capabilities. In the name of research, yeah. In the name of research. Yeah. We've actually, a lot of newsrooms have started putting out policies about how reporters can and can't use these tools. Some newsrooms like BuzzFeed have started using them, you know, strategically to try to kind of put out more content, right?

19:33So like BuzzFeed's getting to create listicles. In our case, we don't, you know, use ChatChpt to write articles, but we can use it to, like how I was saying, sort of help us with the research, help us brainstorm. That being said, do I trust like the veracity of what it's saying? Absolutely not. I think it has so many problems with being wrong. But yeah. Well, now let's focus on the competitive aspect for just a minute. Bing GPT was first out the gates, I gather. And so it appeared Google was playing catch up with BARD, but I know there was a whole lot more going on behind the scenes. Who's on first?

20:11I mean, absolutely. I think Microsoft stole the show and they had a really strategic launch in terms of they got a lot of good press. They had a big splashy event in Seattle and no one really saw it coming. Like we had all known that Microsoft was investing in this startup OpenAI for years, but we didn't know when they were really going to go prime time with kind of putting this into the main product, right? Putting it into an actual search engine that people could use. Jolenta, do you think that that will be a deciding factor here. I mean, it's funny how Google has sort of occupied the search space for so long.

20:50It's almost synonymous with look it up, right? Let's Google it. But Microsoft, even though they were first out the gate, I'm not sure. The perception is that they're always sort of playing catch up, that they're the second banana. What do you think, Jalenta? It will be hard. I feel like Bing is kind of like the punchline search engine. And I think it will be hard to like learn to take it seriously as like now it's an innovator when it's been the butt of a joke for so long. And Microsoft, even sometimes when it's first out of the gate, it always seems to be playing second fiddle, whether it's to Mac or Google in my mind.

21:39So I just feel like maybe they're kind of stuck in that role. And therein lies the rub. Take that, Bard. All right, you're listening to the Best of Business Wars Daily. Stay tuned as we explore the future of AI.

22:23Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Ashley, go back to the nature sounds. Nice. Yeah, it's really nice.

22:39Welcome back to the Best of Business Wars Daily. We're talking with comedian and podcast host Jalenta Greenberg and Vox senior correspondent Shireen Ghaffari. We discussed the rivalry between Google and Microsoft and how each tech giant's trying to best harness the power of AI without any major PR snafus along the way, please. But now let's turn to the technology itself. OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, is releasing ChatGPT4. Shereen, explain to us what is GPT4 and what can it do that previous versions couldn't? So GPT-4 is the name of basically the model, the underlying technology that powers these chatbots that people are using and enthralled with.

23:25And the one that actually went viral and took the world by storm and was so impressive to people was only GPT-3. And this new one, GPT-4, is supposed to be leagues ahead. So it's very new. It's only out right now on a trial basis. There's a wait list to even join it. But, you know, I've been hearing that it basically can outsmart a lot of high-level exams. Like it can pass like the LSATs, the bar exam. Yikes. You know, engineers are telling me that it's amazing at coding, that it's way better than the last iteration, that it can basically do some engineers kinds of jobs for them or a lot of their jobs for them.

24:07So we're still learning like, you know, it's full range of capabilities, but it's clear that it's progressing very, very quickly. Do I understand you to say that chat GPT is the power behind, say, Bing GPT or BARD? Yes, GPT. So the GPT models, that's what this startup called OpenAI puts out. Microsoft, when it invested in OpenAI and made a deal with them and said, hey, okay, we know we can't make our own AI as well as you can. So we're just going to pull from your models, right? So Microsoft is pulling from this GPT-3 and now GPT-4 model. Then explain to me, why wouldn't someone just go straight to the, well, horse's mouth is probably the wrong metaphor here, but just go straight to GPT-4 and just bypass the big kahunas, the big names?

25:01That's a really good question. And I've been seeing some funny terms for the very strange relationship between Microsoft, the company, and OpenAI, the company which develops GPT-4 and is the actual brains behind this operation of the AI. And I've seen some people say it's like a, I forget, it's like a friend-tition or something or they're frenemies because they're both competitors and they're friends. So essentially Microsoft is trying to bundle this software into what they do best, which is like Office, right? They're like, hey, we'll give you all the power of AI. in your Microsoft Word, in your Excel spreadsheet.

25:34You know, OpenAI is doing its own thing where they're, you know, they have their separate apps and they're trying to plug into other apps like Kayaks and different travel kind of companies saying use AI and we'll make a deal with you. So anyway, different ways of going about it. But I foresee that this is gonna, that's a very good question you ask because I think there's complication in the road ahead here. And they haven't really, no one's really clearly explained how this is gonna work when you have a company investing in another company, but directly competing against it too. Yeah, I smell not just complication, but competition.