ars technica: “Today Microsoft took the wraps off of Microsoft 365 Copilot, its rumored effort to build automated AI-powered content-generation features into all of the Microsoft 365 apps. The capabilities Microsoft demonstrated make Copilot seem like a juiced-up version of Clippy, the oft-parodied and arguably beloved assistant from older versions of Microsoft Office. Copilot can… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Microsoft
Microsoft’s new share button makes it easy to show people what Bing AI is saying
The Verge: “The company also said it’s made the chatbot’s ‘Balanced’ mode faster. Microsoft is trying to make it easier to share your experiences with its GPT-4-powered Bing Chat by adding a button that lets you post the AI’s response to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. People have already been sharing the interesting (and sometimes upsetting)… Continue Reading
Microsoft makes Outlook for Mac free to use
The Verge: “Microsoft is making Outlook for Mac free to use today. Outlook is now available free in Apple’s App Store, and you no longer need a Microsoft 365 subscription or Office license to use it. It’s a surprise move that coincides with Microsoft’s push to make its Windows desktop Outlook email client more web-powered.… Continue Reading
Americans Can’t Consent to Companies Use of their Data
Americans Can’t Consent – Companies’ Use of Their Data – They Admit They Don’t Understand It, Say They’re Helpless to Control It, and Believe They’re Harmed When Firms Use Their Data —Making What Companies Do Illegitimate: A Report from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania – “Overview – Consent has always been a… Continue Reading
Microsoft unveils AI model that understands image content, solves visual puzzles
Ars Technica: “On [February 27, 2023], researchers from Microsoft introduced Kosmos-1, a multimodal model that can reportedly analyze images for content, solve visual puzzles, perform visual text recognition, pass visual IQ tests, and understand natural language instructions. The researchers believe multimodal AI—which integrates different modes of input such as text, audio, images, and video—is a… Continue Reading
What did they know, and when did they know it? The Microsoft Bing edition
Gary Marcus – Substack – The Road to AI We Can Trust – A new discovery that makes a curious story a whole lot more curious. “We all know by now just how off the rails Bing can get. Here’s a timeline, deliberately leaving out one surprising thing out until the end. March 23, 2016: Microsoft… Continue Reading
ChatGPT launches boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon
Reuters: “…There were over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle store as of mid-February listing ChatGPT as an author or co-author, including “How to Write and Create Content Using ChatGPT,” “The Power of Homework” and poetry collection “Echoes of the Universe.” And the number is rising daily. There is even a new sub-genre on Amazon: Books… Continue Reading
Most expect ChatGPT will be used for cheating
“We’ve heard about it. We use it. But we are not necessarily comfortable with what the future holds. The Monmouth University Poll finds awareness of AI developments has increased over the past decade, but opinion about its potential impact remains largely unchanged, with a few exceptions. Most Americans express concern about the impact of new… Continue Reading
Microsoft and the unreliable AI chatbot
Futurism: “Microsoft has finally spoken out about its unhinged AI chatbot. In a new blog post, the company admitted that its Bing Chat feature is not really being used to find information — after all, it’s unable to consistently tell truth from fiction — but for “social entertainment” instead. The company found that “extended chat… Continue Reading
How Google Ran Out of Ideas
The Atlantic – The company thinks it’s an innovator. In fact, it’s an imitator—and not the best one, either. By Cory Doctorow. “Microsoft is making a desperate play. Having spent billions on a search engine that no one uses, the company has sunk billions more into equipping it with the chatbot technology ChatGPT, on the… Continue Reading
Microsoft’s Bing is an emotionally manipulative liar
The Verge: “Microsoft’s Bing chatbot has been unleashed on the world, and people are discovering what it means to beta test an unpredictable AI tool. Specifically, they’re finding out that Bing’s AI personality is not as poised or polished as you might expect. In conversations with the chatbot shared on Reddit and Twitter, Bing can… Continue Reading
Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines
MIT Technology Review: “…Approximately two seconds after Microsoft let people poke around with its new ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine, people started finding that it responded to some questions with incorrect or nonsensical answers, such as conspiracy theories. Google had an embarrassing moment when scientists spotted a factual error in the company’s own advertisement for its chatbot Bard,… Continue Reading
