#35: Microsoft’s Unsettling Chatbot, How AI Systems Like ChatGPT Should Behave, and What “World of Bits” Means to Marketing and Business

Paul and Mike are back together for a new episode of The Marketing
AI Show. As technologies fast-track some rollouts, it’s clear that
it might be time to slow down, and this includes ChatGPT better
explaining its value. Then the guys discuss “World of Bits” and
what this means for marketers and the business world. Microsoft’s
Bing chatbot is not ready for primetime. A recent interaction
between New York Times technology reporter, Kevin Roose, and a
chatbot developed by MIcrosoft for its Bing search engine went a
bit awry.  Suffice it to say, it turned into bizarre and
unsettling human/machine interaction. During a two-hour
conversation, the chatbot told Roose unsettling things like that it
could hack into computer systems and also suggested Roose leave his
wife. Roose concluded that the AI wasn’t ready for primetime, and
Microsoft is now doing damage control.  ChatGPT vows to better
educate the public. For marketers who have taken time to understand
ChatGPT, you have seen some degree of value in the tool. For your
average consumer, many are confused or generally scared by the idea
of what AI could do. Because of this and a myriad reasons, OpenAI
recently published a blog post that addresses some of the known
issues with ChatGPT’s behavior. It also provides some education on
how ChatGPT is pre-trained, and how it is continuously fine-tuned
by humans.  Open AI is working hard to improve ChatGPT’s
default behavior by better addressing biases in the tool’s
responses, defining the AI’s values within broad bounds, and making
an effort to incorporate more public input on how the system’s
rules work. “World of Bits” has transformative implications on
marketing and business. Paul wrote a blog post over the weekend
about a powerful concept called “World of Bits,” saying that it
could transform marketing and business. In the post, Paul said,
“Based on a collection of public AI research papers related to a
concept called World of Bits (WoB), and in light of recent events
and milestones in the AI industry, including legendary AI
researcher Andrej Karpathy announcing his return to OpenAI, it
appears that the capabilities for AI systems to use a keyboard and
mouse are being developed in major AI research labs right
now.”  The outcomes? If AI develops these abilities at scale,
the UX of every SaaS company will have to be re-imagined, and it
will have profound impacts on productivity, the economy, and human
labor. It’s a great and thought-provoking way to end this week’s
podcast.  Listen to this week’s episode on your favorite
podcast player, and be sure to explore the links below for more
thoughts and perspectives on these important topics.