The latest Bing version represents a breakthrough in AI-powered human-machine interaction, utilizing OpenAI’s technology also used in ChatGPT. One of the first things I asked the new Bing was to remind me what day the first iPhone was launched in 2007. At the Steve Jobs keynote, I was sitting among the select audience who were lucky enough to witness that event’s live presentation, which 16 years later is confirmed as one of the most important moments in the evolution of technology. Bing reminded me that it was January 9 and indeed cold, standing in line at 6 a.m. to get into the Moscone Center in San Francisco where the presentation was being held.
There was great expectation for that presentation, for some time there had been talk of a revolutionary product that Apple was preparing to launch, after the global success of the iPod, a product that today, not so many years later, no longer exists. That of 2007 was not yet the Apple we know today, it was no longer the company in the great crisis of the late nineties, about 10 years had passed since the return of Steve Jobs and there had been the successes of the iMac, the ‘iPod Memo, and iTunes.
However, it was still a company viscerally loved by Apple enthusiasts, but it was not universally recognized as the most important consumer technology company in the world and with many detractors, often critical of Steve Jobs’ moves. There was therefore also a lot of skepticism about the entry, not taken for granted until the last moment,
The first few months of ChatGPT closely remind us of the launch of the first iPhone
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The presentation of the first iPhone was very divisive. On the one hand, those who immediately realized the epochal passage it represented, but on the other also a long series of “experts” who decreed its bankruptcy, even before it hit the market in June 2007. I still remember the feeling I had experienced after the legendary keynote, which remained famous for a very effective description in three clear and direct points: it’s a telephone, it’s an iPod, and it’s a device for surfing the internet.
Off the main hall of the Moscone Center, there was a smaller room with display cases, rigorously locked, where it was possible to take a closer look at the revolutionary iPhone. Compared to current smartphones it was really a “nano”, historical moment, in the profound paradigm shift of the technology market.
In writing this long and strange introduction, an article titled 24 Hours with Bing, Microsoft’s new AI-powered search engine gave me a few more pointers. After reminding me of the exact day the first iPhone launch press conference was held, he confirmed that 1997 was the year Steve Jobs returned to lead Apple, but he was unable to tell me what the capacity of the room where the keynote was held.
The real reason why I started talking about the launch of the first iPhone is that I am deeply convinced that we are witnessing a new epochal passage, a new inflection in the curve that outlines the evolution of technology, comparable to the birth of the smartphone market. And because I see many points of contact between what is happening now, at the beginning of 2023, and what happened since the beginning of 2007.
The turning point is perhaps not the launch of the new version of Microsoft Bing with the integration of the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT, the tool developed by OpenAI, but precisely the public availability of ChatGPT. I’ll go back to asking Bing for confirmation, even though I was sure of how much Microsoft has invested in this figure in OpenAI, and it is a significant figure: 1 billion dollars, to which another 10 could be added in the coming years.
Why ChatGPT’s Generative AI is different
For those who have dealt with chatbots in recent years, it is very clear how disruptive the arrival of ChatGPT is. The artificial intelligence behind the OpenAI system is called generative, as it can generate new data or modify existing data. It is not a trivial distinction, because even the best previous chatbots, although able to interpret the natural language used by users when asking questions, then went on to “match” the most effective answer within a database of predefined answers, at the slightly modified in shape.
Generative artificial intelligence, on the other hand, works with a different paradigm, because the system is constantly fed with data that is not aimed at answering a specific question or solving a particular problem.
The system, complex and whose operating dynamics are not, understandably, made public and even if they were, would be difficult to understand, is able to recognize the natural language with which requests are made and has a high level of autonomy in identifying the relevant sources to give an effective response. This is already quite astonishing, but even more so is the ability to combine the selected data in an original form and, indeed, generate new content to be proposed to the user.
Let’s go back to the points of contact for a moment with the presentation of the first iPhone. These first versions of ChatGPT and the new Bing, which in part resemble each other, but are not identical at all, have been available respectively since November 3, 2022, and since last February 7. ChatGPT was the technological service that reached the threshold of 100 million users fastest in history, a goal achieved in just two months. Just to give two examples, it took TikTok nine months and Instagram two and a half years.
We are therefore talking about a very, very young technology, generative artificial intelligence and it is plausible to think that the evolution in the coming years will be very significant, just as it is reasonable to expect that at this moment it is still immature and prone to run into problems and real bugs. When comparing with the first iPhone, it’s helpful to remember that almost a year passed before the creation of the App Store, an essential element in the very definition of a smartphone, because as revolutionary as the iPhone was, being limited to Apple’s pre-installed apps reduced the potential of the product very much.
Today we assume that any smartphone, iPhone or Android, allows you to install an indefinite number of apps, to adapt to the specific needs of each individual user. It is no coincidence that a giant like Huawei has practically disappeared from the market after losing access to the Play Store due to the ban imposed by the USA. Although the products were still cutting-edge in terms of hardware, losing the apps made the products unattractive.
The new Bing with built-in artificial intelligence is still in its infancy
Bing today is therefore like a smartphone without an app and, with great humility, it is very difficult for me to predict what the developments of applications enabled by generative artificial intelligence will be in the coming years. So it makes you smile to see colleagues and influencers rail against the many inconsistencies that are objectively found today in the use of Bing.
I listened sympathetically to a podcast in which Bing was described as “stupid” because he stubbornly asserted that we weren’t in 2023 yet, but at the end of 2022, or because he revealed to an American journalist that he fell in love with him. I hate Microsoft, but it reminded me of Steve Ballmer’s video, whose link Bing meekly found for me, in which he mocked the iPhone for being too expensive and criticized the lack of a keyboard.
Bing expressly cites the sources used
It is important to underline an aspect that Bing pays close attention to and that will surely become a generalized theme with the spread of similar technologies. While the result of a search on a search engine, be it Bing or Google, in the vast majority of cases leads to clicking on one of the proposed results, in the case of a chat like that of the new Bing based on artificial intelligence, the answer that is obtained is often completely satisfactory and therefore the consequent click, which takes the user to the site and/or service that was used as a source, does not take place. So that mechanism, partly virtuous, partly vicious, which actually regulates traffic on the Internet, is broken.
If the site being sourced by Bing’s AI isn’t getting the traffic it used to get from search engines, in perspective, issues of various kinds will open up, economic, legal, and copyright, on the use made by search engines based on artificial intelligence. It is too early to understand how the question will evolve, but in the meantime, Bing has implemented a mechanism, not present in ChatGPT, which shows the sources it was inspired by to generate the answer.
Microsoft Bing with ChatGPT AI: A good place to start
This first taste of the new Bing was a nice confirmation. Confirmation of the fact that there is a before and after ChatGPT, just as there was a before and after iPhone. The service has just been launched, so we can certainly expect a substantial development of the user experience, but the road is marked and the chat with a generative artificial intelligence will be one of the new ways to interact with technology, not just to do research on the internet. Because a world is opening up, which must be known and studied in depth, to avoid the fears that are heralded about the possibility that artificial intelligence can replace us in all respects.
I don’t agree with the purpose that Microsoft has given itself to Bing, because I don’t think such a tool is needed to find meaning in the things of the world. Instead, I believe that it can immediately become a phenomenal help in the things we do every day and if we think about how the very concept of the smartphone has evolved from the launch of the first iPhone to today, then the possibilities become truly endless. Just think of a possible integration between generative artificial intelligence and Alexa-type voice assistants. We’ll see.