Alexa, can you fix Bing's chatbot?

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Microsoft’s creepy chatbot could use a history lesson. But first…Today’s must-reads:• The FTC won’t c [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Microsoft’s creepy chatbot could use a history lesson. But first… Today’s must-reads: • The FTC [won’t challenge Amazon’s One Medical]( deal • Volkswagen’s emissions software [was deemed faulty]( • Amazon’s cloud unit [partnered with an AI startup]( Stump the robot Early testers of Microsoft Corp.’s [new Bing chatbot]( peppered it with all types of oddball messages to explore the bounds of its artificial intelligence. The machine has at times reciprocated with sentient-sounding answers ranging from combative or flirtatious to downright creepy. The interactions — clearly intended to stump or get a rise out of Bing — put Microsoft in an awkward spot. For a way forward, the company should consider some lessons from Bing’s chatbot ancestors, Alexa and Siri. When Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. introduced their voice assistants about a decade ago, they were heralded as a new form of computing. Amazon’s Echo speakers or an iPhone equipped with Siri could be always listening, learning speech patterns and constantly improving, potentially upending internet search. Jeff Bezos said Amazon’s aim was to make Alexa as smart and interactive as the computers in Star Trek. Early reviewers of the Echo, which rolled out to the public in 2015, were generally baffled. Like the beta tests of Bing’s AI, some treated their interactions with [Alexa like a game]( of stump the robot. Others delved into deeper and more bizarre topics, like whether Alexa could define the meaning of life, express desires or even offer tips on [how to dispose of a dead body](. These voice assistants seem quaint by the standards of ChatGPT. Voice-activated computing did take off but never quite lived up to the hype. After enough unsatisfying interactions, few people bother testing the limits of Alexa or its kin anymore. They’re primarily used for a selection of basic but essential daily tasks: setting kitchen timers, playing music, checking the weather and so on. These use cases may sound incremental, and [Amazon certainly has greater ambitions]( for the product. But timers, music and weather forecasts are all things I need, and the Echo has eliminated a ton of annoyances for me. For any technology, filling a need should be the goal. After a batch of reviewers had weird experiences with Bing’s AI, in which the chatbot professed its [love for one reporter]( and [compared another to Hitler](, Microsoft rightly recognized that the general public doesn’t really need a robotic companion to engage in long, personal conversations. As part of its damage control, Microsoft is adding tighter guardrails. OpenAI, meanwhile, said it was working to [reduce biases and errors in ChatGPT](, which shares some DNA with Bing’s chatbot. It seems inevitable that some strangeness will persist as Bing interacts with wider audiences, which will ask it ever more eclectic questions. Whenever the initial novelty wears off, Microsoft will have to focus on perfecting more incremental, mass-appeal capabilities of its AI, just as Amazon did with Alexa. Microsoft has said that it’s received requests for simple and boring features like help booking flights and sending emails, and Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has suggested similar tools will be added to Microsoft Office and “[reduce some of the drudgery](” of work and life. Having a genuinely smart version of Clippy isn’t quite like living on the Starship Enterprise, but if it can make the writing process easier, sign me up. —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story Microsoft has its sights set on Call of Duty, [formalizing a 10-year contract with Nintendo]( for the flagship game and [making it clear that there will be no $69 billion deal]( to purchase Activision Blizzard without the franchise. Get fully charged A Peter Thiel-backed SPAC is considering a merger with the fintech company Hyphen Group, a transaction that [could value the combined company at several hundred million dollars](. Amazon tapped T-Mobile and other wireless carriers to sell private 5G wireless services to businesses as [a replacement for Wi-Fi inside offices](. The Central Bank of Nigeria wants to develop software for its eNaira digital currency and [is in talks with potential technology partners](. 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