Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar

Subject: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 11:25 AM

The above has suddenly appeared on my Windows 10 machine. Micros**t are making a big thing of it. What is so special about it? I never found Bing too good but has adding AI to it made an improvement?

Subject: RE: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 11:33 AM

I think it has made it rather surly and weird, according to the reports that seep through to my consciousness. I haven't tried it (I think there is a subscription involved with some of it?)

Please let us know what you learn (don't let the chat bot write your post!)

Subject: RE: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 11:43 AM

Hi, Dave. Yesterday I looked up what AI (artificial intelligence) is. It's a program that lets a human "converse" with a computer that has been trained by exposure to much, much human speech.

I think AI is an overblown name for a program which simply talks. It should be called AV - artificial verbiage. It can't solve an algebra problem, calm a frightened baby or spot a mean dog. Those things take intelligence.

This is not something I would bother to do.

As for Bing, I have never used it, simply because I'm getting along fine with Google, and why mess up a good thing?

Subject: RE: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 02 Mar 23 - 01:02 PM

You may have no choice, leeneia, or rather only a choice of evils: the tech press resounds with the protests about both Google and Microsoft pushing Artificial Incompetence into their respective search engines. Personally, I use DuckDuckGo for searching: this strips out identifying information before passing the query to Bing. I really, really hope they work out how to also bypass the (*akkh* *phht*) AI element, as I don't like being lied to by a machine.

Oh, and what's special about it, DtG, is that management saw *shiny* and threw a great deal of money at it before they worked out whether it would be any use, let alone what for, so they're all thrashing around trying to find how to get some of it back out. The more people pay for something, the more they think it's worth.

Disengage rant mode. The entire AI nonsense really gets on my thungas: it's a glorified pattern-matching exercise, which (rumour hath it) was given the name by someone just to get US DoD funding.

Subject: RE: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 10:36 AM

This, from The Register's article about it on Wednesday:

The software giant heralded this as a "major step forward."

.... at which I had a vision of Wile E. Coyote taking a major step forward, unaware that there's a cliff edge in front of him.

Subject: RE: Tech: Bing AI on Windows taskbar
From: leeneia
Date: 03 Mar 23 - 11:41 AM

I think I'll be all right. So far I've avoided contact with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok, and I think I can elude AI as well.

Just to check, I told my computer to search for AI, and it came up with "Air by Mr. Handel."