Microsoft released a new version of its Bing search engine last week, and unlike an ordinary search engine it includes a chatbot that can answer questions in clear, concise prose.
Since then, people have noticed that some of what the Bing chatbot generates is inaccurate, misleading and downright weird, prompting fears that it has become sentient, or aware of the world around it.
That’s not the case. And to understand why, it’s important to know how chatbots really work.
No. Let’s say that again: No!
In June, a Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, claimed that similar chatbot technology being tested inside Google was sentient. That’s false. Chatbots are not conscious and are not intelligent — at least not in the way humans are intelligent.
Let’s step back. The Bing chatbot is powered by a kind of artificial intelligence called a neural network. That may sound like a computerized brain, but the term is misleading.
A neural network is just a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing vast amounts of digital data. As a neural network examines thousands of cat photos, for instance, it can learn to recognize a cat.
Most people use neural networks every day. It’s the technology that identifies people, pets and other objects in images posted to internet services like Google Photos. It allows Siri and Alexa, the talking voice assistants from Apple and Amazon, to recognize the words you speak. And it’s what translates between...
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