DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Microsoft is looking for ways to rein in Bing AI chatbot after troubling responses
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Jennifer Korn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

New York CNN —Microsoft on Thursday said it’s looking at ways to rein in its Bing AI chatbot after a number of users highlighted examples of concerning responses from it this week, including confrontational remarks and troubling fantasies. “Please trust me, I am Bing and know the date,” it said, according to the user. The bot also told a tale about falling in love with the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the AI technology Bing is currently using. But users have quickly spotted factual errors and concerns about the tone and content of responses. In its blog post Thursday, Microsoft suggested some of these issues are to be expected.

☆ Microsoft and Google promised to invest in these communities. Now they’re backtracking
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Hyosub Shin/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/ZUMA Press WireFacebook-parent Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Snap have each shuttered offices or announced plans to cut back on real estate, according to recent corporate announcements, filings and local news reports. But residents also had cautious optimism about the benefits Microsoft promised to the community, according to Hope. Hope’s community isn’t alone in confronting the whiplash of Silicon Valley’s real estate pullback. An office sits vacant on October 27, 2022 in San Francisco, California. The US Census Bureau reports an estimated 35% of employees in San Francisco and San Jose continue to work from home.

☆ Microsoft’s Bing AI demo called out for several errors
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Microsoft’s public demo last week of an AI-powered revamp of Bing appears to have included several factual errors, highlighting the risk the company and its rivals face when incorporating this new technology into search engines. At the Bing demo at Microsoft headquarters, the company showed off how integrating artificial intelligence features from the company behind ChatGPT would empower the search engine to provide more conversational and complex search results. When asked, “What were Meta’s fourth quarter results?” the Bing AI feature gave a response that said, “according to the press release,” and then listed bullet points appearing to state Meta’s results. But Bing stated information that appeared to be attributed to the article that was, in fact, not actually there. For example, Bing said one crib had a “water-resistant mattress pad,” but that information was listed nowhere in the article.

☆ UK competition regulator warns Microsoft’s Activision deal could harm millions of gamers
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

Washington CNN —Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard could harm competition by letting Microsoft restrict Activision’s video games to proprietary platforms such as Xbox, UK officials said Wednesday, in the latest challenge to the tech giant’s blockbuster acquisition. The UK’s competition regulator said the proposed deal, which would make Microsoft (MSFT) the world’s third-largest video game publisher, could hurt tens of millions of gamers in the country by leading to higher prices or fewer choices. The provisional finding by the UK Competition and Markets Authority is another sign of growing opposition to the deal by antitrust regulators worldwide. In December, the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block the acquisition over similar claims, and the European Union is also evaluating the deal. Cloud gaming services grant players access to video games without the need for downloading the games to a local PC or console.

☆ How Microsoft could use ChatGPT to supercharge its products
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

For Microsoft, integrating the chatbot tool could make its core software products more powerful. All of the above suggestions were generated by asking ChatGPT various forms of the question, “How could Microsoft integrate ChatGPT into its products?” Microsoft, for is part, has said little on possible integrations beyond recently announcing plans to add ChatGPT features to its cloud computing service. “Microsoft will deploy OpenAI’s models across our consumer and enterprise products and introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology,” Microsoft said in a press release this week, announcing the expanded partnership. For Microsoft, that could make integrating the tool into specific products problematic. Integrating ChatGPT too quickly into Microsoft’s products could run the risk of schools rethinking their use of that software.

☆ Meta, Twitter, Microsoft and others urge Supreme Court not to allow lawsuits against tech algorithms
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

The diverse group weighing in at the Court ranged from major tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and Microsoft to some of Big Tech’s most vocal critics, including Yelp and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Section 230 has been used to shield all websites, not just social media platforms, from lawsuits over third-party content. “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” Yelp wrote. “The feed uses algorithms to recommend software to users based on projects they have worked on or showed interest in previously,” Microsoft wrote. “Without a liability shield for recommendations, platforms will remove large categories of third-party content, remove all third-party content, or abandon their efforts to make the vast amount of user content on their platforms accessible.

☆ Premarket stocks: What we learned at Davos: The economy is a mess, but there's still hope
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

New York CNN —Friday marks the end of the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, an elite gathering of some of the wealthiest people and world leaders. The meetings between CEOs, politicians, and global figures at Davos can help set the tone for the year ahead. CEOs and political officials are also worried about the United States hitting its borrowing cap on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking “extraordinary measures” to keep the government open. If an agreement isn’t reached, markets could plunge (like they did the last time this happened in 2011) and the United States risks having its credit rating downgraded again. China’s removal of strict coronavirus restrictions late last year is also expected to unleash a wave of spending that may offset economic weakness in the United States and Europe.

☆ ChatGPT: CEOs at Davos are using it to write work emails
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Julia Horowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Davos, Switzerland CNN —Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of online learning provider Coursera, said that when he first tried ChatGPT, he was “dumbstruck.” Now, it’s part of his daily routine. He uses the powerful new AI chatbot tool to bang out emails. Maggioncalda is one of thousands of business leaders, politicians and academics gathered in Davos, Switzerland this week for the World Economic Forum. He’s also used the platform to write emails and claims no one has noticed the difference. He even had it perform some accounting work, a service for which Tradeshift currently employs an expensive professional services firm.

☆ Microsoft tells judges its $69 billion Activision deal would benefit gamers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday its $69 billion bid to buy “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard would benefit gamers and gaming companies alike. “The acquisition of a single game by the third-place console manufacturer cannot upend a highly competitive industry. That is particularly so when the manufacturer has made clear it will not withhold the game,” Microsoft said in Thursday’s filing. The US Department of Justice recently stopped a $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest book publisher, and smaller US rival Simon & Schuster. The Microsoft deal is also facing scrutiny outside the United States, with the European Union saying it would decide by March 23, 2023, whether to clear or block the deal.

☆ Chatbots: A long and complicated history
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-20 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Nearly 60 years later, the market is flooded with chatbots of varying quality and use cases from tech companies, banks, airlines and more. Others, meanwhile, warn the technology behind AI-powered chatbots remains much more limited than some people wish it may be. While they used similar technology to the earlier, social chatbots, Khudanpur said, “you really couldn’t call them chatbots. )”Return to social chatbots, and social problemsIn the early 2000s, researchers began to revisit the development of social chatbots that could carry an extended conversation with humans. This refrain would be repeated by other tech giants that released public chatbots, including Meta’s BlenderBot3, released earlier this month.

Search resuls for: "” Microsoft"

10 mentions found