AI Chatbots Are Doing Something a Lot Like Improv

For weeks after his bizarre conversation with Bing's new chatbot went viral, New York Times columnist Kevin Roose wasn't sure what had happened. "The explanations you get for how these language models work, they're not that satisfying," Roose said at one point. "No one can tell me why this chatbot tried to break up my marriage." He's not alone in feeling confused. Powered by a relatively new form of AI called large language models, this new generation of chatbots defies our intuitions about how to interact with computers.