Generative AI – including large language models such as GPT-4, and image generators such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion – is advancing in a "storm of hype and fright", as some commentators have observed. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have yielded warnings that the rapidly developing technology may result in "ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control". That's according to an open letter signed by more than 1,000 AI experts, researchers and backers, which calls for an immediate pause on the creation of "giant" AIs for six months so that safety protocols can be developed to mitigate their dangers. But what is the technology currently capable of doing? Midjourney creates images from text descriptions.

Dmitri Brereton, an AI researcher located in the US, asserts that Microsoft's new AI-powered Bing search engine made a number of mistakes and produced false data during its demonstration last week. The new Bing, which was unveiled on February 7 by CEO Satya Nadella, employs the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) and promises users ChatGPT-like search experiences. Yusuf Mehdi, consumer's chief marketing officer, demonstrated how the new Bing will conduct searches and respond to user inquiries during the launching event. Brereton wrote on Twitter that the demo's faults were considerably worse than Google's Bard error. Additionally, he stated that Bing AI miscalculated most of the statistics while summarising a financial document.

During last week's chatbot hype, with Microsoft and Google attempting to outduel each other in showcasing early versions of artificial intelligence-powered search, more than 1 million people signed up to try Microsoft's tool in the first 48 hours, the company said. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC that the technology, which can spit out complete answers that read like they were written by a human, was "perhaps the industrial revolution brought to knowledge work." But for those concerned about accuracy, the AI leaves plenty to be desired. In Microsoft's demo in front of reporters, the ChatGPT-like technology embedded in the company's Bing search engine analyzed earnings reports from Gap and Lululemon. In comparing its answers to the actual reports, the chatbot missed some numbers.

I was born/grew up in: I was born in Nova Scotia, but grew up in Parry Sound, Ontario. I now live in: I now live in Barrie, Ontario, and work remotely for a company headquartered in Toronto. I work now at a company called Cyclica. We are a biotechnology company that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help make medicines that are more effective for patients. I do research and develop methods for computational drug design.

When I recently Googled "best toaster" on my phone, thinking about replacing the appliance in my apartment kitchen, the search immediately yielded a carrousel of images of products from various high-design brands: Balmuda, Hay, Smeg. Lower down on the results page were ads for online retailers such as Amazon and Wayfair, then another carrousel of "Popular Toasters" with user-review metrics, then a list of suggested queries under the heading "People also ask." ("Is it worth buying an expensive toaster?" "You can't gain much beyond the $100 models," says an answer pulled from CNET.) Swiping down further, I reached aggregated listicles clearly designed to exploit Google's search algorithm and profit from affiliate marketing: toaster tips from Good Housekeeping, the "4 best toaster ovens of 2022" from Wirecutter. Further down still was a map of toasters that could be purchased in physical proximity to my apartment. I felt lost among the suggestions, awash in information and yet compelled by none of it. This kind of cluttered onslaught of homogenous e-commerce options is what recently prompted Dmitri Brereton, a twenty-six-year-old engineer at a recruiting-software company in San Francisco, to publish a blog post titled "Google Search Is Dying."