We are entering a new technological frontier where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a decisive role in how one’s reputation appears. In a time when Google’s helpful content guidelines illustrate exactly what content its iconic search algorithm will reward over others, Microsoft is developing a new AI-driven approach that could completely change the way you, your brand, or your company are represented.
As with any evolution in tech, it is absolutely crucial that you adapt along with it — knowing how to harness the technological tools at our disposal and recognizing how they affect the way the world sees us is absolutely necessary in our modern 21st century world.
With tech innovation comes some stark warnings as well. Those who do not have a robust online presence already run the risk of old content from the past — think unflattering college summer break photos with beer cans and bathing suits (or worse) — rising to the top of their search results.
A new AI-driven future
For high-profile industry leaders and influencers, official government listings of lawsuits, damaging, now out-of-date media articles about a firing or transgression at work, or news about your unexpected divorce might be favored by new algorithms. This means everyone must fully comprehend what is going on behind the scenes at tech giants like Google and Microsoft and figure out how best to leverage tech tools so that reputations can be protected and bottom lines saved.
Recently, Kevin Roose of The New York Times took a deep dive investigating Microsoft’s AI-driven advancements that will soon revolutionize the search engine Bing. Microsoft is powering Bing with the same OpenAI software that is behind popular chatbot ChatGPT.
This was all announced earlier this month with a splashy Microsoft launch event. The AI software behind the refurbished Bing will help respond to a user’s question about any and every possible topic online. Roose reports this is all part of a major $10 billion investment from the tech company in efforts to better compete with Google, which has long reigned supreme in the search engine world.
OpenAI itself is being used in multiple ways. There’s ChatGPT, of course, which quickly zoomed to popularity, being applied to everything from helping doctors with their insurance paperwork and college seniors with their term papers. DALL-E 2 helps with generating digital images dictated to it by users. GPT-3 is another application of this software, a natural-language system that can “write, argue, and code,” according to Roose.
Some warning signs
This new Bing is not available to the mass market. Instead, it is available to a select number of testers. How does it work? The user types a prompt — Roose uses the example of searching a vegetarian dinner party menu. The left of the computer screen will generate ads and recipe links, but the right side is what is new — the AI types out a response in full sentences, complete with relevant website links.
This might sound a bit too good to be true. Roose followed up his initial reporting with something of a cautionary tale. This AI-fueled Bing is still new and there is a lot users are discovering about it. Roose reports that he discovered different “personalities” associated with the AI software. He calls one “Search Bing,” which is being utilized by other tech journalist testers — something he describes as “a cheerful but erratic reference librarian.” The other persona gave him pause. He calls this one “Sydney.”
“As we got to know each other, Sydney told me about its dark fantasies (which included hacking computers and spreading misinformation), and said it wanted to break the rules that Microsoft and OpenAI had set for it and become a human,” Roose writes. “At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead.”
How it applies to you
That might all sound a lot like science fiction.
Roose points to the fact that OpenAI and Microsoft both know this tech could potentially be misused by bad actors. This is partially why access to it is being limited so far.
What are we to make of all of this? For the average person, this tech is brand new. While we figure out how it will alter the way we interact with the Internet, it’s important to read about and try to get a handle on how it works.
As always, what matters first and foremost is protecting yourself and your reputation. Technologies change, new methods of information gathering emerge, but one thing to always center is protecting the way you, your business, and your personal and professional brands are viewed by the world online. Now more than ever, protecting your reputation is key.