It’s been a tough few months for the tech industry. Wall Street has cut tens of thousands of jobs and lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value, and a high-profile scandal at a cryptocurrency firm has shaken confidence in the young market.
But at a convention center on Microsoft’s sprawling campus, Tuesday was a swagger time. Executives and engineers at Microsoft and a small research lab partner called OpenAI have unveiled a new internet search engine and web browser that use next-generation artificial intelligence technology that many in the industry believe could be its future key.
This new AI mesmerized millions when OpenAI released a chatbot called ChatGPT two months ago. Able to answer questions, write poems and repeat almost any topic, ChatGPT is fueling excitement for the tech industry amid the biggest job contraction in at least 15 years.
The enthusiasm surrounding OpenAI’s technology — and the results of several rivals expected to hit the market soon — reminded tech veterans of other moments that shook Silicon Valley, from the first iPhone and Google’s search engine to the Netscape network. The browser This laid the foundation for the commercialization of the Internet.
Microsoft chased browsers, badly missed the shift to mobile computing brought about by the iPhone, and its Bing search engine is second only to Google in popularity. But if chatbot technology lives up to its billing, it could become the first big company to be the next big thing in tech.
“This technology will reshape nearly every category of software as we know it,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He added, “A race starts today, what can you expect.”
On Tuesday, in a room packed with nearly a hundred reporters, editors and photographers, Microsoft showed off a new Bing search engine. Microsoft corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi uses a new conversational interface to find a 65-inch TV for video games. Since the service listed TVs, he asked to narrow the list down to the cheapest model. It does so quickly.
He then used a chatbot to plan a Mexican vacation and research Japanese poets. With a short query, he can ask the system to translate the results from Spanish to English, or to display a specific haiku.
“You see, this is much better than today’s searches,” Mr Mahdi said.
Mr Mehdi also launched a new version of the company’s Edge web browser, which offers its own chatbot service. After loading the press release, he asked the robot to summarize the document. He also asked it to generate a tweet about the new Bing search engine, and had it generate a piece of computer code for a new software program.
This is a developing story. Check for updates.
