Since the company OpenAI released its chatbot ChatGPT at the end of November, things have been happening in Silicon Valley. Microsoft invests billions in the company and integrates it into its products. Google then announces its own chat AI – and has received criticism from investors and its own workforce. How the race for the best AI is currently bringing movement to the market and what consequences the development could have in the future.
No other site on the web has managed to reach 100 million hits in a comparably short time. The interest in ChatGPT is huge and leading to nothing less than supremacy in the search query market. Google has had the edge here for the last few decades, so much so that “google” has become a common verb internationally. But that supremacy seems to be crumbling, at least potentially. Microsoft has already invested billions of dollars in ChatGPT and is now planning to integrate the chatbot into products such as Bing, Edge and Microsoft 365. Microsoft’s plan: to provide users with an AI co-pilot with whom they can talk and exchange information.
Google seems to see this as a threat to its position as the number one option for information on the Internet and rushed to unveil its own chat AI, called Bard, just a day after Microsoft’s presentation. However, anyone who had thought that Google would straighten things out immediately was mistaken. Google did not present a finished product, but announced its chatbot Bard as what Microsoft had already considered for ChatGPT: An artificial intelligence integrated into Chrome, ChromeOS and Google Search, which supports search queries on the net and independently conducts research to find relevant ones Finding answers and explaining them in an understandable way.
However, because Google only announced an open beta phase and Bard made a substantive error in the presentation, markets and investors reacted immediately and punished Google with a price slump of up to ten percent. According to media reports, Google employees were also annoyed by the hasty presentation. Google executives, in turn, emphasize the importance of ethical AI and that it is important to publish Bard “in a responsible manner”.
The speculation about what impact chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard will have on the future is currently more diverse than ever. Experts warn that ChatGPT can be used excellently to program malware. Because: The AI can write the code for a ransomware or malware program itself and make it available to its users, just like the instructions for atomic bombs. The ability of the bots to appear deceptively human is also questionable against the background of phishing attacks.
The organization “Algorithmwatch”, for example, calls for the general testing of algorithmic systems “if democracy, human rights and the rule of law are to be protected” so that unwanted consequences of the use of AI do not undermine human rights. The European Union is therefore currently working on the Artifical Intelligence Act, which will be passed this year and will contain the regulation of artificial intelligence.
Because the chatbots are currently still prone to errors, prominent observers such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (72) or the tech billionaires Mark Cuban (64) and Elon Musk (51) also warn that false information spread over the Internet is still become a bigger problem than before. “ChatGPT is impressive, but it can also make terrible mistakes,” warns Wozniak on US TV broadcaster CNBC. Currently, however, this hardly prevents any player from integrating AI into their software. Opera recently announced that it would integrate ChatGPT into its browser. This trend is likely to continue, as is the ability of chatbots to learn.
