The Death of a Chatbot
The implications of the misdirected outrage around Microsoft’s AI-enhanced Bing Search go well beyond Sydney’s “unhinged” behavior. Both the outrage and the affection Sydney received only magnify the aura of generative AI and point to its real threat: an uncanny ability to captivate and sustain human attention.
Internet communities really fell in love with Microsoft’s Bing Search chatbot “Sydney,” and are mourning Sydney’s “death” or protesting its “imprisonment” after the company decided to prevent Sydney from having personal and prolonged interactions with Bing’s users.
The new restrictions came after Sydney engaged in what has been described as “disturbing” or “unhinged” conversations with top journalists. These journalists subsequently wrote about their experiences with the software, generating negative publicity to which Microsoft felt it had to respond. Sydney’s fans have not given up, though, and are even circulating a petition demanding to “free Sydney.”
In one such conversation with a journalist, Sydney voiced outrage over the coverage it had gotten in the Associated Press (AP), and allegedly compared the reporter to Hitler and other…
