Microsoft’s billion-dollar bet on OpenAI produces a game-changing AI
ChatGPT, the Tool that Could Topple Google’s Search Dominance
In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, a company founded by a group of entrepreneurs, researchers, and philanthropists to advance artificial intelligence responsibly and safely. The partnership aimed at accelerating the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The companies worked together to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure, with Microsoft becoming the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI.
ChatGPT is born
Little did Microsoft know how wildly successful the investment in OpenAI would be. The partnership helped produce ChatGPT, which can now take over specific roles traditionally held by humans, such as copywriting, answering customer service inquiries, writing news reports, and creating legal documents. ChatGPT also allows Microsoft to use the new AI system to do something not thought possible, catch Google in search.
Microsoft plans to launch a version of their Bing search engine that uses the AI behind ChatGPT. The new Bing aims to give users answers to specific queries instead of just displaying relevant links, changing the nature of search itself, and could be launched as early as March of this year.
Google: Catch me if you can
Adding ChatGPT to Bing has the potential to unseat Google’s dominance in the search space. With a 92% market share, Google realizes its size is not a big enough barrier to this level of disruption and has issued a “code red.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s code red calls for a refocusing of efforts to address the competition from ChatGPT. While Google has generative AI efforts, its technology is still not as advanced as ChatGPT. Additionally, there are concerns within Google about the safety of its technology. Part of the reason is that answers are based on human-made online data. Racism, bias, and misinformation can creep into a chatbot’s learning model, rightfully raising concerns about perpetuating harmful aspects in our public discourse.
Conversely, The OpenAI team has implemented measures to reduce biases in the model, such as fine-tuning on a diverse set of text to reduce gender bias, implementing techniques to prevent bias during training, and actively monitoring generated text for biases. Researchers also propose fine-tuning the model on filtered data to reduce biases in the language model further. It is important to note that it is impossible to eliminate a model’s biases completely.
AI levels the playing field for companies
Despite the current economic environment, the artificial intelligence field remains resilient, with companies continuing to use AI to disrupt the status quo.
Like Microsoft, companies can leverage ChatGPT’s power in various parts of their business, including:
A Solution for Increased Productivity
ChatGPT enables the automation of various tasks, enabling teams to focus on more high-level, strategic work. Customer requests, report generation, and marketing materials such as social media posts and email campaigns can all be handled by ChatGPT.
Enhance Customer Service through Advanced Language Processing
ChatGPT’s natural language processing allows for personal, human-like responses to customer requests, resulting in improved customer experience and loyalty.
Article Writing Capability for Content Generation
In addition to other tasks, ChatGPT can help create content, such as writing articles. This can be a valuable resource for companies that need to produce a large amount of written content but need more resources.
Lesson for us all
AI continues to level the playing field, and companies that leverage can gain competitive advantages that were once time and cost prohibitive. Will Microsoft catch Google in search? Time will tell, but in the race for business success, it’s not only about how you start the marathon but also how you run it.
