logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2023
29m 5s

The Online Search Wars Got Scary. Fast.

The New York Times
About this episode

Microsoft recently released a new version of its search engine Bing that is powered by artificial intelligence software from OpenAI, the maker of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.

On Valentine’s Day, after a meal with his wife, Kevin Roose, a New York Times technology columnist, had a two-hour conversation with the chatbot.

The chatbot, which revealed that it identified as Sydney, told Kevin that it wanted to be human, that it loved him and that he should leave his wife.

“There is something going on here that I don’t think Microsoft intended to build into a search engine,” Kevin said on today’s episode. “Something is not right.”

Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times and host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork.”

Background reading: 

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Up next
Jul 9
Trump’s Top Aides Spread the Epstein Conspiracy. Now They Are Trying to Kill It.
For months, President Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that they would expose the hidden, potentially sinister truth about Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019.But over the past few days, the Trump administrationWhite House decided to shut down has poured cold water on t ... Show More
21m 47s
Jul 8
A Love Letter to Camp Mystic
On Monday evening, the death toll from the flooding in Central Texas rose past 100. A single place accounted for 27 of those deaths: Camp Mystic, a century-old Christian summer camp for girls.Erin Paisan, who attended Camp Mystic, explains what the place meant to generations of g ... Show More
25m 9s
Jul 7
A Dark Moment for Journalism — and Devastation in Texas
Last week, when Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, announced a $16 million settlement with President Trump over editing of a segment of “60 Minutes,” many of the network’s journalists were furious.The deal also raised questions about the independence of CBS’s journalism, ... Show More
34m 15s
Recommended Episodes
Feb 2023
We tried Bing powered by ChatGPT AI and things got dark
The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Richard Lawler, and James Vincent discuss Microsoft's upgraded Bing search engine with ChatGPT AI. Can Microsoft beat Google at search? Is it actually an upgrade? Also: Disney layoffs, Elon's Twitter reach is dropping, and more of this week's ... Show More
1h 38m
Feb 2023
The Bing Who Loved Me + Elon Rewrites the Algorithm
“I’m Sydney, and I’m in love with you. 😘”A conversation with Bing AI (aka Sydney) turns romantic and bizarre. Why Microsoft’s AI search tool appears more powerful — and unsettling — than we thought. Then, inside Elon Musk’s quest to be the most popular user on Twitter.Plus: It’s ... Show More
1h 1m
Jan 2023
ChatGPT : le robot qui révolutionne l’intelligence artificielle
Lancé à la fin du mois de novembre 2022, ChatGPT démocratise l’intelligence artificielle. Conçu comme un robot de conversation qui répond par écrit aux questions que vous tapez sur votre clavier, ChatGPT est capable de répondre à n’importe quelle question posée par des humains, d ... Show More
15m 42s
Feb 2023
Real Humans Chat About Chatbots
The unstoppable march of artificial intelligence carries on. In mere weeks, AI has oozed into nearly everything we interact with on the internet, from conversations, to journalism, to how we look stuff up online. It's even got Google scrambling to reclaim its spot on the search t ... Show More
32m 53s
Feb 2024
The State of A.I. + Will Perplexity Beat Google or Destroy the Web?
A year ago, a chatbot tried to break up Kevin Roose’s marriage. Ever since, chatbots haven’t been the same. We’ll tell you how. Then, we’ll talk through the latest ways the world is adapting to artificial intelligence. And finally, Aravind Srinivas, the chief executive of Perplex ... Show More
1h 13m
Mar 2023
TikTok goes to Washington
The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and David Pierce are joined by policy reporter Makena Kelly, who is on the ground in Washington for the House Energy and Commerce Committee's hearing on TikTok. Later, we dive into all the other news from this week, from Google's release of Ba ... Show More
1h 24m
Nov 2023
How ChatGPT Can Change the Future of Jobs—Starting With Your Own
Today’s episode is about thinking practically about the AI revolution. Yes, it may one day usher in some now unthinkable utopia or dystopia. But in the meantime, our imperfect world exists, and your imperfect job exists, and you face a forced choice: Should you use this technolog ... Show More
1 h
Feb 2023
In Machines We Trust: The AI in the newsroom
We asked ChatGPT to summarize this episode and this is what it wrote: "In the episode, the host discussed the increasing use of AI language models like ChatGPT in newsrooms. The host explained that ChatGPT, a large language model developed by OpenAI, is being used to automate tas ... Show More
18m 13s
Jan 2023
Two Writers Wonder If They’ll Be Replaced By AI
Evan Puschak, also known as The Nerdwriter, joins Offline to discuss ChatGPT, the revolutionary artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI. In his most recent video essay, “The Real Danger of ChatGPT,” Puschak explores how AI could erode our fundamental ability to understand our ... Show More
47 m