Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have been tossing around with his bold plans for a “metaverse,” but over the past decade, a really hot new front in the rivalry between the tech giants has been the competition for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence. And while the conflict has been relatively quiet so far, it has come into its own over the course of the week with the already official unveiling of an artificial intelligence system from Microsoft that threatens to outshine Google and possibly steal its lead in internet search. Both Google and Meta Zuckerberg, as well as many small high-tech companies, are preparing or have already prepared, albeit imperfectly, their version of such an application. Microsoft, however, seems to have “caught them sleeping,” as it was caught years ago when Google offered the most successful and popular navigation engine on the web. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence app, the brainchild of a small $20 billion Microsoft-backed startup called OpenAI, was officially unveiled this week by the company’s CEO Satya Nadella. However, it was already known to genre enthusiasts, as it had been available on the Internet since November and had already conquered, according to the first estimates, about 100 million registered users, who were literally fascinated by its unimaginable possibilities. The ChatGPT system can compose text, academic articles, poems and poems, songs, images, answer questions of scientific or other content, and, in fact, communicate with its user.

The rapid spread of the ChatGPT application has caused disruptions even in academic institutions.

Its rapid spread has literally infuriated universities, and professors are devising plans to prevent their students from committing a very sophisticated version of the traditional student “sin”: exposing them to any meaning of ChatGPT, completely fake, instead of their own work. It should be noted that the Faculty of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki passed him on the same exam as the students and gave him an excellent mark.

However, primarily in the world of tech giants, ChatGPT tends, at least for now, to literally “turn upside down”. It threatens to overthrow Google’s dominance as Microsoft integrates it into the capabilities of Bing, its own web navigation engine, and may surpass Google’s engine. It is significant that for most Internet users even the name Bing itself is almost unknown or at least forgotten, since the Microsoft search engine has been losing second and distant place to the Google search engine for at least 20 years. As you know, the Google search engine has become so synonymous with Internet search that it has created a corresponding verb. However, within a week, Google introduced its own version of ChatGPT, Bard, and, unlike Microsoft, things didn’t go well for it.

The empire is to blame

After seeing Microsoft’s unexpected success with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google made the mistake of being too hasty. Or maybe she’s just a little unlucky. Within two months, ChatGPT monopolized interest, and the day before its official presentation, Microsoft, the company of the most popular navigation engine on the Internet, rushed to present its version: the artificial intelligence system Bard.

But Bard was wrong, and perhaps Google’s big trouble was that the mistake was made in advertising that preceded the official presentation. Reuters noticed this and almost anticipated the impression of investors and the public who attended the official presentation and reacted almost indifferently, in contrast to the hype caused by Microsoft a day later with the introduction of the already hugely popular ChatGPT. The commercial asks Bard to talk about the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope that can be told to a nine-year-old child. Actually, the question was, “what discoveries of the James Webb telescope can I tell my nine-year-old son about and interest him?”. Bard gave a number of responses, some of which were not only successful, but well-articulated, insightful, and interesting. But it also gave a completely unfortunate result, as it seemed to imply that the telescope had taken pictures of a planet outside of our solar system.

After all, unlike Microsoft, which has made the ChatGPT system public since November and is already releasing a new version of Bing with the new technology integrated, Google seems to be lagging behind. In its presentation, the company did not provide details on how and when Bard will be integrated into its core search. As Jill Luria, a software analyst at DA Davidson, told Reuters, “Google has been a leading force in artificial intelligence for years, but it has fallen asleep and has been slow to apply the technology to its Internet search engine.” In short, because of this delay, Microsoft was one step behind, and in its rush to compete, it made a mistake and ended up a few more steps behind.

Multi-billion investment from Meta

Cade Metz and Mike Isaac
New York Times

Two weeks before ChatGPT hit the web and wowed the world, Meta, the parent of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, introduced its own chatbot, as the AI ​​app is called in the proper terminology.

It is called “Galaxy” and is intended for scientific research. It can compose instant articles, solve math problems, generate computer codes, and describe images. He made mistakes, and when a user asked him who rules Silicon Valley, the Galaxy replied, “Steve Jobs.” But unlike ChatGPT, which also made mistakes, Galactica received an avalanche of protests and criticism for its mistakes. Just three days later, the company removed Galactica from the internet as it had already been accused of spreading disinformation and hate speech through its social media apps.
For nearly a decade, Meta has spent billions of dollars developing new AI products. Since 2013, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has set a goal for Meta to become a leading force in the field. The company has hired hundreds of top AI researchers, including Dr. Le Cun. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the vast amount of power computers need to build artificial intelligence systems. Yet the Meta is currently out of the game, as Silicon Valley is alive with a fever of “creative artificial intelligence,” as these technologies are called, which generate text, images, and generally communication materials on their own. The focus is now on OpenAI, even though both Meta and many other companies have introduced their own related technologies. Some rushed to enter the game. However, Meta already suffered a blow to its reputation as a tech giant when it was accused of spreading false information, as Dr. Le Cun recently pointed out. And, given his responsibility to billions of users, he could not allow the spread of a chatbot that gave incorrect and biased information. As Shirag Shah, a professor at the University of Washington who has studied the failures of technologies such as Galactica and ChatGPT, noted, “OpenAI and some other small companies can do a better job and are credited with succeeding in developing something like ChatGPT, and they will not stand up to the same scrutiny.” .
In addition, in recent years, the Meta has focused on another area of ​​technology: the nascent world of the so-called “Metaverse,” which Mark Zuckerberg believes is something new. In the short term, it is doubtful that his company will be able to offer creative AI products with as many services as they do today, and in a way that will engage the public. This does not mean, of course, that he does not try. In contrast, Zuckerberg is actively involved in related initiatives and calls weekly meetings with his company’s artificial intelligence researchers.

Satya Nadella

Introducing the ChatGPT artificial intelligence system technology and announcing its integration into Microsoft’s discovery engine, the company’s CEO stressed that “today is the start of a race for what to expect” and predicted that “this technology will dramatically change every category of software we know.” . “.

In an attempt to justify Google’s delay in implementing Bard, its version of ChatGPT, the CEO of the Internet’s most popular browser emphasized that “Google is committed to responsible AI development” and added that “it is imperative that we boldly but responsibly develop these models.” .

Despite Meta’s struggle with Galactica, its own version of ChatGPT, and attempts to compete with Microsoft, its CEO emphasized that “one of the company’s goals is to build on its research to stand out among the leaders in creative artificial intelligence.”