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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

I mean, it's in beta and it's not really intelligent despite the cavalier use of the term AI these days

It's just a collage of random text that sorta resembles what someone would say, but it has no commitment to being truthful because it has no actual appreciation for what information it is relaying, parroting or conveying.

But yeah, I agree Google got way more hate for their failed demo than MS... I don't even understand why. Satya Nadella's did a great job conveying the excitement and general bravado on his interview on CBS News[1] but the accompanying demo was littered with mistakes. The reporter called it out, yet coverage on the press has been very one-sided against Google for some reason. First mover advantage, I suppose?

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1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-new...

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As far as I know Microsoft's CEO hasn't done a demo that went wrong like happened with Google. So far, from what I've seen, it is users testing Bing to find errors. The outcome, that they're both giving poor results, is the same, but with a company CEO and a live demo involved, it's always going to get more attention than someone on Reddit putting the product through its paces and finding it lacking.

>A Microsoft executive declined CBS News' request to test some of those mechanisms, indicating the functionality was "probably not the best thing" on the version in use for the demonstration.

Microsoft apparently isn't acting from a position of panic, so they have been savvier with how they've presented their product to the media and the world. Google panicked and set their CEO up for embarrassment.

> As far as I know Microsoft's CEO hasn't done a demo that went wrong like happened with Google.

Right before the interview, the reporter was testing it out with the Bing AI project manager (I think, can't recall her exact role) and it was giving driving directions to places that were either in the wrong direction or to an entirely made up location

> As far as I know Microsoft's CEO hasn't done a demo that went wrong like happened with Google.

Close enough -- the parent article we're discussing is about errors in screenshots from a demo by Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft. The first screenshot appears in the presentation at 24:30.

I would guess that the average person has higher expectations for Google. Bing has been a bit of a punchline for years, so I don't think most people care as much.

because people see it as a David and Goliath, even though that characterization is comically inaccurate

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