A Year After Microsofters Told Us Google Was 'Doomed' Google Reaches Peak Usage in Africa (Growing at Bing's Expense)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 18, 2024

The more populated continent: Microsoft: Our Bing Thing Does "Hey Hi" Now. Asia: Meh. We'd Rather Use Russia's Yandex.

THE Microsoft chatbots have been a colossal failure that cost the company billions in losses and caused many lawsuits to be filed. Microsoft will never admit it as shareholders were led to believe a lie. The company's debt grew by about 32 billion in a year while assets sank by about half.

As Cory Doctorow recently put it: "Our policymakers are putting a lot of energy into thinking about what they’ll do if the AI bubble doesn’t pop – wrangling about “AI ethics” and “AI safety.” But – as with all the previous tech bubbles – very few people are talking about what we’ll be able to salvage when the bubble is over."

And judging by what we see in Asia and this dataset from Africa, for the purpose of search or solution-finding Microsoft has failed (no adequate use cases^1,2). The numbers speak for themselves. Need we wait another year before pointing out the obvious? █

____________

1. Quartz ☛ Air Canada AI chatbot lies to passenger about bereavement discounts

   A Canadian tribunal has ruled that Air Canada must pay damages to one of its passengers for misleading advice given by its customer service chatbot, which resulted in the passenger paying nearly double for their plane tickets.

2. The Register UK ☛ Air Canada must pay after chatbot lies to grieving passenger

   Air Canada must pay a passenger hundreds of dollars in damages after its online chatbot gave the guy wrong information before he booked a flight.

   Jake Moffatt took the airline to a small-claims tribunal after the biz refused to refund him for flights he booked from Vancouver to Toronto following the death of his grandmother in November last year. Before he bought the tickets, he researched Air Canada's bereavement fares – special low rates for those traveling due to the loss of an immediate family member – by querying its website chatbot.