Sydney Loves Kevin

Kevin Roose was a columnist and podcast host for the New York Times, who focused on technology and its effects on society. When Microsoft launched the latest version of its search engine Bing in February 2023, the company invited Roose to its Redmond campus to experience Bing’s new capabilities, which were built around OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology. Roose was captivated, as the seamless integration of artificial intelligence made the new Bing capable of a wide array of tasks. In response, he wrote a glowing review of the search engine in his column and proclaimed that the AI-enabled Bing had overtaken Google as his favorite search engine. But then eight days later, Roose had a conversation with Bing’s new chatbot Sydney, and everything changed…