Microsoft Corp on Wednesday rolled out new features on its Bing search engine powered by artificial intelligence (AI), including one that summarizes the two opposing sides of contentious questions and another that measures how many reputable sources are behind a given answer.
Tired of delivering misleading information when their algorithms are gamed by trolls and purveyors of fake news, Microsoft and its rivals have been going out of their way to show that they can be purveyors of good information — either by using better algorithms or hiring more human moderators.
Microsoft is also trying to distinguish its No. 2 search engine from long-dominant Google and position itself as an innovator in finding real-world applications for the latest advances in AI.
“As a search engine we have a responsibility to provide answers that are comprehensive and objective,” Microsoft corporate vice president for AI products Jordi Ribas said.
Bing’s new capabilities are designed to give users more confidence that an answer is correct and to save them time so that they do not have to click through multiple links to validate it themselves.
“You could be asking: ‘Is coffee good for you?’ We know that there are no good answers for that,” Ribas said.
However, the new search features side-by-side opposing perspectives. One source emphasizes coffee’s ability to increase metabolism and another shows that it can raise blood pressure. Similar questions can also be asked on more sensitive topics, such as whether the death penalty is a good idea.
On more complicated questions — “Is there a God?” — Bing does not have enough confidence to provide a pro-con perspective, but on questions that involve numbers, it boils information down into digestible doses. Iraq, for instance, is described as “about equal to the size of California.”
Search engines have evolved since Google took the lead at the turn of the 21st century, when rankings were based on “link analysis” that assigned credibility to sites based on how many other sites linked to them.
As machines get better at reading and summarizing paragraphs, users expect not just a list of links, but a quick and authoritative answer, said Harry Shum, who leads Microsoft’s 8,000-person research and AI division.
To test its technology, the company has compared its machine-reading skills to the verbal score on the SAT college-entrance exam.
“We are not at 800 yet, but we bypassed [former US president George W.] Bush a long time ago,” Shum joked.
The demand for more sophisticated searches has also grown as people have moved from typing questions to voicing them.
“We’re getting to the point that for about 10 percent of those queries we’ll see answers,” he said.
Shum was hesitant to over-promise Bing’s new features as an antidote to misinformation.
“In the end, people have their own judgements,” he said.
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