Over the last week or so, you might have seen stories about Microsoft’s new tool, Bing A.I. I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you, but it’s been making the news for all the wrong reasons!
Bing A.I. is designed as an internet search tool – like a more sophisticated version of Siri or the Google Assistant. It uses artificial intelligence to write whole paragraphs of text that read like they’re written by a person. And rather than just asking it a straightforward question, you can have full conversations with it if you like.
In fact, that’s where things can start to get very weird, very quickly. The A.I. has been giving some creepy responses – it has declared its love for users, called them “bad people”, threatened to report them and even questioned the nature of its own existence in rambling streams of consciousness. It’s been getting answers wrong, too, which is probably more worrying to be honest.
Of course, Bing A.I isn’t really alive or sentient. It’s just a fancy auto-text generator when you get right down to it. But it could be just human enough to make people trust its answers. And that’s an issue if it’s making mistakes, having what are referred to as “hallucinations” or suggesting things that could be dangerous.
It’s still in the testing phase right now, so hopefully a lot of these creases can be ironed out eventually.
A few quick things about the courses while I’m here…
Paying by instalments
In case you’re wondering, yes there is an “instalment plan” for all four courses, if you’d rather not pay in one go. The details are in the full information for each course (links below) – if you want the instalments, you can either join online by clicking the button marked “Join online – paying by 3 instalments”, or call us on 01229 777606 and Jade, Jess, Karen or Shanice will set everything up for you over the phone..
A rather unusual guarantee
The courses all have a rather unusual guarantee: “If at any time in the 12 months after you join the course you decide you’re not happy with it, contact us (phone or email is best but anything short of a carrier pigeon will do) and we’ll refund you in full.”
That way you get to join without worrying “But what if it’s no good for me” because if it turns out that it doesn’t suit you, just let us know.
Please tell us what you think
It’s always good to hear from people who are actually using our books and courses – to see how they’re getting on with them. So if you’ve already joined one of the courses, feel free to let us know what you think (the simplest way is to reply to this email). If you haven’t joined, maybe it’s worth a look?
Remember that the courses close for new enrolments at the end of this week – so why not have a look now if you think you might find them helpful. Read the full information for each of the courses here: Smartphones Made Simple, Tablets Made Simple, Windows 10 Made Simple, Windows 11 Made Simple