In the ongoing US Justice Department’s landmark antitrust trial against Google, an intriguing example involving Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce highlights a key challenge faced by AI technology like ChatGPT. The case underscores how Google’s dominant search engine can’t be easily replaced or rivaled by emerging tech such as chatbots.
ChatGPT Still Has Much to Learn about Taylor Swift
ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, can respond to user queries with written answers.But here’s the catch: its knowledge is rooted in older data harvested from the web.
So, if you’re looking for the latest scoop on Taylor Swift’s romantic escapades, it might leave you hanging. In contrast, Microsoft’s Bing search engine, thanks to its real-time data updates, would happily spill the tea on this pop culture affair.
Microsoft executive Mikhail Parakhin, in his testimony, underlined the chatbot’s dependence on search engines for fresh, real-time information. While ChatGPT wields AI for generating responses, its core data comes from search engines like Bing. Without access to up-to-the-minute data, it struggles to provide timely and accurate answers.
AI’s Role in the Antitrust Battle
Beyond the celebrity gossip, this antitrust trial is about the future of the internet and how technology giants incorporate AI into their products. The case not only delves into historical actions dating back to 2002 but also sets a precedent for how AI and big tech intersect.
A central point of contention in this trial is the concept of a search engine’s “scale.” Essentially, it refers to the sheer volume of data a search engine gathers from websites and users. Google boasts the largest search index globally, with data that could reach the moon and back 12 times if printed on paper.
Parakhin shed light on the fact that websites often restrict data access to select search engines, creating a formidable barrier for newcomers. For instance, Quora Inc. exclusively permits Google’s crawlers to index its content.
The Data Dilemma
Google argued that user data is becoming less critical in the era of advanced AI. However, Parakhin stressed that even cutting-edge technology cannot fully circumvent the data challenge. Microsoft’s Bing, which provides data not only for its own purposes but also for other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, exemplifies the ongoing reliance on data.
Parakhin acknowledged that while technology can alleviate the scale’s impact, it remains a formidable hurdle to overcome. Building a fully competitive search engine, even with advanced algorithms and large language models like ChatGPT, remains an uphill battle.
The Google antitrust trial has unraveled the intricate dynamics between AI and search engines. ChatGPT’s limitations in keeping up with real-time data underscore the uphill climb that new tech faces when challenging industry giants like Google. While AI is transforming many industries, the intricacies of web-scale search remain a challenge.
