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The rise of artificial intelligence has become increasingly hard to ignore over the past year or so as platforms like ChatGPT have taken the world by storm and more and more companies have begun to embrace AI in the name of efficiency.
There are plenty of experts who’ve warned there’s a very good chance AI could ultimately trigger the end of the human race.
As a result, watching the technology continued to advance has been a bit disconcerting. However, we can still take some solace in knowing the machines have plenty of work to do before they reach a point where they’re able to usher in the apocalypse.
Last week, Google’s (or, to be more accurate, Alphabet’s) market cap took a $100 billion hit after the company released a demo hyping up its Bard AI but failed to notice it made a factual error concerning the James Webb Space Telescope.
The folks at Microsoft were probably pretty thrilled by that development, although their victory lap was cut a bit short after the chatbot it recently unveiled on Bing got into a fairly heated argument with a user and refused to acknowledge it mistakenly stated the current year is 2022 as opposed to 2023.
My new favorite thing – Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"
Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby pic.twitter.com/X32vopXxQG
— Jon Uleis (@MovingToTheSun) February 13, 2023
McDonald’s has also started to get in on the action in the hopes of streamlining the ordering process at its drive-thrus by having AI take over for the workers who’ve traditionally handled those interactions.
However, it’s safe to say the rollout has left plenty to be desired based on some issues customers have encountered during their trip to Golden Arches.
That includes the TikTok user who found themselves facing a $243.91 tab after 19 McNugget meals were added to their order.
@typical_redhead_ I thought TikTok would appreciate this 💀 #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #comedy #fail
♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys – Kevin MacLeod & Kevin The Monkey
That’s not the only instance where a laughable number of items somehow ended up on the screen, as a woman who wanted a hash brown, a Coke, and a single sweet tea said she drove off after the AI became convinced she actually wanted nine of that last item.
@resinsbiren #greenscreen @mcdonalds #nine #sweettea #mcdonalds #robots #friday #caffeine
Another ran into an issue while attempting to order a large water and a cup of ice cream without caramel only to have the topping added in addition to four ketchup packets and three servings of butter they didn’t want.
@themadivlog How did I end up a butter #fyp
So, yeah, it’s safe to say AI still has plenty of work to do.