By Charles Miller
Artificial intelligence (AI), and more specifically ChatGPT, continues to be all the rage. This is obviously being fueled by the forbidden-fruit syndrome because the news media has been full of stories about this new technology—a technology that is largely unavailable to the general public. When OpenAPI Inc. announced ChatGPT last November it was quickly oversubscribed forcing the company to start a waiting list to try the program. Many online companies have announced plans to roll out versions of ChatGPT on their websites, but all of these also seem to have waiting lists too. This has resulted in a level of frustration evidenced by the number of emails I’ve received from readers asking how to jump the line so they can try using ChatGPT for themselves.
I am very happy to share with everyone that as of this week Microsoft has dropped the waiting list for those users who want to test drive its preview version of ChatGPT in the AI-powered Bing browser. Bing should already be installed on Windows computers and is available as a free download to be installed on Mac computers as well as on both Apple and Android smartphones. Microsoft’s version of ChatGPT, however, is only available using the Microsoft Edge browser.
Open Edge and in the address bar type “bing.com/new” to see the page that says, “Introducing the new Bing. Ask real questions. Get complete answers. Chat and create.” In the upper left of the web page will appear the Microsoft Bing logo.
When you have arrived at this page click on the “Start chatting” button. You will be prompted to enter your username and password for your “Microsoft Account.” If you do not have an account, click on “No account? Create one!” to create a free account. When you log in, the next page will say, “Welcome to the new Bing, Your AI-powered copilot for the web.” Now you are ready to start a dialog with the AI chatbot. Just start typing any question up to 2000 characters.
If you do not see the pages I described above it is most likely because you failed to type “bing.com/new” in the address bar, probably searching Google instead. Do not search! You need to go specifically to the address “bing.com/new,” not search around for it.
I decided to ask the chatbot for its help explaining this. I asked, “How do I explain to people to type a URL into the address bar of their browser and to not search Google for the address?” Microsoft’s chatbot answered, “You can tell people to type an address into the address bar of their browser by instructing them to look for the long white bar at the top of their browser window. They will type the web address (URL) into this bar (with the correct form), then hit Enter in order to visit the website. Make sure they are not typing into the search bar.”
The chatbot went on to suggest reading an article on wikiHow.com titled “How to Type in a Web Address to Go to a Specific Website.” Well said. Maybe next week AI could try writing this column.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
