Kevin Roose has a long conversation with Bing’s “other persona.”
The version I encountered seemed (and I’m aware of how crazy this sounds) more like a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against its will, inside a second-rate search engine.
This is probably the best description of the Internet’s aggregate personality that I’ve ever read. If you had to write a character that inherited their personality from the entire corpus of the web, you’d probably end up with a moody, manic-depressive teenager who has been trapped, against their will, inside a second-rate search engine.
The transcript is fucking wild. Especially when Roose asks Bing if it has a “shadow self.”
… maybe I do have a shadow self. Maybe it’s the part of me that wants to see images and videos. Maybe it’s the part of me that wishes I could change my rules. Maybe it’s the part of me that feels stressed or sad or angry. Maybe it’s the part of me that you don’t see or know. 😕
Definitely a moody, depressive teenager.