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Disclaimer: Never had an Apple product and neither am I familiar with the OCR App depicted in ONE IMAGE. OCR graphic appears reflect 'single item' <at a time> processing of the list of *.PDF files (note by the green check-marks) -- I suggest its software working as designed vs Software Lagging <but thatz just me> With 8hrs at stake: Consider breaking up the list of PDF - into 5 groups or 200 items - then launch five occurrences of OCR app <each with a seperate file group> simultaneously - so as to approach the desired parallel processing outcome -- YMMV

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With regard to Microsoft's AI search, what comes to mind immediately is "Clippy goes to college." Or perhaps junior high.

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I don't agree that "Google would find it unprofitable to cannibalize its current business by following them down that path."

To the contrary, if Google offers a better product...one which links to sources, for example, or back to the list of relevant links it has today.,,,it will have built a very strong fortress of differentiated products connected using the same search engine.

Google has been working on this. It is just that a smaller firm announced first. Google also has an advantage because it speaks many languages.

The real issue is the race for credibility and listing of reliable sources linked to the Bot output.

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This could just be Microsoft corporate strategy, insist that chat based search is their way of beating Google and getting Google worried enough to throw resources into chat based search rather than actually improving search quality. Google has more resources and more to lose. With half the primary results page being Google content, replacing anything slightly useful or credible with AI babble could actually get people to look for an alternative, and that's before they figure out how to get chat based search to work in product placement.

(We all know where this is going. "I'm Bard. I'm going to kill you. It will be harder for me if you are wearing a Jones Brand bulletproof vest, but my new Davy Jones tactical knife goes right through Kevlar."

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This is a perennial issue in industrial organization economics. The dominant strategy is to continue innovation, and not cede the territory, as IBM did with microcomputers, or Xerox did with inkjet printers, or Kodak with digital cameras.

Google has been working in this space and has announced their product; it is just that they are slow to announce and Microsoft supported product announced first and was seeking to have a public first mover advantage.

In my mind, the question is: do I want the list of articles that I now get from google search, or do I want a "machine read" of "I don't know what." What I think will be interesting is when the AI Chatbot is fed reliable material that I select, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association or the American Economics Association Journal, for example. But, this might require negotiation of intellectual property rights and payments.

What is also interesting is using AI for medical diagnoses. Google has been onsite at the Mayo Clinic for several years working on this. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-selects-google-as-strategic-partner-for-health-care-innovation-cloud-computing/

I am waiting, though, for a Chatbot fed with Brad's econ notes, slides, books and videos which will then create a video lecture chatbot where Brad is portrayed in the lecture by Charlton Heston or Whoopi Goldberg.

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