It's a Twitter post, not an English essay that's about to be graded.
As a published article.
It is the same reason every app (be they web or mobile) gets a redesign every year.
At Ignite yesterday they announced that Security Copilot will now be included for free with E5 licensing.
The tool that until yesterday way $50k for a single tenant deployment. Aka, no one bought it, but they need to juice the KPIs so might as well make it free so it looks like someone is actually using it.
It's not that people are unimpressed with AI - they're just tired of constantly being bombarded with it, and it sneaking its way into where it's not wanted. "Generate any image you want!" "Analyse this thing with AI!" gets pretty tiring.
If I want AI I'll actively seek it out and use it - otherwise, jog on.
That doesn't mean I want it plastered everywhere, in every app or website. That doesn't mean I want to interact with or use my computer via AI, and I especially don't want to talk to my computer to do things. Mouse & keyboard is faster.
But for now at least you can just choose not to use it. The problem is, Microsoft is putting 100% of their efforts into this while long-standing Windows bugs and regressions still exist. They're aware they exist too, and are deliberately choosing not to improve their product.
But we can't. I can have something styled as a conversation with a token predictor that emits text that, if interpreted as a conversation, will gaslight you constantly, while at best sometimes being accidentally correct (but still requiring double-checking with an actual source).
Yes, I am uninterested in having the gaslighting machine installed into every single UI I see in my life.
I can generate images that are difficult to use commercially. I can analyze something with AI but I can't confidently use that output in any setting that matters.
For people who are attempting to engage in profitable work then AI is miserably unimpressive. I don't know what planet this guy is living on. Time is money. Flowery emails and off axis summaries can only create a waste of that time.
This. After a generation of social media sneaking its surveillance, manipulation, and noisy ads into our home, work and mobile lives, it is very obvious that having something "smart" shoved into tools where it wasn't asked for isn't some noble attempt at improving lives.
Users are tired of being continually and transparently abused.
All Microsoft would have to do to shock the world and get months of good press is announce they were never going to opt anybody into anything by default any more. At this point that would be considered astonishing.
And suddenly, internal incentives would be to create useful, conflict-free capabilities users actually choose for themselves.
One can dream. I manage M365 where I work, and MS never opting tenants into anything by default again would save me many hours of work on a seemingly weekly basis now.
The fact that they can abuse even their enterprise customers and still retain them is what blows my mind.
The large org dependency on 365 and microsoft is a serious info-security and national security risk. 0 interest in improving because they know they won't ever see competition
AI is fake, it feels fake, and it’s obvious. It’s mind blowing to me that executives think people want fake crap. Sure, people are susceptible to it, and get engaged by it, but it’s not exactly what people want or aspire to.
I want something real, something that makes me feel. AI generated content is by definition fake and not genuine. A human is by definition not putting as much thought and effort into their work when they use AI.
Now someone could put a lot of thought and effort into a project and also use gen AI, but that’s not what’s getting spammed across the internet. AI is low-effort, so of course the pure volume of low effort garbage is going to surpass the volume of high effort quality content.
So it’s basically not possible to like what AI is putting out, generally speaking.
As a productivity enhancer in a small role, sure it’s useful, but that’s not what we’re complaining about.
Ironically though, Diablo Immortal was a huge commercial success despite the tone deaf announcement. I don't think MS will experience the same though. They're quickly going to be left with the only people using windows are those who are forced by their employer, no one will willingly choose it over other options.
Its this shenanigans that forced me to nuke my Windows install and go Arch. I noticed that Windows Defender will upload "suspicious" files and there's no audit trail of what's being uploaded. So I have no way of knowing what personal documents or even proprietary software has gone up to their cloud.
Imagine the ghost of Henry Ford asked me what I wanted from transportation today and I said "a new novel technology to enable sub-second transcontinental travel". I'd be laughed at even harder than in an alternate reality where I asked for marginally more convenient air travel, without knowing Henry Ford actually did resurrect himself and invent the Stargate last tuesday.
Not to mention, I can find AI perfectly impressive and still have absolutely no day-to-day use for it… certainly not enough to justify it taking over my operating system experience.
Nor do I ever want to have a voice conversation with my computer to where it responds in an uncanny valley voice. If I do want to use voice, it's to give a command. No response needed. "Hey computer, call John" that's it. Do the thing, don't talk back. A glorified voice assistant is all the further it needs to go.
Wonder if he calls any of his rejected dates a “cynic” because they said no to him, too.
I think this is a big part of it. If Apple ever achieves their vision for personal context Siri & AI in their OS, I bet people will praise it and actually use it. Because Apple has built trust with their customers, and has strong marketing around privacy.
Microsoft burned that bridge a long time ago. They feel sleazy. Maybe if they haven't violated their users trust over and over again, people would be more receptive.
It's almost like the kind of trap a lot of solo devs get into where they build a thing that is interesting to them but then can't find anyone else interested. But at least the solo devs built something that worked for themselves. I can't imagine anyone at MS eating their own dog food on this stuff.
At a company like MS, that shouldn't happen. They're supposed to have the resources to understand what their customers want. But we've seen this trend for the last 15 years. Companies like MS, Meta, Google, don't want to engage and collaborate with the customer. They want to push ideas down and be celebrated for their design brilliance. They don't even really A/B test this stuff anymore. The inmates are running the asylum.
MSFT reminds me of INTC.
There's nothing underwhelming about AI. It's how Microsoft damages anything it touches, and lies to users about it. They force a stupid "copilot" key into computers and encourage the waste of resources into "chips with AI capabilities", only to push your data to the cloud, deceitfully, and with very poor safety guarantees.
Also, people have a Windows backlash in general, and Microsoft ignores it, as usual.
Jeez there are so many clueless CEOs!
> It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming.
This is your business. It should "make you curious." Saying it "cracks you up" is ridiculous behavior from someone in your position. I will never do business with someone like this.
> I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone!
Because you were bored? Or because you literally set time aside every day to play it because it was just that good? What is this nonsense?
> The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation
I have "fluent conversations" already. With people. About recent and relevant things. The fact that a computer can pretend to do this is not impressive. Press on it hard enough and you'll immediately see the cracks. We've had weak chat bots since forever.
> with a super smart AI
That's trained on existing data. It cannot synthesize new perspectives or prerogatives. It often fails to know anything that recently occurred. It often presents data as if it is absolutely true and that it could not possibly be wrong. It's the opposite of smart in every way.
> that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me.
It can make copies. It cannot generate anything novel. There was no part of my life that was hampered by the fact I couldn't generate images or videos. This is an amusement, not anything that adds to my bottom line.
Everything since then has not really pushed too far passed that "impressive tech demo" state. I like using AI to help me with coding. That's... about it.
"Click this, then that, then this other thing and it should work"
"that other thing isn't an option"
"Oh you're 3 versions behind. Instead, it's in location X."
Then - like now - it seemed that they couldn't understand that what they made was not what their customers wanted.
I believe users are stupid enough to stick to Microsoft "agentic OS" anyway.
cadamsdotcom•1h ago
All the leadership need to do is read these types of articles and they’ll see what’s going on outside the walls. One wonders how the internal incentives can be so wrong.