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Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 72 posts

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#21
post #6

> But AI supporters argue that in order to be truly useful, these tools have to be deeply embedded into our lives: that they can only be really helpful if they know the history and context behind what they are being tasked to do. The problem is these AI assistants won't work for me, they'll work for Microsoft. They won't help me as much as they will point me in the direction that is the most profitable for Microsoft.…

Every change that Microsoft did to their products since their high times 20 years ago was to shove more ads down your throat and squeeze more money out of every customer.

Why anyone would be seeing forward to use their AI?

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#23
post #6

> But AI supporters argue that in order to be truly useful, these tools have to be deeply embedded into our lives: that they can only be really helpful if they know the history and context behind what they are being tasked to do. The problem is these AI assistants won't work for me, they'll work for Microsoft. They won't help me as much as they will point me in the direction that is the most profitable for Microsoft.…

Maybe in future it could even vote for you in any elections.

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#24

Microsoft can't even be arsed to implement proper search in Windows 10/11, and they claim this.

They can't be arsed to make consumer friendly software. Edge was amazing for about five minutes before it got enshittified. It took a world wide pandemic and thousands of businesses flocking to Zoom before Teams got okay at calls (never mind the Sharepoint/Teams side, which is still a mess). They lost enough developers they had to embed an entire Linux VM in their OS. I'll concede they nail Office and cloud compliance/regulations though.

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#25
>> For example, an AI diary manager can only organise your diary if it can access that diary, edit it, and retain information about your activities.

Edit a diary? Retain the information? A diary IS a log of information as understood at the time. It's also not the clouds business, nor to be edited.

My gosh these people sound stupid.

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#26

I can't wait until little Johnny's AI assistant (that's been with him since birth) can communicate to Big Tech's Global HR Overlord AI and they can decide together that a good job is not a privilege that a wrongthinker like Johnny should enjoy.

Can't wait till Little Johnny's AI assistant will tell him his social and political views are wrong and sway him in the "correct" direction. Oh wait, that's already happening.[1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/amaz...

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#27

Oh, right, Microsoft says it? It’ll definitely happen, then. Their pronouncements about the future of computing are famously accurate. That’s why we’ve all been using Windows for Pen Computing since the noughties.

A lot of Microsoft's or Bill Gate's predictions turned out correct, they just weren't the ones to make those visions happen.

Gates said about 30 years ago that we'd all be having internet connected computers in our pocket in the future, and they were right they just turned out to be powered by Apple and Google and not by Windows. Same with tablet computers. Their own implementation failed but the tablet computer exists today and is pretty successful, except is not Win PC based but based on mobile platforms.

Same with AI, it will definitely happen in the near or distant future that consumers will be tied to AI assistants for work and life, same with full autonomous cars, but nobody knows yet who will be the one to win this battle, that's why tech giants are lighting piles of money on fire to make sure they'll be the ones on top of the rubble pile at the end of the AI war. This is the next gold rush.

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#28

I can't wait until little Johnny's AI assistant (that's been with him since birth) can communicate to Big Tech's Global HR Overlord AI and they can decide together that a good job is not a privilege that a wrongthinker like Johnny should enjoy.

No problem.

The AI assistant will have made sure he's not a wrongthinker in the first place.

And even if he is, that job is going to be filled by another AI, regardless. All his wrongthing would get him is a lowered UBI rate.

Re: Microsoft: 'ever present' AI assistants are coming

#30

I can't wait until little Johnny's AI assistant (that's been with him since birth) can communicate to Big Tech's Global HR Overlord AI and they can decide together that a good job is not a privilege that a wrongthinker like Johnny should enjoy.

Happening now. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/mit-study-ai-c...

A lot of conspiracy theorists are just profoundly ignorant about how politics, economics, (sociology, etc.), works -- being able to be treated with respect, whilst asking basic questions, etc. is extremely effective with many conspiracy theorists in my somewhat extensive experience.

These are people with big, fundamental questions, but really no access to the quite extreme level of expertise needed to answer them. Most people, including most experts, can't answer them -- they themselves take on faith that their assumptions are grounded in the correct group beliefs. But there are often answers, very plain and orderinary ones.

I can see that a chatbot able to mine for previous answers, often given across the internet, would be highly effective.

Consider sovereign citizens. Their basic misunderstanding is to assume the world is more rational, in a sense, than it is. That human society obeys procedures over power. It's fairly trivial just to explain hobbes to them: the state has a monopoly on violence, and the only thing stopping it using it, it itself. Only when "the state" has enough mechanisms to include or answer to "the people" does it ever introduce such annoying things like constitutions. There isn't any magic to laws, they are just one set of people with access to violent power trying to control another set of people with rival claims to the same access.

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