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Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#21

Post by tech_ken »

h2zizzle wrote: post #18
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

It's part of a larger economic con centered on the financial industry and the financialization of American industry. If you want this stuff to stop, you have to be hoping (or even working toward) a correction that wipes out the incumbents who absolutely are working to maintain the masqerade. It will hurt, and they'll scare us with the idea that it will hurt, but the secret is that we get to choose where it hurts - th…

> correction that wipes out the incumbents who absolutely are working to maintain the masqerade

You need to also have a robust alternative that grows quickly in the cleared space. In 2008 we got a correction that cleared the incumbents, but the ensuing decade of policy choices basically just allowed the thing to re-grow in a new form.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#23

Post by ReptileMan »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

It was the same with the cloud adoption. And I still think that cloud is expensive, wasteful and in the vast majority of cases not needed.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#24

Post by dehrmann »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

> In other words --- pure greed.

It's the opposite; it's FOMO.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#25

Post by stingraycharles »

empath75 wrote: post #10
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

It's not "fundamentally flawed". It is brilliant at what it does. What is flawed is how people are applying it to solve specific problems. It isn't a "do anything" button that you can just push. Every problem you apply AI to still has a ton of engineering work that needs to be done to make it useful.

You’re correct, you need to learn how to use it. But for some reason HN has an extremely strong anti-AI sentiment, unless it’s about fundamental research.

At this point, I consider these AI tools to be an invaluable asset to my work in the same way that search engines are. It’s integrated into my work. But it takes practice on how to use it correctly.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#26

Post by dbspin »

empath75 wrote: post #10
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

It's not "fundamentally flawed". It is brilliant at what it does. What is flawed is how people are applying it to solve specific problems. It isn't a "do anything" button that you can just push. Every problem you apply AI to still has a ton of engineering work that needs to be done to make it useful.

I'd consider hallucinations to be a fundamental flaw that currently sets hard limits on the current utility of LLMs in any context.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#27

Post by foobarchu »

stingraycharles wrote: post #19
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

Don’t attribute to malice that which can equally be contributed to incompetence. I think you’re over-estimating the capabilities of these tech leaders, especially when the whole industry is repeating the same thing. At that point, it takes a lot of guts to say “No, we’re not going to buy into the hype, we’re going to wait and see” because it’s simply a matter of corporate politics: if AI fails to deliver, it fails to…

> if AI fails to deliver, it fails to deliver for everyone and the people that bought into the hype can blame the consultants / whatever.

Understatement of the year. At this point, if AI fails to deliver, the US economy is going to crash. That would not be the case if executives hadn't bought in so hard earlier on.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#28

Post by wubrr »

Gormo wrote: post #7
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

> In other words --- pure greed. Pure greed would have a strong incentive to understand what the market is actually demanding in order to maximize profits. These attempts to try to steer demand despite clear indicators that it doesn't want to go in that direction aren't just driven by greed, they're driven by abject incompetence. This isn't pure greed, it's stupid greed.

Pure greed is stupid greed.

Also, if the current level of AI investment and valuations aren't justified by market demand (I believe so), many of these people/companies are getting more money than they would without the unreasonable hype.

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#29

Post by rtp4me »

stingraycharles wrote: post #25
empath75 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "fundamentally flawed". It is brilliant at what it does. What is flawed is how people are applying it to solve specific problems. It isn't a "do anything" button that you can just push. Every problem you apply AI to still has a ton of engineering work that needs to be done to make it useful.

You’re correct, you need to learn how to use it. But for some reason HN has an extremely strong anti-AI sentiment, unless it’s about fundamental research. At this point, I consider these AI tools to be an invaluable asset to my work in the same way that search engines are. It’s integrated into my work. But it takes practice on how to use it correctly.

My suspicion is because they (HN) are very concerned this technology is pushing hard into their domain expertise and feel threatened (and, rightfully so).

Re: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

#30

Post by mason_mpls »

h2zizzle wrote: post #18
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

AI agent technology likely isn’t ready for the kind of high-stakes autonomous business work Microsoft is promising. It's unbelievable to me that tech leaders lack the insight to recognize this. So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted? I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry. They know the product is fundamentally flawed and won't perform as being promised. But the money to be made…

It's part of a larger economic con centered on the financial industry and the financialization of American industry. If you want this stuff to stop, you have to be hoping (or even working toward) a correction that wipes out the incumbents who absolutely are working to maintain the masqerade. It will hurt, and they'll scare us with the idea that it will hurt, but the secret is that we get to choose where it hurts - th…

This assumes fair competition in the tech industry, which has evaporated without a path for return years ago.
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