Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 399 posts

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#41

Post by WillAdams »

_fat_santa wrote: post #33

The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use. Most of the announcements I hear about Copilot, it's always how they've integrated it into some other piece of software or cut a deal with yet another vendor to add it to that vendors product offering. On the surface there's nothing wrong with…

Or, scaling back trying to keep their datacenter bill manageable.

Used to be one could upload an unlimited number of files (20 at a time) and process them directly at the initial window --- now one has to get into "Pages Mode", and once there, there's a limit on the number of files which can be uploaded in a given 24-hour period.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#42

Post by mjr00 »

Microsoft's focus was making it so that AI could allow unskilled workers to replace skilled workers. The hope was that everyone but sales/management could be offshored to SEA/India/etc and AI would somehow make up for the skill differential.

The successful AI companies are making it so that skilled workers can use AI as a tool to be more productive and efficient.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#43

Post by tonyedgecombe »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #3

> push by Chief Executive Satya Nadella to transform Microsoft into an AI-first company Why can't we have a 'user-first' company. Maybe think about the user of your products a wee tiny bit. But no, it is not to be.

I thought it was cloud first, or was it mobile first, I don't remember.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#44

Post by apercu »

_fat_santa wrote: post #33

The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use. Most of the announcements I hear about Copilot, it's always how they've integrated it into some other piece of software or cut a deal with yet another vendor to add it to that vendors product offering. On the surface there's nothing wrong with…

> "The biggest issue I see is Microsoft's entire mentality around AI adoption that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" then actually delivering a product people want to use."

That succinctly describes 90% of the economy right now if you just change a word and remove a couple:

The biggest issue I see is the entire mentality that focuses more on "getting the numbers up" than actually delivering a product people want to use.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#46

Post by senko »

PaulHoule wrote: post #21
wolvoleo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and even the engineers and architects have no influence on the purchase decision. If you ask us we wouldn't buy Microsoft. But they're really good at rubbing shoulders with the CIOs and convincing them their stuff isn't the mediocre trash it really is.

It's a story in Germany all the time that some open source zealots get a town government to switch to an off-brand office suite which is so bad that the government worker's union goes on strike to get Microsoft Office back.

The unironic use of "off brand office suite" here is hysterically tragic.

Also, the productivity suite formerly known as Office is these days called "365 Copilot".

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#47

Post by fsflover »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #3

> push by Chief Executive Satya Nadella to transform Microsoft into an AI-first company Why can't we have a 'user-first' company. Maybe think about the user of your products a wee tiny bit. But no, it is not to be.

This only works in a competitive market, not for monopolistic walled gardens like Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#48

Post by ifwinterco »

PaulHoule wrote: post #16
JohnMakin wrote: post #12

Microsoft's fumble here is pretty spectacular. Back in early 2023, the state of google search was abysmal (despite that their leaders insisted it wasn't, it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion). Microsoft rolled out a new version of bing, which became bing chat - search worked for me again for a very brief window of time. They could have pounced on this opportunity to…

Over and over Microsoft kills products with mis-marketing. One scenario is the product is good (OneNote) but they put three icons on the taskbar for it and spam the rest of Windows for ads for it that just make people scream "take it away!" Another scenario is that the product is bad (OneDrive) and they push you into having a traumatic experience (Microsoft Office uses it as the default save location and when it is d…

Recently had to download actual Adobe Reader for the first time in at least a decade and... christ. Requires most of an H100 in resources and you can't do what you actually want to do because of multiple AI related popups and attempt to get you to subscribe to some Adobe cloud nonsense.

I knew it would be bad but I couldn't believe the state of it, just utter garbage

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#49

Post by pjmlp »

brg wrote: post #38
pjmlp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which certainly has to do with it being initially developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and not plain Microsoft. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40472977 https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd...

I would argue that the success has more to do with DevDiv being the strongest technical organization at MS than its provenance.

Until they messed up the whole UWP / WinRT developer experience in Visual Studio.

Also VS 2026 was released with a hard milestone, thus while there is a new settings experience, many options show a dialog from VS 2022, because the new UI is still not implemented for the new experience.

Note that most organisations have to pay for Visual Studio licenses, and get rewarded with such quality.

Slop has also arrived into DevDiv.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#50

Post by exceptione »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
exceptione wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their philosophy of mediocre = good enough. (Not everything ofc, MS is a continent. .net core, language design etc is top-notch.)

Which certainly has to do with it being initially developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and not plain Microsoft. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40472977 https://web.archive.org/web/20190111203733/https://blogs.msd...

Ah, thanks. That must be the link with Simon Peyton Jones as well. Seems to be another case of a marketing machine running away with foundational research coming from Europe.*

* no hard feelings

Post reply on HN