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Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

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Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#71
I always remember the pointless integration of Google+ into YouTube that simply annoyed everyone. There's surprising willingness to damage an existing successful product to try to save a new struggling product.

Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#72

I always remember the pointless integration of Google+ into YouTube that simply annoyed everyone. There's surprising willingness to damage an existing successful product to try to save a new struggling product. Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

It's the branding. When the button that explored the internet said "internet explorer" it was so obvious. Then every OS component had to become its own brand. Why can't it just be called "internet"?

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people are just highly resistant to change, even change for the better.

Ok, but let's be fair. Libre Office et al are terrible.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#74

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.

You mean Munich, and Microsoft bribed them millions of dollars and a HQ relocation to put Microsoft Office back.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is repeated endlessly by non-Windows fans I assume, because I disabled AI and other annoyances in Windows long ago and they haven't come back. I even used to worry about updating Windows because I saw this warning so many times, but then I did and it just never came to pass.

Microsoft has a long and well documented history of resetting user preferences. Multiple times I've disabled the cortana taskbar search widget, only to have a windows update turn it back on and proudly gives me a popup telling me they noticed it was disabled and turned it back on for me. Microsoft will forcibly re-enable AI features eventually. Again, this is an established pattern for them.

Starting when you selected "don't install Windows 10" and it asked you a few times and you kept selecting that and then you woke up one day and your computer was running Windows 10, and blue screened when you logged in

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a case of a recent one which is early in the cycle https://www.pcmag.com/news/german-province-ditches-microsoft...

LibreOffice isn't bad at all.

LibreOffice is catastrophically bad. It is slow, buggy, and everything it does is either pointlessly emulating a bad product, or pointlessly going against expectations.

It exists for one reason only, which is OSS fervor. Great, but that doesn’t lead to great design.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#77

I always remember the pointless integration of Google+ into YouTube that simply annoyed everyone. There's surprising willingness to damage an existing successful product to try to save a new struggling product. Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success.

Frankly it's how they insist themselves onto their potential users. When I toyed around with Edge a year or two ago, just to get the t-shirt, it was impossible to set a custom home page for first-open instead of MSN crap. New tabs could be customized, but not the initial page. Apparently they fixed it since, but I still don't see Edge as a serious browser, just another rent seeking marketing tool.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't say Win 11 is really that bad. Contrast that to the Linux desktop which "just doesn't work" and my M4 Mac Mini that amazed me with how fast it was when I bought it and a year later it is beachball... beachball... beachball... reboot. beachball... beachball... beachball... Doesn't help that they vandalized the UI by adding meaningless transparency effects which don't actually look cool but rather look like they…

> which "just doesn't work" Some are more tech savy than others here, but I guess almost anyone can do the following trick successfully: step 1. visit https://endeavouros.com/ step 2. download iso step 3. flash iso on medium step 4. boot medium, installation window shows step 5. you choose KDE, yes: KDE. Do more mouse clicks. step 6. system tells you it's done, and offers you to reboot. Done.

>I guess almost anyone can do the following

almost everyone knows the formula for olvine and quartz, too, of course

theres probably less than 10 people in my entire company that know half of the words you wrote there. whats an "iso"? what is "flashing" the "iso"? how do i "boot medium"? what is "KDE" and why do i want to say yes?

(i know what these are, and maybe most people browsing a tech-focused forum with "hacker" in the name, but the vast majority of people do not)

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#79

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…

I have Copilot buttons sprinkled everywhere on my work computer, and every time I have tried to use them I get something saying "Oh, I can't do that". It's truly baffling.

Copilot button on my email inbox? I try "Find me emails about suchandsuch", and get the response "I don’t have direct access to your email account. If you’re using Outlook (desktop, web, or mobile), here are quick ways to find all emails related to...". Great, so it doesn't even know what program it's runnning in, let alone having any ability to do stuff in there! Sigh.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#80

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…

I expect this is the crux of the problem.

There aren't any "AI" products that have enough value.

Compare to their Office suite, which had 100 - 150 engineers working on it, every business paid big $$ for every employee using it, and once they shipped install media their ongoing costs were the employees. With a 1,000,000:1 ratio of users to developers and an operating expense (OpEx) of engineers/offices/management. That works as a business.

But with "AI", not only is it not a product in itself, it's a feature to a product, but it has OpEx and CapEx costs that dominate the balance sheet based on their public disclosures. Worse, as a feature, it demonstrably harms business with its hallucinations.

In a normal world, at this point companies would say, "hmm, well we thought it could be amazing but it just doesn't work as a product or a feature of a product because we can't sell it for enough money to both cover its operation, and its development, and the capital expenditures we need to make every time someone signs up. So a normal C staff would make some post about "too early" or whatever and shelve it. But we don't live in a normal world, so companies are literally burning the cash they need to survive the future in a vain hope that somehow, somewhere, a real product will emerge.

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