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Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

wsj.com

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Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#81

Post by MisterTea »

pjmlp wrote: post #63
PaulHoule wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think after the failure of Metro, I think Microsoft gave up on native apps entirely and now the story is web or Electron.

It appears the problem is more deep than that. From what I could infer from some community talks, podcasts and so, I would assert that nowadays they have the problem new hires have been educated in UNIX like OSes and Web. Thus Windows team gets lots of folks that never coded anything for Windows, and management instead of having proper trainings in place, just goes with Webview2 and Electron all over the place. I mig…

I would say the web took over as the primary application platform and Unix-likes provided convenient low cost license-free foundations to build them on.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#82

Post by simonw »

nitwit005 wrote: post #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.

The Google+ thing was a great example of bonus-driven product design. My understanding is that effectively everyone at Google was told that their annual bonus would be directly tied to how well their team's products supported the rollout of Google+.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#83

Post by alex1138 »

simonw wrote: post #82
nitwit005 wrote: post #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.

The Google+ thing was a great example of bonus-driven product design. My understanding is that effectively everyone at Google was told that their annual bonus would be directly tied to how well their team's products supported the rollout of Google+.

You look at ~15 year old comments and it's people replying to people that aren't there

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#84

Post by shevy-java »

It is rather interesting how dead-focused Microsoft is on AI. Even if you look at their recent statements "We now admit there are AI problems with Microsoft-related products." (e. g. Win11 in particular), it seems to me that they really have no way back now. It's turtles down all the way; once the train is moving, it is hard to stop.

It's definitely not what many users wanted or expected from Win11; nonetheless, and this also surprised me, more than one billion devices run on Win11. That's also strange - AI is not a big reason for most of these folks then, right? Probably neither positive or negative (or they may not even know about it).

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#85

Post by shevy-java »

nitwit005 wrote: post #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.

Yeah - Google really tried to get people to use Google+ but it always sucked.

YouTube, while Google nerfed and downgraded it, still works to some extent, though AI generated "content" is such a waste of time.

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

https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/

Well for tech users it is at around 12% or so, give or take. More curiously Google chrome share dropped a little. I have no data about this, e. g. one website is too little info anyway but I suspect that Google killing ublock origin was a reason; right now I am using firefox and though it has tons of issues too, being able to lock away pointless "content" is so vital for how I browser and access information online.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#86

Post by anthonypasq »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #80
_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…

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. Th…

Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new technology in their existing industry is hard to believe.

AI is literally the fastest growing and most widely used/deployed technologies ever.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#87

Post by anthonypasq »

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…

>it had become nearly unusable for me and I don't think was that unfounded of an opinion

this is an extremely unfounded opinion, and pointing me to other people on hackernews that agree with you is not evidence. Google search quite literally was and continues to be the most successful and profitable product in the history of humanity. None of your comment interfaces with reality at all.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#88

Post by jjcm »

Product leaders should really measure internal usage as a litmus test for whether or not people actually want these things. It's honestly shocking how much MS's brand has diminished in the last few years because of them pushing the copilot brand into everything.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#89

Post by askonomm »

shevy-java wrote: post #84

It is rather interesting how dead-focused Microsoft is on AI. Even if you look at their recent statements "We now admit there are AI problems with Microsoft-related products." (e. g. Win11 in particular), it seems to me that they really have no way back now. It's turtles down all the way; once the train is moving, it is hard to stop. It's definitely not what many users wanted or expected from Win11; nonetheless, and…

It's difficult to describe just how many people are using Windows not because they choose to, but because they have to. Whether it is because the corporations they work at only give them Windows PC's or because whatever software that they need only runs on Windows. Being able to choose your operating system that you also do work with is largely a luxury of software engineers, I think, but for your average Joe you get what you get, even if it sucks.

Microsoft has an amazing sales team forcing vendor lock-in at corporations, schools and governments all over the world, no wonder they get tons of users.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#90

Post by hjoutfbkfd »

shevy-java wrote: post #84

It is rather interesting how dead-focused Microsoft is on AI. Even if you look at their recent statements "We now admit there are AI problems with Microsoft-related products." (e. g. Win11 in particular), it seems to me that they really have no way back now. It's turtles down all the way; once the train is moving, it is hard to stop. It's definitely not what many users wanted or expected from Win11; nonetheless, and…

innovators dilemma.

they see that the future is AI, but AI doesnt need Microsoft.

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