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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

#191

Post by syockit »

outside1234 wrote: post #73
stock_toaster wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have OnlyOffice as an alternative today. Personally I find the UI quite pleasing. But lately I haven't had any need to use office suite at home so I don't really use it so I have yet to find anything to complain (meanwhile, LibreOffice was horrible, while Office 365 was bearable until you stuff too many things in the equation editor).

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#192

Post by autoexec »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #98
anthonypasq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, I've been here before. Back in 1995 we called it "The Internet." :-) Not to be snarky here, as we know the Internet has, in fact, revolutionized a lot of things and generated a lot of wealth. But in 1995, it was "a trillion dollar market" where none of the underlying infrastructure could really take advantage of it. AI is like that today, a pretty amazing technology that at some point will probably revolutionize…

I have zero doubt that AI will eventually make many people lots of money. Just about every company on earth is collecting TBs of data on everyone and they know they're sure they can use that information against us somehow, but they can't possibly read and search through it all on their own.

I have quite a few doubts that it'll be a net positive for society though. The internet (for all of its flaws) is still a good thing generally for the public. Users didn't have to be convinced of that, they just needed to be shown what was possible. Nobody had to shove internet access into everything against customer's wishes. "AI" on the other hand isn't something most users want. Users are constantly complaining about it being pushed on them and it's already forced MS to scale back the AI in windows 11.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#193

Post by autoexec »

rightbyte wrote: post #100
anthonypasq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The product is the stock price, not Office or Windows. From that perspective they are doing it right.

In particular it's the short term stock price. They'll happily grift their way to overinflated stock prices today even though at some point their incestuous money shuffle game will end and the stocks will crash and a bunch of people who aren't insider trading are going to be left with massive losses.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#194

Post by autoexec »

6510 wrote: post #188
anthonypasq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The mistake is simple. It is like the difference between giving you many tools to use vs making you the tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

I get the feeling that a lot of people using AI, feeding it their private data, and trusting what it tells them are certainly being tools.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#195

Post by bandrami »

InfamousRece wrote: post #52
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe they skipped blockchain first so at least there is that.

No, they were all-in on Blockchain-as-a-service on Azure for a hot minute, and it's still included in their supply chain protection stack (which in fairness is one of the few use cases that makes a lot of sense)

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#196

Post by speed_spread »

outside1234 wrote: post #73
stock_toaster wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At this point, LibreOffice is much better than whatever Microsoft now sells as an office suite.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#197

Post by Gigachad »

shevy-java wrote: post #85
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 ta…

My experience of Google+ was that it didn't suck, it just didn't offer much Facebook didn't already offer. So why would anyone use it. And then they started automated posting on Google+ for when you did something like comment on youtube, it would make a post on G+ which pissed people off.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#198

Post by safety1st »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #98
anthonypasq wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, I've been here before. Back in 1995 we called it "The Internet." :-) Not to be snarky here, as we know the Internet has, in fact, revolutionized a lot of things and generated a lot of wealth. But in 1995, it was "a trillion dollar market" where none of the underlying infrastructure could really take advantage of it. AI is like that today, a pretty amazing technology that at some point will probably revolutionize…

The comparison to the dotcom bubble isn't without merit. As a technology in terms of its applications though I think the best one to compare the LLM with is the mouse. It was absolutely a revolution in terms of how we interact with computers. You could do many tasks much faster with a GUI. Nearly all software was redesigned around it. The story around a "conversational interface" enabled by an LLM is similar. You can literally see the agent go off and run 10 grep commands or whatever in seconds, that you would have had to look up.

The mouse didn't become some huge profit center and the economy didn't realign around mouse manufacturers. People sure made a lot of money off it indirectly though. The profits accrued from sales of software that supported it well and delivered productivity improvements. Some of the companies who wrote that software also manufactured mice, some didn't.

I think it'll be the same now. It's far from clear that developing and hosting LLMs will be a great business. They'll transform computing anyway. The actual profits will accrue to whoever delivers software which integrates them in a way that delivers more productivity. On some level I feel like it's already happening, Gemini's well integrated into Google Drive, changes how I use it, and saves me time. ChatGPT is just a thing off on the side that I chat randomly with about my hangover. Github Copilot claims it's going to deliver productivity and sometimes kinda does but man it often sucks. Easy to infer from this info who my money will end up going to in the long run.

On diversification, I think anyone who's not a professional investor should steer away from picking individual stocks and already be diversified... I wouldn't advise anyone to get out of the market or to try and time the market. But a correction will come eventually and being invested in very broad index funds smooths out these bumps. To those of us who invest in the whole market, it's notable that a few big AI/tech companies have become a far larger share of the indices than they used to be, and a fairly sure bet that one day, they won't be anymore.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#199

Post by shigawire »

ryandrake wrote: post #189
ChuckMcM wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For most software products I use, if the company spent a year doing nothing but fixing P2 bugs and making small performance improvements, that would deliver far, FAR more value to me than spending a year hamfistedly cramming AI into every corner of the software. But fixing bugs doesn't 1. pad engineer's resumes with new technology, or 2. give company leadership exciting things to talk about to their golfing buddies.…

I think it is more externally driven as well, a prisoners dilemma.

I don't want to keep crapping out questionable features but if competitors keep doing it the customer wants it -- even if infrastructure and bug fixes would actually make their life better.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#200

Post by quantummagic »

veqq wrote: post #112
stickfigure wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think Google+ was a good idea and it's a shame google now has a dozen different products with completely different social identities. Facebook does this right, you have one profile. Youtube comments might not be a cesspool if they were tied to your "Google identity".

Youtube comments have been nice and constructive for a few years now

You're right. Youtube comments are great now. Granted, it means you can't have controversial conversations there, but that's not what they're for.
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