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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

#11

Post by nightski »

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…

I think on some level it is being done on the premise that further advancement requires an enormous capital investment and if they can find a way to fund that with today’s sales it will give the opportunity for the tech to get there (quite a gamble).

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

#12

Post by empath75 »

zdragnar wrote: post #6
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…

I was just in a thread yesterday with someone who genuinely believed that we're only seeing the beginnings of what the current breed of AI will get us, and that it's going to be as transformative as the introduction of the internet was. Everything about the conversation felt like talking to a true believer, and there's plenty out there. It's the hopes and dreams of the Next Big Thing after blockchain and web3 fell ap…

Two things can be true:

1) We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible to do with existing AI technology. 2) Almost all of the money we are spending on AI now is ineffectual and wasted.

---

If you go back to the late 1990s, that is the state that most companies were at with _computers_. Huge, wasteful projects that didn't improve productivity at all. It took 10 years of false starts sometimes to really get traction.

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

#13

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

I have a feeling that Microsoft is setting themselves up for a serious antitrust lawsuit if they do what they are intending on. They should really be careful about introducing products into the OS that take away from all other AI shops. I fear this would cripple innovation if allowed to do so as well, since Microsoft has drastically fatter wallets than most of their competition.

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

#14

Post by stocksinsmocks »

jollyllama wrote: post #5
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…

They've gotten away with shipping garbage for years and still getting paid for it. They think we're all stupid.

Given that they aren’t meeting their sales targets at all, I guess that’s a little bit of encouraging about the discernment of their customers. I’m not sure how Microsoft has managed to escape market discipline for so long.

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

#15

Post by danans »

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…

> So how to explain the current AI mania being widely promoted?

> I think the best fit explanation is simple con artistry.

Yes, perhaps, but many industries are built on a little bit of technology and a lot of stories.

I think of it as us all being caught in one giant infomercial.

Meanwhile as long as investors buy the hype it's a great story to use for triming payrolls.

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

#16

Post by delfinom »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #13
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…

I have a feeling that Microsoft is setting themselves up for a serious antitrust lawsuit if they do what they are intending on. They should really be careful about introducing products into the OS that take away from all other AI shops. I fear this would cripple innovation if allowed to do so as well, since Microsoft has drastically fatter wallets than most of their competition.

Under the current US administration the only thing Microsoft is getting is numerous piles of taxpayer bailouts.

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

#17

Post by forks »

If you click through to the article shared yesterday[0]:

> Microsoft denies report of lowering targets for AI software sales growth

This Ars Technica article cites the same reporting as that Reuters piece but doesn't (yet) include anything about MSFT's rebuttal.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46135388

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

#18

Post by h2zizzle »

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 - the same as how they've gotten to choose the winners and losers for the past two decades.

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

#19

Post by stingraycharles »

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 deliver for everyone and the people that bought into the hype can blame the consultants / whatever.

If, however, AI ended up delivering and they missed the boat, they’re going to be held accountable.

It’s much less risky to just follow industry trends. It takes a lot of technical knowledge, gut, and confidence in your own judgement to push back against an industry-wide trend at that level.

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

#20

Post by hereme888 »

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…

It's like when a child doesn't want something, you "give them a choice": would you like to put on your red or white shoes?
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