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

151–160 of 399 posts

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#151

Post by hibikir »

apercu wrote: post #44
_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 wa…

KPI infection. You see projects whose goal is, say "repos with A I code review turned on" vs "Code review suggestions that were accepted". And then if you do get adoption (like, say, a Claude Code trial), then VPs balk about price. If it's actually expensive now it's because they are actually using it all the time!

The same kind of logic that led companies to migrate from Slack to Teams. Metrics that don't actually look at actual, positive impact, as nobody picks a risky KPI, and will instead pick a useless one that can't miss.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#152

Post by lizknope »

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 started working in 1997. Cisco was one of our big customers so I knew a lot of engineers there. Cisco stock hid $80 in 2000. In 2002 it was at $10.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CSCO/

I knew people who purchased their options but didn't sell and based on the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) had tax bills of millions of dollars based on the profit IF they sold on the day they purchased it. But then it dropped to $10 and even if they sold everything they couldn't pay the tax bill. They finally changed the law after years but those guys got screwed over.

I was young and thought the dot com boom would go on forever. It didn't. The AI bubble will burst too but whether it is 2026, 27, 28, who knows. Bubble doesn't mean useless, just that the investors will finally start demanding a profit and return on their investment. At that point the bubble will pop and lots of companies will go fail or lose a lot of money. Then it will take a couple of years to sort out and companies have to start showing a profit.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#154

Post by egl2020 »

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+.

I was at G when "mobile first" was the slogan, and it led to "odd" choices such as designing and leading with a travel app rather than the web site. Perhaps locally suboptimal, but in the long run brutal forcing functions were needed to move a company as big and successful as Google into something new. I hear that going all-in on AI was internally disruptive and probably had some bad side-effects that I'm ignoring, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do. When ChatGPT, perplexity, and you.com came out, my immediate thought was "Google is toast", but they've recovered.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#155

Post by overgard »

I think the difference with Copilot vs other tools is how it's being pushed on us, and where it's being pushed. Because Copilot is bundled with software people need, it's going to get a lot more scrutiny compared to AI products that aren't built into the OS/built into Office, etc. In a way, being an "agentic OS" isn't that different from say Moltbot (conceptually), but one of those ideas seems to have gotten quite a bit of excitement, and the other a lot of anger, because Moltbot isn't being forced on you.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#156

Post by KoftaBob »

anthonypasq wrote: post #87
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.

> most successful and profitable product in the history of humanity.

The iPhone is a much stronger contender for that title. It has probably surpassed $1 Trillion in profit for Apple since 2007.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#157

Post by alsetmusic »

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.

And this is the broken mindset tanking multiple large companies' products and services (Google, Apple, MS, etc). Focus on the stock. The product and our users are an afterthought.

Someone linked to a good essay on how success plus Tim Cook's focus on the stock has caused the rot that's consuming Apple's software[0]. I thought it was well reasoned and it resonated with me, though I don't believe any of the ideas were new to me. Well written, so still worth it.

0. The Fallen Apple - https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#158

Post by bitwize »

sanjayjc wrote: post #119
simonask wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm with wolvoleo. I'm forced to use MS Office at work but install only LO on my personal machines. It may lack features or pizzazz but as a reliable, unfussy authoring tool, it serves my needs very well. > pointlessly going against expectations If you're referring to the ribbon, I'm not sold on its superiority. The vast majority of other software still uses the familiar menu structure, which is what LO uses too. Gra…

I started my wife on LibreOffice, putting it on her Mac when her 365 subscription lapsed. She loves it. Her needs aren't fancy, though, and she can create her own or open others' documents and spreadsheets just fine.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#159

Post by JBlue42 »

overgard wrote: post #155

I think the difference with Copilot vs other tools is how it's being pushed on us, and where it's being pushed. Because Copilot is bundled with software people need , it's going to get a lot more scrutiny compared to AI products that aren't built into the OS/built into Office, etc. In a way, being an "agentic OS" isn't that different from say Moltbot (conceptually), but one of those ideas seems to have gotten quite a…

True. Let's not forget that they are rebranding Office 364 as Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#160

Post by DANmode »

PaulHoule wrote: post #18
kotaKat wrote: post #8

Maybe Microsoft needs to fix the cart before they put the jet engines on top of it and try to kill the horses off. Go back to fixing what’s wrong with Windows, then worry about the AI software running on top of it and where you can add a value proposition, because right now the Windows value proposition is continuing to go right down the shitter as everyone flees Windows 11.

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…

The reason is they’re gearing up to push the AR/VR-first UI/UX.

and it’s definitely got some bad edges right now.

Literally.

Post reply on HN