Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

#22

Post by scudsworth »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #17
high_na_euv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You answered your own question WhatsApp and AI Chats are different products.

No d'uh they're different products. I asked why people would think one is valuable and the other not?

whatsapp is an invaluable communication tool for large parts of the globe. the other is not essential for daily life for any person anywhere on the globe. i hope this helps, cum guy

Re: Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

#23

Post by JohnFen »

Cumpiler69 wrote: post #10
high_na_euv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data

So then why doesn't this argument apply to AI? Why do people think AI is gonna be worthless?

There are different kinds of "worth".

Many things are valuable from a monetary point of view, but largely worthless (or of negative worth) otherwise. And many other things are worthless from a monetary view, but of great value otherwise.

Re: Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

#24

Post by lsy »

The C-suite operates in the universe of big ideas and are being presented demos and mockups that imply more capability than is actually possible. And the employees have to actually deal with the rubber hitting the road. They can see that the tech is half-baked and are dealing with the real problems users experience, and there is an intuitive sense that customers aren't going to pay subscription prices for something that fails in an embarrassing and opaque way for every N times it's invoked.

It's also difficult for engineers to understand how a sustainable industry can be built on tech where the primary method of "engineering" it is to try doing something (training a new model, changing a prompt) and hope it will work rather than knowing what will and won't. The potential to get trapped in a local maximum or burn massive resources for insufficient return is too high, and the cost of switching models is too low to build any moat based on model quality.

At the end of the day this is the only thing tech investors are excited about, so the market will dictate strategy until the bottom falls out for whatever reason. The video is not assuring on this front, saying that CEOs are just staying the course without much indication they have a reason to believe a return is around the corner.

Re: Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

#26

Post by belter »

lsy wrote: post #24

The C-suite operates in the universe of big ideas and are being presented demos and mockups that imply more capability than is actually possible. And the employees have to actually deal with the rubber hitting the road. They can see that the tech is half-baked and are dealing with the real problems users experience, and there is an intuitive sense that customers aren't going to pay subscription prices for something t…

Sounds like Watson all over again.

Re: Microsoft employees are doubtful of AI's capabilities and company's AI bet

#27

Post by bfrog »

mgh2 wrote: post #20
Cumpiler69 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers are drawn into your service by convenience. They'd much rather get their answer via a quick AI chat than swifitng through pages of your data. Yeah, data is valuable, but if consumers have no easy way to get what they want from it, it becomes useless.

WhatsApp when bought already had traction, Copilot seems forced

Copilot feels like I’m getting a personal health examination I didn’t ask for, need, or want.
Post reply on HN