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Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

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Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#221

Post by artrockalter »

throw310822 wrote: post #75
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #62

Well, the major problem Microsoft is facing is that its AI products are not only shoddier than average , which is nothing new for them in many categories, but that this time the competition can actually easily leapfrog them. Like, I have a 'Copilot' button prominently displayed in my New Outlook on MacOS (the only platform where the app-with-that-designation is sort-of usable), and it's a dropdown menu, and it has...…

The other day I've clicked on one of Outlook calendar's copilot prefilled questions: "who are the main attendees of this meeting". It started a long winding speech that went nowhere, so I typed in "but WHO are the attendees" and finally it admitted "I don't know, I can't see that".

It's so easy to ship completely broken AI features because you can't really unit test them and unit tests have been the main standard for whether code is working for a long time now.

The most successful AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor) are all dogfooding their products as far as I can tell, and I don't really see any other reliable way to make sure the AI feature you ship actually works.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#222

Post by transcriptase »

Eisenstein wrote: post #154
geodel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds of an research article from Microsoft!. It detailed on why scam emails about `Nigerian prince` are so obviously dumb. The reasoning being it specifically need to target only those who can fall for it. Anything more sophisticated and they would get people who wouldn't fall for scam in subsequent communication.

Except it makes no sense because as a scammer your goal is to get as many people as possible in contact with you so that you can scam them. You can only score on the goals you attempt so cutting out any person, no matter the reason, is illogical.

You’re assuming that there’s no cost involved in moving a potential victim through the pipeline. I’m sure AI has changed the game, but the general idea was that beyond the initial blast of spam you would have someone actually responding to those who fell for it. Putting in signals that it was a scam filtered out individuals who would waste scammer time because they would eventually figure it out before falling victim. By selecting for people who literally can’t pick up on obvious signs of a scam, you save yourself a lot of time and energy.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#225

Post by arresin »

artrockalter wrote: post #221
throw310822 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I've clicked on one of Outlook calendar's copilot prefilled questions: "who are the main attendees of this meeting". It started a long winding speech that went nowhere, so I typed in "but WHO are the attendees" and finally it admitted "I don't know, I can't see that".

It's so easy to ship completely broken AI features because you can't really unit test them and unit tests have been the main standard for whether code is working for a long time now. The most successful AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor) are all dogfooding their products as far as I can tell, and I don't really see any other reliable way to make sure the AI feature you ship actually works.

Microsoft: What? You want us to eat this slop? Are you crazy?!

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#226

Post by jfim »

saubeidl wrote: post #190
jfim wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's meant by efficiency, it's allocating it to the place that has the highest return on investment. As you point out, in practice what's efficient is what can capture the highest return, not necessarily the highest return per se. If say investing in education had high returns society wide but those returns couldn't be captured, that's not an efficient use of private capital.

As somebody doesn't consider himself a capitalist, wouldn't it be fair to say it is "the most efficient" in precisely one thing: capital reproducing itself? And if so, why is that necessarily a good thing? Why should that be our goal as society as opposed to things like minimizing child mortality, increasing literacy rates, making sure we don't have a ton of our fellow humans living on the street in misery etc etc -…

Optimizing for capital returns is a simplification of the real world, where it allows for comparing whether it makes more sense to put one's money into opportunity A or B.

There's a lot that's not captured by solely looking at dollars, like the examples that you bring up, such as quality of life, human welfare, and so on.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#227

Post by rcxdude »

saubeidl wrote: post #190
jfim wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what's meant by efficiency, it's allocating it to the place that has the highest return on investment. As you point out, in practice what's efficient is what can capture the highest return, not necessarily the highest return per se. If say investing in education had high returns society wide but those returns couldn't be captured, that's not an efficient use of private capital.

As somebody doesn't consider himself a capitalist, wouldn't it be fair to say it is "the most efficient" in precisely one thing: capital reproducing itself? And if so, why is that necessarily a good thing? Why should that be our goal as society as opposed to things like minimizing child mortality, increasing literacy rates, making sure we don't have a ton of our fellow humans living on the street in misery etc etc -…

Ultimately that money is made by people choosing to spend their money on something, because it helps them, because they like it, because they need it for whatever reason (real or imagined). That's what grounds the financial markets: eventually someone is buying a thing because they want the thing, and all the rest of it is basically just figuring out who can make the thing, how many people want the thing and how badly, and whether the stuff used to make the thing could make a different thing that people want more. Financial markets can depart from that reality for a while, but mainly because of a collective belief in some falsehood about the above (everyone really badly wants AI, right?).

Number go up infinitely is due to inflation and that's basically just an incentive to not hoard cash indefinitely, and instead use it for something useful. But the only thing that uses up is numbers. Everything else is because people, on average, want more stuff and are willing and able to work hard to get it.

(Of course, this generally means that the markets chase the desires of those who have something valuable enough. People who don't will be marginalised by this mechanism, for sure. And of course there's lots of opportunity for people to steal or abuse powerful positions in the market to the detriment of others. Which is why a free market is not the be all and end all of organising a society, and other organisational structures exist to regulate it and to allocate resources in a less transactional manner)

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#229

Post by vladvasiliu »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #62

Well, the major problem Microsoft is facing is that its AI products are not only shoddier than average , which is nothing new for them in many categories, but that this time the competition can actually easily leapfrog them. Like, I have a 'Copilot' button prominently displayed in my New Outlook on MacOS (the only platform where the app-with-that-designation is sort-of usable), and it's a dropdown menu, and it has...…

On new-outlook-on-Windows there’s an option to disable the copilot button. Wanna take a guess what that does?

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#230

Post by flkiwi »

throw310822 wrote: post #75
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #62

Well, the major problem Microsoft is facing is that its AI products are not only shoddier than average , which is nothing new for them in many categories, but that this time the competition can actually easily leapfrog them. Like, I have a 'Copilot' button prominently displayed in my New Outlook on MacOS (the only platform where the app-with-that-designation is sort-of usable), and it's a dropdown menu, and it has...…

The other day I've clicked on one of Outlook calendar's copilot prefilled questions: "who are the main attendees of this meeting". It started a long winding speech that went nowhere, so I typed in "but WHO are the attendees" and finally it admitted "I don't know, I can't see that".

Me: Can you access my inbox and Teams messages?

Copilot: Yep!

Me: Please find any items in my inbox or sent items indicating (a) that I have agreed to take on a task or (b) identifying me as the person responsible for a task, removing duplicates and any items that I have unambiguously replied to via email or Teams. Time window is preceding 7 days.

Copilot: Prints a list with, at best, 5% accuracy

I know some folks have the peculiar idea that search is dead in favor of AI, but if AI can't accurately find information, it is useless. As near as I can tell, Copilot finds 3-4 items (but rarely the SAME 3-4 items across runs) and calls it a day. It just seems like nobody is actually testing any of this stuff. Microsoft is actively destroying its credibility because it's offering a tool with a party trick but is utterly unreliable. I will, therefore, not rely on it.

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