Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#261

Post by LexiMax » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

le-mark wrote: post #78

anon7000 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s partly that, but it’s also partly that the quality SUCKS. I’m frustrated with AI blogspam because it doesn’t in any way help me figure out whatever I’m researching. It’s such low quality. What I want and need is higher quality primary sources — in depth research, investigation, presented in an engaging way. Or with movies and shows, I want something genuine. With a genuine story that feels real, characters that…

I experimented with some ai generated political spam on YouTube. The reality is a lot of people can’t tell the difference or don’t care. Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world.

> Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world.

Let's not go there.

I could see an argument that Hacker News users are a bit more book smart than the average internet user. But this site's user base is just as susceptible to motivated reasoning, myopia, and lack of empathy for those who view the world differently than them.

Those are all their own kind of intelligence. If anything, the book smarts can make those other areas disproportionately worse.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#262

Post by officeplant » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #240

le-mark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experimented with some ai generated political spam on YouTube. The reality is a lot of people can’t tell the difference or don’t care. Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world.

> Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world. I'm not sure what you're implying? That people here are smart? Or that they're ruthless tech-bro capitalists? Or that ~20-40% of them are bots hyping their startup capital ventures, cuz that's what YC is about -- venture capital and startups.

Some of us are just here to make fun of VC folks that deserve to be endlessly mocked. The crossover with those that are also AI hype types just makes it funnier.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#263

Post by BizarroLand » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #245

paradoxyl wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a subtle form of gaslighting with features of victim blaming and argument from authority? Microsoft treats its users and customers with utter contempt. I hope Valve takes this opportunity to turn its toehold with Steam OS into a full-blown invasion of the desktop/laptop market and destroy Microsoft's monopoly while the latter is so focused on creating everything an actual user doesn't want: - virulent data mini…

It is very encouraging that Xbox is dying right at the moment that windows is trying to kill itself and Valve is moving in for the kill. For the first time in my entire life i know normies talking about running Linux on their desktops

I've found a great combo.

Install Linux, (I prefer Kubuntu but you do you) and then install LM Studio and an abliterated AI from mradermacher.

The specific issue I had was that my Linux system installed the wrong driver for my motherboard's Ethernet and downloads were slow. Steam wouldn't even download.

I gave the local AI the specific issues and hardware that I had, it identified the specific cause, (Linux installing r8169 instead of the r8126 driver), and gave me the specific console commands needed to modprobe in the new driver.

I could have figured that much out myself, sure, but modprobe failed. It then told me to go to Realteks site, manually download the correct driver, and then how to install it and test that it was working.

10 minutes later I'm good to go, whereas if I had been doing it myself it would have taken me over an hour, and I'm not a total Linux noob.

When you encounter a problem, ask your local AI how to fix it. Give your PC the responses the terminal gives you in response, and minutes later you're ready to go.

Want AI? Check.

Want Games? Check.

Want to browse the internet? Check.

Want to learn Linux by doing? Check.

Want to do it all and have the least amount of headache transitioning to Linux? Check.

It's a win all the way around, and the best part is that your data isn't going to some greedy corpo to build ads targeted to you.

You get all the pluses and none of the minuses other than a few extra minutes of learning when you encounter an error.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#264

Post by BizarroLand » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:48 PM UTC

sheepscreek wrote: post #234

epolanski wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On top of that: it seems like Microsoft (and Google too) is doing its best at alienating customers with those measures. Everything is now either accessing your data directly and you have to opt-out or you can't even opt out at all. This AI rush/push is also permeating every line and product: from the office suite, to github, to vscode, and even open source tools are getting AI shoved in, like Playwright, and it feels…

It’s a perception problem AMPLIFIED by a trust problem. People don’t trust Microsoft. Or at least they trust Google more than they trust Microsoft. For a small period of time, I was actually using Edge + Copilot everyday (and it was decent) but their competition has improved so much and appears WAY more privacy focused. I know that Sam Altman is trying hard to stay within the bounds of people’s trust, which once brok…

I'll trust Sam Altman as far as I can throw him.

For now he doesn't seem like a bad actor in the AI industry.

However, the moment it becomes more sustainably profitable to grow a mustache and start wearing monocles he likely will, and if he doesn't he'll be ousted and replaced by someone far worse.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#265

Post by abdusco » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:50 PM UTC

Narishma wrote: post #81

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #2

> it's hard to believe we're going to see a version of Windows that isn't bloated with AI functionality most people didn't ask for. All the leadership need to do is read these types of articles and they’ll see what’s going on outside the walls. One wonders how the internal incentives can be so wrong.

Reminds me of the Xbox One reveal disaster.

I had to remind myself what that was about

> The Xbox One reveal disaster in 2013 stemmed from controversial policies that were widely rejected by consumers, primarily the mandatory 24-hour online check-in (effectively an "always-online" requirement) and severe restrictions on used games. Compounded by a primary focus on TV and media features over gaming, and a higher price tag of $499 with a mandatory Kinect, the policies caused a massive public backlash. This allowed the PlayStation 4 to successfully position itself as the consumer-friendly gaming option, ultimately forcing Microsoft to reverse all the controversial DRM policies before the console's launch.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#266

Post by _DeadFred_ » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

OptionOfT wrote: post #82

anon7000 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s partly that, but it’s also partly that the quality SUCKS. I’m frustrated with AI blogspam because it doesn’t in any way help me figure out whatever I’m researching. It’s such low quality. What I want and need is higher quality primary sources — in depth research, investigation, presented in an engaging way. Or with movies and shows, I want something genuine. With a genuine story that feels real, characters that…

The thing is, for us normal consumers AI only has downsides. AI blogspam is made to serve you ads and make you buy stuff. AI posts / comments on Reddit are made to make you buy stuff. AI videos are made to keep you engaged, and then serve you ads which at the end make you buy stuff. Soon ChatGPT will start to weave ads into their output because they'll need to make $.

AI posts/comments are meant to disenfranchise. AI posts/comments are made to flood the market of opinion and drown out the voice of the individual, to speed up dead internet theory and to remove the adversarial nature the old, open internet had with entrenched power/control (especially on narratives).

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#267

Post by collingreen » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

tessellated wrote: post #256

jordanb wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Max Martin is considered incredibly good at what he does. https://youtu.be/DxrwjJHXPlQ?si=m-A6M8xrad5MrQqZ&t=151 Adam Conover discussed ad bumpers from the 1990s and 2000s. These were legal requirements for children's programming from the FCC. They're a compliance item, yet they were incredibly well made and creative in in many cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vI0UcUxzrQ Because people at the top of their game…

Fascinating! The last sentence could also talk about the famous book.

You're saying 1984 is completely formulaic brainrot?

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#268

Post by _DeadFred_ » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

LexiMax wrote: post #261

le-mark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experimented with some ai generated political spam on YouTube. The reality is a lot of people can’t tell the difference or don’t care. Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world.

> Given the demographic this site selects for, it’s easy to forget how many dumb people there are in the world. Let's not go there. I could see an argument that Hacker News users are a bit more book smart than the average internet user. But this site's user base is just as susceptible to motivated reasoning, myopia, and lack of empathy for those who view the world differently than them. Those are all their own kind o…

Once someone decides their intelligence guarantees their correctness, they stop questioning themselves. There was conversation here about Israel starving Gaza, and they Israel needed to provide for Gaza like the USA did for Germany, that that was acceptable/gold standard treatment of an occupied populace. When I looked up the numbers, and Israel was actually during starvation providing more calories per person than the USA did Germany, I was instantly downvoted and told people need more calories. Just for providing actual context to comments that were routinely being made.

Edit: I'm post rate limited from replying below. HN routinely chose to whitelist flagged Gaza discussions, but didn't whitelist comments of people who stated the minority opinion and whose comments were completely flagged into invisibility. If you arrived late and didn't get to read the original non-offensive but viewpoint challenging comments, you would assume everything from the 'wrong' viewpoint was so unhinged it had to be flagged, but many were just 'wrongthink' and not 'flag to invisibility' worthy. Or that there was group consensus on the discussion (obviously people just learned to stop posting on those threads if you had wrongthink).

Not sure how moderation can intervene, remove the topic flag and say it's 'a worthwhile discussion for HN' when the same moderation allows views/challenge of the narrative to be flagged to invisibility. It becomes more pontification than discussion at that point.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#269

Post by bayarearefugee » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

anon7000 wrote: post #40

hifix wrote: post #5

> The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me. It's not that people are unimpressed with AI - they're just tired of constantly being bombarded with it, and it sneaking its way into where it's not wanted. "Generate any image you want!" "Analyse this thing with AI!" gets pretty tiring. If I want AI I'll actively…

It’s partly that, but it’s also partly that the quality SUCKS. I’m frustrated with AI blogspam because it doesn’t in any way help me figure out whatever I’m researching. It’s such low quality. What I want and need is higher quality primary sources — in depth research, investigation, presented in an engaging way. Or with movies and shows, I want something genuine. With a genuine story that feels real, characters that…

> AI is fake, it feels fake, and it’s obvious.

True pretty much across the board for all generative AI, IMO.

I do understand why people get somewhat enamored with it when they first encounter it because there is a superficial magic to it when you first start using it.

But use it for a while (or view the output of other people's uses) and all the limitations and repetitiveness starts to become pretty obvious, and then after a while that's all you see.

Re: Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

#270

Post by rincebrain » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

queenkjuul wrote: post #248

rincebrain wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what people misunderstand is that this is probably an active goal of theirs. Similar to how Microsoft has decided there's no money to be made in console hardware and is trying to spin their Xbox brand into a software service brand they can slap on other things, I think they've decided that making a consumer OS has no money in it, and all the minmaxing of squeezing at the moment is them trying to extract the l…

It seems like they had the right idea with Windows 10 (our consumer OS is now just a loss-leader we put out for free as a way to market Office/OneDrive/Visual Studio etc) but they've completely about-faced with 11. Which yeah, could be a sign they're wanting to kill the consumer segment i guess.

11, I think, is what happened when they wanted to push breaking changes that customers who pay for LTSC wanted to avoid for the entire lifetime of 10.

My assumption is that 10 was as you describe, and then 11 was motivated by wanting to make disruptive changes to squeeze the last juice from the consumer segment, and the "agentic OS" pivot is just the most recent gorilla in the room to squeeze the ever-drier sponge.

In particular, I would assume Microsoft sees writing on the wall with how so many people in younger demographics are using phones as primary devices and see full sized laptops and desktops as effectively legacy platforms they use at jobs, and is frantically trying to get out of that market before the bottom falls out.