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Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

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Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#351

Post by Zambyte »

hbn wrote: post #348
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is repeated endlessly by non-Windows fans I assume, because I disabled AI and other annoyances in Windows long ago and they haven't come back. I even used to worry about updating Windows because I saw this warning so many times, but then I did and it just never came to pass.

Microsoft has pinned a Copilot shortcut to my taskbar after an update multiple times. One time they replaced my "show desktop" button in the bottom right with a Copilot button.

That's called malware. Like that's literally malware by any reasonable definition. The fact that it's branded by and distributed by a multi trillion dollar corporation does not make it not malware. Your PC has been compromised, and it would be wise to solve your problem instead of trying to make the best of running malware.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#352

Post by rurp »

heisenzombie wrote: post #79
_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…

I have Copilot buttons sprinkled everywhere on my work computer, and every time I have tried to use them I get something saying "Oh, I can't do that". It's truly baffling. Copilot button on my email inbox? I try "Find me emails about suchandsuch", and get the response "I don’t have direct access to your email account. If you’re using Outlook (desktop, web, or mobile), here are quick ways to find all emails related to…

A whole new toolbar appeared in Outlook on my work computer with nothing but a single button to open a copilot chat window. I tried asking it a few simple questions and it completely failed at all of them. Copilot didn't even know if I was using the web or desktop version of the very app it was embedded in!

Wasting UI space for a useless tool it's just a waste of time, it actively makes it harder to get work done. But I guess the important thing is the number of times that AI button gets clicked is going up on some PMs telemetry dashboard.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#353

Post by mbreese »

pjc50 wrote: post #341
mbreese wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a really good take, and not one I’ve seen mentioned a lot. Pre-Internet (the world Microsoft was started for), the man expense for a software company was R&D. Once the code was written, it was all profit. You’d have some level of maintenance and new features, but really - the cost of sale was super low. In the Internet age (the likes of Google and Netflix), it’s not much different, but now the cost of…

> cost of doing business is increased to include data centers, power, and bandwidth Microsoft Azure was launched in 2010. They've been a "cloud" company for a while. AI just represents a sharp acceleration in that course. Unfortunately this means the software products have been rather neglected and subject to annoying product marketing whims.

They've had cloud products for a long time, but I don't think that Microsoft fundamentally changed. I still see them organized and treated as an Enterprise software company. (This is from my N=1 outside perspective.)

ChatGPT says that "productivity and business processes" is still the largest division in Microsoft with 43% of revenues and 54% of operating income (from their FY2025 10K). The "intelligent cloud" division is second with 38% revenue and 35% operating income. Which helps to support my point -- their legacy enterprise software (and OS) is still their main product line and makes more relative profits than the capital heavy cloud division.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#354

Post by ryandrake »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #347
ManlyBread wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s possible AI just seems more popular than it is because it’s easy to hear the people who are talking about it but harder to hear the people who aren’t. I think it's because there's a financial motivation for all the toxic positivity that can be seen all over the internet. A lot of people put large quantities of money into AI-related stocks and to them any criticism is a direct attack on their wealth. It's no dif…

Currently if someone posts here (or in similar forums elsewhere) there is a convention that they should disclose if they comment on a story related to where they work. It would be nice if the same convention existed for anyone who had more than say, ten thousand dollars directly invested in a company/technology (outside of index funds/pensions/etc).

A browser plugin that showed the stock portfolios of the HN commenter (and article-flagger) next to each post would be absolutely amazing, and would probably not surprise us even a little.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#355

Post by antonkochubey »

ryandrake wrote: post #189
ChuckMcM wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect this is the crux of the problem. There aren't any "AI" products that have enough value. Compare to their Office suite, which had 100 - 150 engineers working on it, every business paid big $$ for every employee using it, and once they shipped install media their ongoing costs were the employees. With a 1,000,000:1 ratio of users to developers and an operating expense (OpEx) of engineers/offices/management. Th…

For most software products I use, if the company spent a year doing nothing but fixing P2 bugs and making small performance improvements, that would deliver far, FAR more value to me than spending a year hamfistedly cramming AI into every corner of the software. But fixing bugs doesn't 1. pad engineer's resumes with new technology, or 2. give company leadership exciting things to talk about to their golfing buddies.…

To you – yes. But have you thought about the shareholders?

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#356

Post by anthonypasq »

ajkjk wrote: post #182
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.

every time these companies make a mistake and waste billions of dollars it is well-publicized. so there is plenty of data that they are frequently and preposterously wrong.

name a technology that every single top tech company has invested billions of dollars in and then has flopped. the metaverse does not count unless google, amazon, microsoft etc was also throwing billions into it.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#357

Post by anthonypasq »

xyzsparetimexyz wrote: post #144
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.

Doesn't matter what the leaders think if the users hate it and call it slop https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya...

right because copilot is bad, that must mean no one uses chatgpt, or claude code, or gemini. they only have billions of MAUs, people must really hate it

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#358

Post by anthonypasq »

reaperducer wrote: post #97
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.

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. It's happened before. Your premise that companies which become financially successful doing one thing are automatically excellent at doing something else is hard to believe. Moreover, it demonstrates bo…

> It's happened before.

source?

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#359

Post by anthonypasq »

pjc50 wrote: post #289
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.

> top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong There's another post on the front page about the 2008 financial crisis, which was almost exactly that. Investors are vulnerable to herd mentality. Especially as it's hard to be "right but early" and watch everyone else making money hand over fist while you stand back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008

this was the top 10 companies in the s and p in 2008

Rank,Company 1,Exxon Mobil 2,General Electric (GE) 3,Microsoft 4,Procter & Gamble 5,Chevron 6,Johnson & Johnson 7,AT&T 8,Walmart 9,JPMorgan Chase 10,Berkshire Hathaway

1 financial institution.

8 of the top 10 currently are tech companies. its completely different

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#360

Post by anthonypasq »

bane wrote: post #301
ChuckMcM wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The blockchain hype bubble should probably be pretty near in memory for most people I would suspect. I thought that was a wild, useless ride until Ai took it over.

no one has ever used blockchain. consumer ai apps have billions of MAUs how is this even remotely comparable dude
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