Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#361

Post by anthonypasq » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #186

anthonypasq wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I don't see how "most successful and profitable product" is supposed to disprove a big drop in quality.

people dont use and pay for things that suck

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#362

Post by g947o » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #342

g947o wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has more to do with Microsoft's size and long history. If you are big and have been doing the same thing for many years, naturally you'll want to expand, some of which do succeed.

Google and Facebook have failed to do this, so why is that?

Failed to do what?

I'm sure you can find good analysis of why specific products failed.

And both Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta have a bunch of side projects that are reasonably successful.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#363

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

kalap_ur wrote: post #326

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…

How do you diversify now? I presume you don't refer to stock portfolio, do you?

Stocks are fine for diversification, just stocks that have a different risk factors. So back in the 90's I had been working at Sun then did a couple of startups, and all of my 'investment' savings (which I started with stock from the employee purchase plan at Sun) were in tech of one kind or another. No banking stocks, no pharmaceutical stocks, no manufacturing sector stocks. Just tech, and more precisely Internet technology stocks. So when the Internet bubble burst every stock I owned depreciated rapidly in price.

One of the reasons I told myself I "couldn't" diversify was because if I sold any of the stock to buy different stock I'd pay a lot of capital gains tax and the IRS would take half and now I'd only be half as wealthy.

Another reason was my management telling me I couldn't sell my stock during "quiet" periods (even though they seemed too) and so sometimes when I felt like selling it I "couldn't."

These days, especially with companies that do not have publicly traded stock, that is harder than ever to diversify. The cynic in me says they are structured that way so that employees are always the last to get paid. It can still work though. You just have to find a way to option the stock you are owed on a secondary market. Not surprisingly there are MBA types who really want to have a piece of an AI company and will help you do that.

So now I make sure that not everything I own is in one area. One can do that with mutual funds, and to some extent with index funds.

But the message is if you're feeling "wealthy" and maybe paying your mortgage payments by selling some stock every month, you are much more at risk than you might realize. One friend who worked at JDS Uniphase back in the day just sold their stock and bought their house, another kept their stock so that it could "keep growing" while selling it off in bits to pay their mortgage. When JDSU died they had to sell their house and move because they couldn't afford the mortgage payments on just their salary. But we have a new generation that is getting to make these choices, I encourage people in this situation to be open to the learning.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#364

Post by hosteur » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:01 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #345

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…

ITT: we assume that "computer rooms", mainframes, and other dev tools weren't a thing for software companies pre-cloud

I se no one that assumes that.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#365

Post by tracker1 » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #114

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 recently began using markdown readers/writers like Typora and they’ve blown me away— what LibreOffice Writer could have been. Competing directly with MS Word was a trap.

You have to consider the origins, going back to Star Office in the days where most people were on really slow Dialup if they had internet at all. And even a lot of businesses were almost worse, sharing a single dialup or ISDN connection.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#366

Post by saghm » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #282

saghm wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock price increases that don't lead to higher dividends eventually are indistinguishable from Ponzi schemes after the fact.

Buybacks lead to stock price increases and are indistinguishable from dividends in theory, and in practice they are better than dividends because of taxation.

The problem I have with that logic is that it still doesn't really give any sensible reason for why the stock should have any economic value at all. If the point is that the company will pay for it at some point, it makes more sense for it to be a loan rather than a unit of stock. I stand by my claim that selling a non-physical item that does nothing other than hopefully get bought again later for more than you sold it for is indistinguishable from a scam.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#367

Post by Bombthecat » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #80

_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 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 coding,ai is amazing and getting better.

Spell checking is also good, grammar better then me lol

And pumping out fake news and propaganda, way worth it when you do it

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#368

Post by codeulike » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

g947o wrote: post #362

codeulike wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook have failed to do this, so why is that?

Failed to do what? I'm sure you can find good analysis of why specific products failed. And both Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta have a bunch of side projects that are reasonably successful.

They have failed to diversify, is what I meant, despite being around for approx 2 decades

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#369

Post by Sharlin » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

dmichulke wrote: post #339

indymike wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm holding out for Copilot 365 Explorer Enterprise Edition.

...the only edition where you can disable bing as default search engine

Honestly I didn't even realize Bing hasn't yet been rebranded as Copilot. And honestly who needs a "search engine" anymore when you can just ask Friend Copilot?

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#370

Post by reaperducer » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

anthonypasq wrote: post #358

reaperducer wrote: post #97

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. 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?

Seriously? Have you just emerged from a hundred-year sleep in a monastery on the top of a mountain?