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Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

wsj.com

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Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#391

Post by tester756 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #106
tester756 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft has also tried hard to push Edge, annoying nearly every Windows user on the planet, with no real success. False, Edge is actually decent product and viable replacement for Chromium based browsers. I use Firefox daily, but at work Edge is my way to go

Edge /is/ a chromium based browser, it makes sense people wouldn't feel the need to download Chrome unless they want to use their google account to sync devices.

for (other) chromium based browsers, I meant.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#392

Post by Suppafly »

bunderbunder wrote: post #209
shigawire wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more externally driven as well, a prisoners dilemma. I don't want to keep crapping out questionable features but if competitors keep doing it the customer wants it -- even if infrastructure and bug fixes would actually make their life better.

Last time I saw results of a survey on this, it found that for most consumers AI features are a deciding factor in their purchasing decisions. That is, if they are looking at two options and one sports AI features and the other doesn’t, they will pick the one that doesn’t. 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 wh…

My job is like that, although it's mostly driven by my direct boss and not the whole company, but our yearly review depends on reaching out to our vendors and seeing if an AI solution is available for their products and then doing whatever is necessary to implement it. Most of the software packages we support don't have anything where AI would improve things, but somehow we're supposed to convince the vendor that we want and need that.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#393

Post by Suppafly »

zuminator wrote: post #216
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…

100% agree. Office and Windows were hugely successful because they did things that users (and corporations) wanted them to do. The functionality led to brand recognition and that led to increased sales. Now Microsoft is putting the horse before the cart and attempting to force brand recognition before the product has earned it. And that just leads to resentment. They should make Copilot/AI features globally and granu…

>Now Microsoft is putting the horse before the cart and attempting to force brand recognition before the product has earned it. And that just leads to resentment.

I'm surprised that they haven't changed the boot screen to say "Windows 11: Copilot Edition".

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#394

Post by reval »

chakintosh wrote: post #294

I opened Excel today to view a spreadsheet and just out of curiosity, I decided to use the Copilot integration for the first time to ask it about a column's content. Copilot was clueless. The spreadsheet was open, the Copilot button is right there in the UI, as a user, the affordance of that button for me is that Copilot should already have the context (which is the spreadsheet content). But it didn't, and it kept as…

I got bitten by this confusing UX. The spreadsheet must be in OneDrive for copilot to use it as context. It’s actually quite useful.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#395

Post by AJRF »

simoncion wrote: post #121
AJRF wrote: post #40

They really dropped the ball on this - they are down ~12% for the year. When they first started, they seemed to be firing on all cylinders and looked like they were going to be big winners, but the strategy has just been a slow motion car crash. I wonder if Satya is the right person for Microsoft.

> ...they are down ~12% for the year. Given how unstable stock prices typically are over the short term, and given that we're currently something like thirty-five days into the year, I don't consider that fact to mean much. Also, wow, your comment is almost exclusively metaphors. I've not seen the like since the last all-hands email from the CEO.

Ouch, keep it civilised

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#396

Post by thewhitetulip »

Andrex wrote: post #385
thewhitetulip wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to do something complex in google sheets. We had just gotten Gemini in gsheet. I assumed they'd have used some fancy mcp and enabled us to do a lot of things but all gemini in gsheet could do was summarize

It sounds like that's still a step up from Copilot. I know Gemini has more advanced features in Docs and they rolled something out for Sheets. I would bet GWorkspace keeps gaining ground on the functionality battle.

Well, copilot is less than useless

But the thing is, for gemini to be magic, they need api for each operation, they don't have it! So that's why it can only do sum.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#397

Post by anonymars »

JohnMakin wrote: post #99
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.

Then prove it? There have been actual studies that confirm this fact. You could also use the fact that google search has been losing market share steadily since 2023 and since search was supported on things like chatGPT as evidence it has been in decline. But, as I have in the past also said, I refuse to argue about this with google employees/devotees because there seems to be a fair amount of delusion involved. For…

Have you seen this piece which goes into some detail about the demise of Google's search quality?

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#398

Post by simoncion »

AJRF wrote: post #395
simoncion wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...they are down ~12% for the year. Given how unstable stock prices typically are over the short term, and given that we're currently something like thirty-five days into the year, I don't consider that fact to mean much. Also, wow, your comment is almost exclusively metaphors. I've not seen the like since the last all-hands email from the CEO.

Ouch, keep it civilised

I have. That you think a plain, neutral statement of fact is uncivilized suggests that you're in similar social circles as CEOs (and other managers) that write messages that are almost exclusively metaphor.

Re: Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems

#399

Post by sehansen »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #130
RoddaWallPro wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean exactly by "diversify"? Money/investment-wise?

Sell the risky stock that has inflated in value from hype cycle exuberance and re-invest proceeds into lower risk asset classes not driven by said exuberance. "Taking money off the table." An example would be taking ISO or RSU proceeds and reinvesting in VT (Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF) or other diversified index funds. Taking money off the table - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763769 - October…

Eh, the top ten stocks in that fund are Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Broadcom, Google, Facebook, Tesla and TSMC. I propose looking for an ex-USA fund to put part of your investment into. Vanguard has a few, e.g. https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi... . You still get TSMC, Tencent, ASML, Samsung and Alibaba in the top 10, but the global stock markets seem less tech-frothy than the US.

(also not investing advice :)

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