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A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

blogs.windows.com

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Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#71

Post by ryanklee »

shdon wrote: post #62
ryanklee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm addressing your particular point about not seeing any use for this in the OS. I disagree. If there is a flexible layer that can consume and correlate context, there are tons of use cases

Then indeed there might be. I'm not saying AI is useless in general, even though it might be totally irrelevant to my personal workflow. But my question is still what Copilot brings. Does it do what you describe? If not, what does it do?

Yeah, I doubt it does anything close to what I'm talking about. If it did, it would be a massive leap forward in integration. More likely, the button opens up Copilot side-bar and only takes text input. But we shall see. Maybe some RAG going on, maybe a bit capable of multimodal, but I'd be a little surprised if there's more than the usual "prompt LLM here".

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#72

Post by da4id »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #39

You can imagine how this came about. Nadella issued a decree that every division has to come up with an idea of how to integrate AI into their product. The keyboard people thought they would add another key. I dread to think what the mouse designers are planning.

If you want to see how something like this might work, I made a fun project where I added a single board computer (SBC) into a keyboard. When you press the 'AI' button, the SBC would send inputs to the LLM on the SBC and output keystrokes to the PC. Demo below if you're curious.

https://youtu.be/BbMSWZKrrcI?si=T_3XIWEtrS8lvxP3

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#74

Post by jacquesm »

Xeamek wrote: post #59
jacquesm wrote: post #37

Microsoft is just aiming to revive their monopoly but this time through AI. Beware. You think Google is bad? It is. But wait until MS can get their hooks into you with AI products that know just about everything about you and that tattle your every action back to the MotherShip in order to make it that much more sticky.

How is microsoft worse then any other of the tech giants?

Because they were already rotten to the core before many of the later crop existed with the exception of Apple.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#75

Post by jacquesm »

LegitShady wrote: post #41
jacquesm wrote: post #37

Microsoft is just aiming to revive their monopoly but this time through AI. Beware. You think Google is bad? It is. But wait until MS can get their hooks into you with AI products that know just about everything about you and that tattle your every action back to the MotherShip in order to make it that much more sticky.

but its not just MSFT doing this. It's literally everyone. Google had such a strong position for so long, and LLMs so suddenly breached that position, that everyone is racing towards the LLM future where they have as much data as they can get their hands on. Google, apple, microsoft, etc.

It's definitely not just MSFT doing this. But MSFT is the one I worry about most because they've shown in the past that they don't hesitate to employ really shady tactics if they think that it will get them an advantage and they can get away with it.

Arguably of a slightly worse shade than Google and Apple, though the latter have plenty in the skeleton cupboards as well.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#76

Post by jacquesm »

apwell23 wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #37

Microsoft is just aiming to revive their monopoly but this time through AI. Beware. You think Google is bad? It is. But wait until MS can get their hooks into you with AI products that know just about everything about you and that tattle your every action back to the MotherShip in order to make it that much more sticky.

> But wait until MS can get their hooks into you with AI products Is this already priced into their stock price ?

It would be funny if it were, especially if a large regulator makes a move.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#77

Post by Findecanor »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #63
Hamuko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Office key is apparently just CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN, as Office Key + W is advertised to open Word and Office Key + L is advertised to open LinkedIn, but you can perform both of those actions in plain Windows by just using CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + W and CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + WIN + L respectively. https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/15/23874798/microsoft-window...

I'm well aware since I wanted to bind tgose shortcuts and of course windows has crap there too

There's a hack for it: https://github.com/acook/OfficeKeyFix>

The Office key shortcuts get bound by Explorer when it starts. If you bind the keys when Explorer does not run, you own them and can then free them after Explorer has started.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#78

Post by Findecanor »

NamTaf wrote: post #21

This feels exactly like back in the early 2000s when I used to physically rip the windows key off my keyboard because I’d accidentally hit it when playing a game and it’d mess everything up.

That is such a common nuisance that keyboards marketed specifically to gamers typically have a "Windows lock"/"Gaming mode" that disables the Windows key.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#79

Post by Findecanor »

shdon wrote: post #22

Unless it can be used as a more or less generic modifier key, I don't really see the point of a key dedicated to this one function. The placement on the keyboard in the photo would suggest that either the space bar is shrunk down or one of the keys to its right is removed to accommodate the new key. That doesn't seem optimal to me. Maybe the dedicated context menu key can be removed, which is equally useless as it re…

> Maybe the dedicated context menu key can be removed, [...]

In my opinion, the Menu key would be better repurposed as a Compose key. It is very useful for typing characters that don't have symbols on the keys, e.g: ♥ ⇒ … — × · ÷ Å Æ Ø Ü.

I have used it in Linux and Solaris, which have support for it if you just enable it. For Windows and MacOS, you'd have to use a third-party utility at the moment.

Re: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

#80

Post by naikrovek »

xg15 wrote: post #70
naikrovek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SecureBoot comes from wanting a secure boot process. If you’ve ever had a rootkit or boot sector virus you understand what this is for. If you hate Microsoft you say that SecureBoot is stealing your freedom or something else equally insane. Nag screens and ads in the OS are things which an MBA tell you to do. Do not single out Microsoft for putting ads for their own products in their own products, because Microsoft w…

> If you hate Microsoft you say that SecureBoot is stealing your freedom or something else equally insane. Secure Boot itself is perfectly sensible, for the reasons you describe. What's not sensible is hardwiring a key so that not even the user itself can change it. > Nag screens and ads in the OS are things which an MBA tell you to do [...] Being an OS doesn’t make Windows immune to this, as much as you or I may hat…

> Secure Boot itself is perfectly sensible, for the reasons you describe. What's not sensible is hardwiring a key so that not even the user itself can change it.

Users CAN change the key. If you have a motherboard that doesn’t allow that, that’s on you and/or the hardware vendor, not Microsoft.

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