> 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 seek it out and use it - otherwise, jog on.

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 feel real and motivated.

AI is fake, it feels fake, and it’s obvious. It’s mind blowing to me that executives think people want fake crap. Sure, people are susceptible to it, and get engaged by it, but it’s not exactly what people want or aspire to.

I want something real, something that makes me feel. AI generated content is by definition fake and not genuine. A human is by definition not putting as much thought and effort into their work when they use AI.

Now someone could put a lot of thought and effort into a project and also use gen AI, but that’s not what’s getting spammed across the internet. AI is low-effort, so of course the pure volume of low effort garbage is going to surpass the volume of high effort quality content.

So it’s basically not possible to like what AI is putting out, generally speaking.

As a productivity enhancer in a small role, sure it’s useful, but that’s not what we’re complaining about.

> sneaking its way into where it's not wanted

This. After a generation of social media sneaking its surveillance, manipulation, and noisy ads into our home, work and mobile lives, it is very obvious that having something "smart" shoved into tools where it wasn't asked for isn't some noble attempt at improving lives.

Users are tired of being continually and transparently abused.

All Microsoft would have to do to shock the world and get months of good press is announce they were never going to opt anybody into anything by default any more. At this point that would be considered astonishing.

And suddenly, internal incentives would be to create useful, conflict-free capabilities users actually choose for themselves.

This is where a lot of people are. In my case, every time I open a PDF in Google Drive, it forces an AI summary of the doc with no way for me to switch it off. I try to close it mid-generation, but I suspect not fast enough to keep it from getting counted in the usage stats, which is probably what some product manager is trying to maximize and demonstrate ("X number of PDF summarizations this quarter").

It's also not very good at any of those things, if you ask it to generate something far enough outside of the mainstream, or something particular, or something consistent, or- But, yeah, the insistence that we deprecate every other even remotely-connected resource (including other people) in order to supplicate ourselves to corporate desires is aggravating. You got a lot of the same pushback with VR. VR is really, really cool. Having your reality mediated by large corporations with a history of user-hostile behavior is not. Them not taking no for an answer feels violating.

> 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.

Does anyone here know what this arguing tactic is called? It's used by tech leadership all over the world, all the time. Weaponized obtuseness, maybe?

The core of it is that you always have to pretend that everyone is basically on board with what you're doing, just don't blink and pretend that real criticism of your product is simply nonexistent, like a ghost. It's about rolling out a change to existing workflows that no one asked for, getting drowned in a sea of "No, we don't want this, do not change this because of these reasons", and then hosting a Q&A session where you pretend that everyone actually is already in love with the idea, everyone wants it, it's just that a few pesky detractors have minor, easily-addressable concerns like "we don't think it's impressive enough yet (but we're totally on board)" or "what about <pick one of the easiest-to-address technical issues here>?". They must do this consciously, right?

I think this is a super important point. Working on ai I’m really wondering where this will actually end in the case of our media consumption, AI is being used to generate more engaging content, this will imply ai will be almost a requirement to stay visible, so more ai will be used. In the end little to no “real content” will make it through.

Will there be a moment where people will leave social networks to get “real content” again? Will that be safe from AI optimization then?

Are we seeing the start of the demise of social media?

Sex is great, but if you constabtly try to force it on me, sneak it into deals we make, or while i sleep etc. it will leave me quite hostile towards the topic, and that's where we are at. Consent is important in all things, no less here.

Reminds me of the classic in the genre:

  how about a couple of weeks of gratitude for magic intelligence in the sky, and then you can have more toys soon?

  Sam Altman, Sep 12, 2024

Such hubris, seeing everything from HIS perspective, without taking into account the users. It is no wonder Microsoft keeps shipping crap - you can convince and push down B2B products to enterprise's throats, when their user's salaries are dependent on bosses who just care about image, with open budgets to fund whatever is sold to them to increase the bottom line. This is less effective on consumers.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding that the AI techies have. Normal people don’t want a “conversation“ with a computer. Conversations happen between people. Computers, at best, receive orders and carry them out. They are tools, not companions, and they should do nothing unless explicitly told to do it.

A fluent conversation was a great party trick but the novelty has worn thin. It had some value but overall having to have a conversation with a tool to get something done is frustrating. Like tasking a junior employee on their first day with advanced tasks and wondering why they keep missing the mark. I want a tool not an opinionated support unit, and often will stop that conversational experience by prompting it away. Having to do that is annoying.

I personally also don't have much use for generating images and videos, at least not regularly. I feel like they want us to use AI tools full time, when really we just need to jump in and use them when required, which might be quite infrequently (obviously dependent on circumstance). But who is going to pay the huge cost of having the tools available when you do want them?

So yeah, agreed. Stop making it hard for me to use my tool without accidentally engaging the LLM integration or just flat out forcing it's usage. I don't want that future price hike that comes with LLMs

The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluid gameplay experience of the latest entry in the Diablo franchise in the palm of our hands was mindblowing to someone as well. "Don't you people have phones?"

What a gaslighting king this CEO is, the concern isn't how functional the AI is, the concern is AI just downloading any and all PERSONAL AND PRIVATE files on a whim, with no guard rails. What if I have photographs of my kids I've never uploaded anywhere EVER because I don't want them anywhere outside of MY DEVICE, does Microsoft just magically get to suck in those files and own them? Wild.

Its this shenanigans that forced me to nuke my Windows install and go Arch. I noticed that Windows Defender will upload "suspicious" files and there's no audit trail of what's being uploaded. So I have no way of knowing what personal documents or even proprietary software has gone up to their cloud.

I would be impressed if AI was actually 'super smart' but what we have now is not.

Instead of "pushing back" I wish he'd actually listen to and address his critics' points.

He is deliberately and disingenuously missing the point. It's not that the features aren't good (maybe they are, maybe they aren't). It's about how coercive Microsoft and Windows are with its users, and this exec is failing to address that one.

Just once, I'd like to hear a question get through to these assholes asking them why they are forcing so many unwanted things onto their users. From Microsoft accounts to forced windows updates to Recall... Gone are the days when users had any control over what their computers are running.

But these kinds of questions never seem to get through to them.

> It's not that people are unimpressed with AI

Oh no, I am definitely unimpressed. That AI you can have a sorta-kinda fluent conversation with is often a complete moron and a habitual liar, and the images it generates are awful - did he not see how horrible that Coke ad looked?

It'll probably end up useful in a bunch of applications soon-ish and I'll probably want to use it eventually, but in the meantime their AI is flooding the internet with absolute garbage, and they are literally shoving AI in my face at every opportunity they get.

It is painfully clear that people just aren't that interested, and they are getting increasingly desperate about finding ways to recoup their massive investments. But people aren't going to magically become enthusiastic about eating rotten garbage if you just keep stuffing it in their mouth!

If anything, their current approach is only going to make people hate AI even more. But they are in too deep, and admitting defeat and scaling it down until they have an actually good product that people genuinely want means seeing their stock price crater because they will have "lost" the "AI race". Their only option to avoid an immediate collapse is to keep lying through their teeth and keep trying to pretend that it is absolutely amazing and that you just must use it.

Or maybe the CEOs are completely delusional and genuinely believe what they are selling - I'm not sure which one is worse.

Exactly. It's not that everyone is saying "AI is completely worthless, get rid of it." It has it's use cases, I certainly benefit from LLMs in my job every day.

That doesn't mean I want it plastered everywhere, in every app or website. That doesn't mean I want to interact with or use my computer via AI, and I especially don't want to talk to my computer to do things. Mouse & keyboard is faster.

But for now at least you can just choose not to use it. The problem is, Microsoft is putting 100% of their efforts into this while long-standing Windows bugs and regressions still exist. They're aware they exist too, and are deliberately choosing not to improve their product.

Exactly. Even if we grant what he says (I don't fully agree)—that doesn't warrant putting that kind of "conversational engine" in Windows as a first-class citizen.

I don't want to have a conversation with my computer about my Word docs. I just want to write my Word docs.

I don't want to have a conversation with my computer about the quarterly report. I certainly don't want it making up values for the quarterly report. I just want to write the quarterly report.

Having a conversation with a computer is cool. It's a fun party trick. If there were a way to reliably get it to know about all of my things, without the concern that it would then take all that data and feed it to its mothership, I might want to be able to converse with it about those things, under certain circumstances.

But, yes: if I want AI I'll actively seek it out and use it. Stop acting like me being upset that it's getting shoved in everywhere is the same as me saying "this is a meaningless achievement."

"we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AIwe can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI"

But we can't. I can have something styled as a conversation with a token predictor that emits text that, if interpreted as a conversation, will gaslight you constantly, while at best sometimes being accidentally correct (but still requiring double-checking with an actual source).

Yes, I am uninterested in having the gaslighting machine installed into every single UI I see in my life.

I have never in my entire life wanted to "generate an image or video". I like taking photographs and recording videos because they represent the reality of my life. Who would ever want to "generate" fake images as a matter of normal daily activities?

When have i ever wanted my os to “generate any image i want!”

This is like a chef being confused why people dont like the shoes he made them. Why did he make hungry people shoes? Certainly not to eat?

I use AI everyday and it’s now integral to my workflow. However, even I still hate the hype train and having it constantly stuffed down my throat. Nevermind AI slop.

Windows 11 is already adware. No wonder people are complaining about more ads.

I am unimpressed with it. If I wanted to steal code off stack overflow I can do that myself. Another layer of indirection has negative value.

I can generate images that are difficult to use commercially. I can analyze something with AI but I can't confidently use that output in any setting that matters.

For people who are attempting to engage in profitable work then AI is miserably unimpressive. I don't know what planet this guy is living on. Time is money. Flowery emails and off axis summaries can only create a waste of that time.

Well, and companies are papering over usability problems with AI. LLMs are not a substitute for good human-centric design.

It's almost as if all the focus has been on eliminating the human... for products designed for humans.

"If I want AI I'll actively seek it out and use it - otherwise, jog on."

If I want MS Windows I'll actively seek it out and use it - otherwise, jog on

If this is not a statement you can make, then Redmond gets to decide what you use, not you