Nobody seems to want to use Copilot, but Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing. They can just provision however many virtual coworkers to a Microsoft Teams instance and you'll be handing off documents and chatting with the AGI workers pretty much as you would any other remote worker.

Microsoft doesn't have to be first or best here. Just owning the plumbing of so many present-day workplaces with Teams and Office will make it hard to beat them.

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TheCraiggers an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing

While I don't disagree with you here, that's a helluva big bet. It'll have to happen soon enough that other companies aren't able to pivot in time, and despite what Altman says, I just don't see it happening at that timescale.

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mschuster91 an hour ago | parent [-]

> While I don't disagree with you here, that's a helluva big bet.

And yet, one that Microsoft has the best chances. Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams. Google has its Workspaces thing plus its web wannabe-equivalents to Office, but that's it. And AWS is an infrastructure provider.

Microsoft in contrast? They're everywhere and most importantly, whatever is in Office 365 automatically has the "compliant" checkboxes ticked for auditors. And MS can easily ride the time until AGI or something coming reasonably close to it is marketable on that moat.

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mouth 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams.

Not from my experience. I see product managers/owners and software engineers using Macs more than Windows where I work, and it’s in healthcare, not SV. This move to Mac was gradual, starting ~10 years ago, and I believe a part of this was moving away from native apps to web apps.

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sofixa 3 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams

Depends on the BigCorp. One of the most quentessential BigCorps out there, IBM, is deep into Apple stuff. As far as publicly shilling for Macs with extremely questionablly extrapolated data - they did a pilot with power users for a year, and came out saying Macs cost less in hardware and support than equivalent Windows Lenovos over the full lifecycle of the machine; which is literally impossible to know a year in a pilot with power users compared to the 4 year lifecycle for all sorts of people.

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bikotreats 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

"Apple has all but zero presence in BigCorp outside of social media and creative teams"

Bad take. Apple has a strong presence within the tech and digital agency world. At every company i've worked for (3 tech companies, 1 digital agency), the Macbook is the default issued workstation unless you formally request a Windows laptop.

Some roles, like finance, tax, 3D design, favor Windows but that is generally because certain software they depend on only exists in the Windows world.

Microsoft totally dominates non-tech companies though.

	▲	chirau 26 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Apple's footprint in BigCorp is a drop in the ocean compared to MS. You said it yourself, "certain software they depend on only exists in the Windows world". That is intentional and the reason is because of MS dominance in BigCorp. Most makers don't find it worthwhile to spend so much time and resources building software for Apple when it has so few users at that level.
	▲	mschuster91 17 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Bad take. Apple has a strong presence within the tech and digital agency world. Oh I'm aware, working at a digital agency myself. But that's not the "bigco" world aka S&P 500, DAX and the likes.

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robotswantdata an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For the average office task they don’t seem far off being competent, at least to the average workers quality.

Ai builder with gpt5 + workflow triggers is very capable already. 1-2 more model generation hops needed plus a bit more “agent” plumbing before its game over for the excel and word jobs.

	▲	sevensor 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Which average office tasks would those be? Writing project proposals? Putting budget numbers into a shared spreadsheet? Composing a progress report? Preparing presentation slides for an executive status update meeting? Writing performance reviews? Taking mandatory compliance training? Going to planning meetings? One or two of these, I could see. Automated progress reports would be nice. But a lot of them aren’t about document generation, but about human accountability, about being a person who commits to something in writing. Automating away paper pushers means all the accountability lands on their bosses, leaving them nowhere to hide. It will be quite something if we manage to rewrite the corporate social context like this.

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pulse7 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm very happy that "AGI office workers" will use Microsoft products - so I don't have to do it anymore... But: they will not pay a dime for the licenses...

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candiddevmike 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why don't we see companies adopting this setup with offshore workers if it's that "seamless" and easy to get started?

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otabdeveloper4 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing

How many more weeks? Also, is this before or after flying cars?

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qgin an hour ago | parent [-]

Looking like 2028-2030 but it's a moving target.

Since we're basically getting flying cars next year at the World Cup, I guess it's going to be after flying cars.

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chongli an hour ago | parent [-]

I prefer fusion power as the go-to vapourware technology. It’s been “10-20 years out” for 70 years and counting.

I don’t see any reason to believe that “AGI office workers” will be ready to go by 2030. All signs right now are pointing to a looming plateau in their capabilities.

	▲	marcosdumay 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Fusion has halved the "interval until we get it" on those 50 years. AGI has doubled the "interval until we get it" twice already since 2022. Those things are not the same kind of vaporware.

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jen20 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

A new Turing test: when all the AGI worker bots would rather gargle razor blades than use Microsoft Teams, we might be close.

	▲	aeve890 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		>use Microsoft Teams Shit like this make rogue AI scenarios totally plausible. I won't wish that on my worst enemy