The Copilot button that comes on new laptops is the Darkest Pattern I have ever seen. UI exploitation that has jumped the software / hardware gap.

A student will be showing me something on their laptop, their thumb accidentally grazes it because it's larger than the modifier keys and positioned so this happens as often as possible. The computer stops all other activity and shifts all focus to the Copilot window. Unprompted, the student always says something like "God, I hate that so much."

If it was so useful they wouldn't have to trick you into using it.

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zahlman an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Unprompted, the student always says something like "God, I hate that so much."

... Dare I ask how Copilot typically responds to that? (They're doing voice detection now, right?)

> If it was so useful they wouldn't have to trick you into using it.

They delude themselves that they're doing no such thing. Of course the feature is so useful that you'd want to be able to access it as easily as possible in any context.

	▲	Duanemclemore 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		BTW, the context is that one thing I teach is 3d modeling software, so the students are following my instructions to enter keyboard commands. It's usually Rhino3d where using the spacebar to repeat the last command is common. > ... Dare I ask how Copilot typically responds to that? (They're doing voice detection now, right?) Just as a generalization, the dozen or so times this has happened this semester the pop-up is accompanied by an "ugh" then after the window pops up from the taskbar the student immediately clicks back into the program we're using. It seems like they're used to dealing with it already. I haven't seen any voice interaction. I mean, the statistics say the students use AI plenty - they just seem annoyed by the interruption. Which I can agree with. > They delude themselves that they're doing no such thing. Of course the feature is so useful that you'd want to be able to access it as easily as possible in any context. Exactly.
	▲	collingreen 34 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		And the telemetry doesn't lie! Look how many people are clicking that button! KPIs go brrrrrrr

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politelemon an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm having a hard time believing any of this, and am tempted to think this might be in bad faith. It's true it's a bit ambitious on their part that they replaced the right side key, but it isn't larger than normal and it's not positioned any differently than normal keys. Working with hundreds of laptops and humans, several ham fisted, on a daily basis I've not seen this at all.

Further, a dark pattern is where you are led towards a specific outcome but are pulled insidiously towards another. This doesn't really fall into that definition.