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Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it (www.theverge.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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“We think we’re on the cusp of the next evolution, where AI happens not just in that chatbot and gets naturally integrated into the hundreds of millions of experiences that people use every day,” says Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, in a briefing with The Verge. “The vision that we have is: let’s rewrite the entire operating system around AI, and build essentially what becomes truly the AI PC.”

...yikes

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[–] 11 points 11 months ago (14 children)

I can’t imagine people would think this is a good idea past the point that they actually have to use this to get anything done, the best would be huffing copium thinking that the part where it gets good is right around the corner

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    I try to never underestimate what people are willing to do, like, and put up with for whatever reasons.

    Considering how un-tech savvy newer generations are, I would not be shocked if the idea of being able to tell a computer what to do and "it just does it" appeals. This is, of course, assuming it works as intended (lol.)

    I also see this as a further dumbing down of that ability to understand tech. Hypothetically, if this were to launch, go mainstream, and the vast majority of future computer users use it, can you imagine a world in which a future teenager looks confused and goes, "What's an app?"

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Why specify just "newer generations?" I do tech support for older generations in my family and they're just as un-tech-savvy.

    The vast majority of people don't care how a computer works, they just want it to work. And that's fine. There are lots of machines and other technologies in my life that I can't spend the time to fully comprehend, I've got other stuff I need to do. As long as there are a few people who focus on each kind of machine and each kind of technology then civilization carries on okay.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, if they could actually deliver on the hype they’re eating out of their own ass that would be one thing, I just think they are fundamentally misrepresenting the capabilities of our current AI technology and barely able to deliver an operating system that works without trying to retrofit the entire thing for their bloated chatbots. Unless there’s a huge breakthrough in AI research that allows actual reasoning AND microsoft manages to actually become competent I don’t see how the end of this route is anything but a steaming turd. My money is on the bubble bursting and Microsoft “refocusing on core competencies” before getting distracted again by the next bad idea.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    As is frequently the case for relatively tech-savvy people, I do free tech support for my older relatives. In the past year or two it's become so much easier because 99% of the time all I have to do is remind them "have you asked Copilot how to do that?" And they'll go "oh yeah," go ask Copilot, and that tells them how to fix their problem.

    You are on the Fediverse, a niche platform that has inordinate appeal to people with a particular attitude and aptitude toward tech. And this particular community has its own set of attitudes that tend to get reinforced thanks to the upvote/downvote system. This is a bubble we are in here. If you look around at the people here and draw conclusions about what people in general want you're going to get a very inaccurate view.

    Chatgpt.com is the fifth-most heavily visited website as of August. AI is popular.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Yep, and so the population gets even stupider. Yay.

    Sorry, not a proponent of it. But honestly I saw the writing on the wall when people got rid of cds and dvds for streaming. People are idiots, and want a corpo controlled life they can stew in, being stupid and fat,exactly like the matrix.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Can you fix your own car? If your refrigerator fails, can you fix that too? How about medical conditions, are you able to treat any and all of those? Prepare any kind of meal? Assemble a wooden cabinet from raw materials? Weld and cut metal? Sew clothing, plant a garden, paint a picture, play a musical instrument?

    There's always things that people are good at and other things that they're not good at. We live in a civilization where we specialize in things because it's impossible to learn everything that needs to be done. You think you're good at troubleshooting computer problems, and that's a fine thing to be good at. Other people are not good at it. They need help with it. That doesn't make them "stupid." It makes them people who've chosen to focus on other things.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Except for the medicine stuff, I am confident I would be able to do all of those things actually, given a bit of time for research and enough motivation. Even more critically, when I have a problem like that where I don't care enough to figure it out for myself, I call upon the expertise of an actual human that really knows things, not a glorified autocomplete with internet access.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Except for the medicine stuff

    So aside from the things that you can't do, you can do anything.

    Even more critically, when I have a problem like that where I don't care enough to figure it out for myself, I call upon the expertise of an actual human that really knows things, not a glorified autocomplete with internet access.

    I bet you Google it.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Why yes, I do frequently google things. Searching for proper tutorials and official documentation for technical subjects is a more intelligent thing to do than asking an LLM to do all my thinking for me. As for the actual humans I was talking about there, I meant bringing my car in to be serviced by a mechanic as an example, if I learned the mechanic working on my car was just following instructions provided by chatGPT I would be fucking livid.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Okay? I'm not sure how any of this is detracting from the point I'm making here. You can't do everything yourself. Nobody can do everything for themselves, society is too complicated now. So we pick the things we're good at. Not being good at troubleshooting your PC doesn't make you "stupid".

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I’m not arguing for that some people, this sounds like a good thing. I’m just imagining said older-relative types asking something like “check my emails” and the AI tries to open their unconfigured outlook lite or whatever and says “I’m having trouble doing that”. I’m sure if it works they’d be all over it, I just don’t believe it will.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Oh, you haven't met people. They're idiots.

    They'll gobble this up. Haven't you installed win 11 in a vm to see how horrible it is? The first fucking thing that pops up is (ads, and) COPILOT HI LOOK AT ME I MAKE SEARCHING THE INTERNET BETTER THAN GOOGLE! PLEASE USE ME. USE ME. I WANT YOUR DATA. ITS OK IF YOU DONT USE ME BECUASE ILL RECORD YOUR SCREEN AND SEND ALL DATA INCLUDING SSN AND BANK DATA TO MICROSOFT BUT DONT WORRY ITS OK. USE ME PLEASE. PLEASE BRO.

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