Opinion In a tweet lamenting all the "cynics" unmoved by AI, Microsoft AI boss Mustafa Suleyman demonstrated that Redmond's Reality Distortion Field is running at full power.
Suleyman took a break from the Copilot company's San Francisco Ignite shindig to exclaim "Jeez there so many cynics!" and calling it "mindblowing" that people are unimpressed with AI.
Suleyman's tweet came after Microsoft posted: "Copilot finishing your code before you finish your coffee."
Both statements demonstrated how horrendously disconnected the Copilot company is from its users. AI is undoubtedly impressive technology. Setting aside Elon Musk's rather sad application, the advances in artificial intelligence have been jaw-dropping. Pattern identification, for example, has been a boon to science.
However, being impressed by AI should not be confused with a desire to shoehorn it into every product and service. Microsoft's Ignite event is a perfect illustration of this. Whether a customer likes it or not, Copilot and AI agents are coming, ready to do their bidding, or, as is depressingly more likely, primed to misunderstand their instructions and do something else entirely.
Microsoft's Copilot code comment was more of the same. A glance at the responses indicated that developers were less than impressed. It's possible Microsoft meant "finishing your code" in the same way autocomplete might, but judging by comments from CEO Satya Nadella, who said that 30 percent of Microsoft's code was now written by AI, it has loftier ambitions.
Perhaps it is best to look away from the precipitous decline in the quality of the company's output.
Suleyman said: "I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone!" Snake turned up in 1998. Imagine if, just a decade or so earlier, Suleyman had struck up a conversation with the text adventure game engines employed by Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls. Mindblowing, indeed.
The emissions from Suleyman and Windows boss Pavan Davuluri show a startling disconnect from reality within Microsoft. Customers are not clamoring for more AI in the company's products, and calling people left cold by Copilot and its ilk "cynics" indicates an arrogance and unwillingness to listen to feedback that doesn't align with a particular worldview.
AI can be very impressive. The way Microsoft is forcing the technology onto customers is not. ®
Source: The register