Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash

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.

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.

> 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.

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?"

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.

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.

"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.

This is one thing that I miss from Balmer days.

I'll take Charms, mouse gestures, and the Start Screen over Copilot any day.

> Microsoft also doesn’t have user trust in the way Apple does, so everyone just assumes MSFT is going bad things with the data.

I think this is a big part of it. If Apple ever achieves their vision for personal context Siri & AI in their OS, I bet people will praise it and actually use it. Because Apple has built trust with their customers, and has strong marketing around privacy.

Microsoft burned that bridge a long time ago. They feel sleazy. Maybe if they haven't violated their users trust over and over again, people would be more receptive.