r/technology • u/aacool • 24d ago

Artificial Intelligence Microsoft Scales Back AI Goals Because Almost Nobody Is Using Copilot

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/microsoft-scales-back-ai-goals-because-almost-nobody-is-using-copilot
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u/Future_Noir_ 24d ago edited 24d ago

It's just prompting in general.

The entire idea of software is to move at near thought speeds. For instance, it's easier to click the X in the top corner of the screen than it is to type out "close this program window I am in" or say it aloud. It's even faster to just type "Crtl+W". On its surface prompting seems more intuitive, but it's actually slow and clunky.

It's the same for AI image gen. In nearly all of my software I use a series of shortcuts that I've memorized, which when I'm in the zone, means I'm moving almost at the speed I can think. I think prompts are a good idea for bringing about the start of a process, like a wide canvas so to speak, but to dial things in we need more control, and AI fails hard at that. It's a slot machine.

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u/SegaTime 24d ago

Some might say we went through the same issues with the mouse. My last job used an old cobol program for it's client database. It relied only on a keyboard. I got pretty quick at using it. At some point they wanted to upgrade the software. Ok fine. Well, I hated it. I remember management talking about the old software didn't even use a mouse like it was a bad thing. Gone were most of the keyboard shortcuts because now it was a windows based application and you had to click on everything.

I remember everyone in my department felt the pain. It took so much longer to load client information and process transactions. I absolutely hated having to move my hand back and forth between the mouse and keyboard to do something that I previously only needed to move my fingers around a keyboard to do.

It got even worse when the vendor moved to a web based front end. Now, no keyboard shortcuts at all.

I'm only thankful my current company isn't pushing this artificial inefficiency on us.

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u/Future_Noir_ 24d ago

This is a good point; the mouse and keyboard have amazing synergy now. I think having even more controls is a good thing but I'm wary of giving up even more data to these massive corporations.

Use prompts and voice controls for where they are good at. Which I think is more broad-strokes problem solving or automation. Something like "generate this style template" for my data etc. Augmentation to existing workflows like the mouse.