“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
Beyond that sounding tedious as fuck, how much will that actually improve workflow? Or is this one of those features that sounds good to people with C level intelligence, and the rest of us just have to pretend we’re using.
Yeah, I absolutely hate talking to devices, it’s inefficient and frustrating. Why would I want that as the primary interface to my computer?
Complex UX should be solved in two ways:
- simplify common operations - i.e. build widgets for weather, news, etc; the more open the system, the easier it is to offload this to the community
- improve docs to educate users on power-user functionality
If I’m asking an AI tool how to do something with your product, you need to fix your product.
This has been a Microsoft wishlist feature since the 90s. I remember being a kid and reading articles in my dad’s copies of PC Magazine that Bill Gates wanted a computer without a keyboard that you could just talk to and tell it what to do.
So yeah, C-level intelligence is exactly right.
They never learn. This is what happens when clueless MBAs make your strategic decisions.
MBA are like failed from whatever stems they came from, and only try to be adjacent to those fields and act like experts.
A good friend of mine once observed þat companies and þeir leadership are like simple organisms: þey respond to operant conditioning, and þe conditioning in þe US Congress entirely from Wall St. You can’t even give þe government any credit anymore. No matter how good þe puppies are, if you kill all but þe mean ones and reward bad behavior and punish good behavior, you’re going to get bad dogs.
Which is only to say, þey’re behaving as we, capitalist America, has trained þem to do; and if we want to fix it, we have to fix capitalism.
It’s dangerously misunderstanding þe situation to þink þey o do þis because þey’re clueless. Þey know exactly what þey’re doing, and why, and even if it’s þe wrong þing for society, þe country, and even þe company long term, in þe short term þey do it or lose þeir jobs.
Think and thing should be using eth, not thorn. Different th sounds.
Are you sure? They’re both unvoiced th, which is what thorn is for if you intend to distinguish.
I can’t tell whether Old English used eth for those words early on - though the unvoiced quality in modern English makes that seem unlikely. Did we also devoice them? Eth died out fairly quickly in favour of thorn in all cases, voiced or not. Possibly because its name is “eþ” not “eð”. It doesn’t even use itself. (Though, ironically, ‘w’ also doesn’t and it replaced ƿynn, which does.)
There was another commenter - actually might have been the same guy, I’m not all that sure - who did use eth for voiced instances, to similar controversial effect in comment sections.
I may have mixed up which one is which. My point was more that if one is to use the old characters for th, they should at least use the correct one for each.
The amount of effort this twit must go to in order to write a comment is baffling. It literally never goes over well.
Stop trying to make þorn happen.
Eh. Let him try. No harm in it. I find it kinda fun learning to read the character better.
yeah a diacritic on the c, t or s to indicate the sound change would be much better, like this:
this, share, chef ṱis, šare, ĉef
The best option would just be to use the language that everyone knows rather than a made-up language that only you know. Writing like that is just going to result in everyone ignoring you.
Ñō yõú
On the contrary, I think the standard way that just about everybody who can read English would be best.
yeah, which is why I don’t write my comments like that, I was just saying if you had to change it, that’d be better.
We have a diacritic in English text already. Rather than above or below, it goes to the right of the letter it modifies and looks an awful lot like a letter h.
And if you don’t quite buy that, remember that a lot of diacritics started life as letters that were eventually moved above a preceding letter and then simplified. The tilde on ñ was an n itself; the ring on å was another a; and in at least some cases the umlaut was an e.
Modifying-h may only be stuck where it is because technology did away with the need for economical scribes before they had a chance to start messing with it.
I think you’re making my point for me, a diacritic instead of an h to indicate a sound change would be more efficient and reduce ambiguity. A diacritic is the natural evolution of such a word pair.
The problem is that not only is there no central authority for spelling reform in English, the cost of replacing the existing body of work would be too large, even for changes that would be more consequential.
My argument was never that my proposal should replace the current system, just that if you did want spelling reform, it would make more sense than the thorn.
But why not?
I got enough keys on my keyboard
But it isn’t about your keyboard; it’s theirs.
“Stop doing X”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to do X.”
because american english is already stupid and annoying, don’t need further stupid to make it more annoying
What the hell, are you doing this on purpose so we cant read what you try to say?
I guess they think they’re a Homestuck troll.
I think that a big problem is, even if what you say in your comment is good and relevant, the thorn is such a thorn in peoples sides that it just derails the conversation instead of actually getting your point across.
Microsoft wants you to install Linux
Mission Accomplished.
I delayed Linux on the main computer for years for the kids’ video games and trying to give MS a chance when they were trying to be good (WSL2, Win10 forever, etc.)
Now when I start the machine in windows, a splash screen comes up and literally tells me to buy a new computer. Linux has been lovely.
WSL(2) was not Microsoft “being good”. It was part of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
It was clear Linux won in the server world (not IIS). So why don’t you run this lovely Linux as an app in our nice safe OS where we can keep milking you.
Microsoft is forcing you to install Linux
FIFY
Someone watched Star Trek and took their interfaces a bit too literally
Just doing everything they can to drive people away from Windows.
To drive some people away from Windows. Others will like this kind of thing, and still others will be indifferent. Bear in mind that we’re in an anti-AI social media bubble here, opinions are not uniform.
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
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not a week goes by without a headline reminding me what a good decision it was to jump ship to Linux.
Yes, I do honestly want a computer I can command with my voice. One that understands my needs and the context of the things I say.
However…
- That PC should not be tethered to the cloud. It must be capable of doing all that on its own.
- It should not fold me into some subscription model to some corporate entity.
- It should be open source and under my control, not opaque and subject to the whims of a corporate entity.
- No, it doesn’t have to be FOSS. I would pay for it, once. It just needs to be OSS.
Is this enshittification final boss yet?
Nope, this is like the Dark Link Miniboss in the Water Temple of Ocarina of Time.
My penguins doesn’t listen to what Microsoft wants.
Can it be disabled?
If they have problems it might be retarded.
yes, with a usb drive containing Linux installation media
Not worth considering. Even if one can disable it now, we can’t trust that they won’t disable that option eventually.
Just use Linux and these questions become “Oh no. Anyways…”.
I am just not sure all my shit would run on Linux. Does Linux have a windows GUI? Do all the steam games have Linux compatability? Is there a Linux version of Windows Defender?
The GUI? Sure. Check out Zorin OS. Not to your liking?There’s others.
Steam? Mostly, yes. If you have a specific game in mind, a quick Internet search will answer that for you. In my case, 98% of games run (incl. most AAA games).
Good news: you don’t need anti virus on Linux (at least not at this point in time). If you really want to, there’s decent options. But I yet have to encounter an infected Linux machine. Infected Windows machines, on the other hand, are easy to find. With Linux, your security will go up considerably, coming from Windows.
These are all pretty easy to answer with a search, but here’s some info to get you started:
Does Linux have a windows GUI?
Lots of distros are similar to Windows in many ways. Some are specifically geared towards Windows-to-Linux migrants, or trying to be as close to Windows as possible. They are all much more customisable than Windows too, so you can change it to whatever works for you.
Linux Mint is often recommended to newcomers. Zorin OS is another good option that is more like Windows.
https://www.howtogeek.com/windows-like-linux-distros-you-should-try-out/
Do all the steam games have Linux compatability?
No, but compatibility is constantly improving and more developers are natively supporting Linux.
Game compatibility list: https://www.protondb.com/
Also, Windows app compatibility list (though many Linux app alternatives are better than their Windows counterparts IMO): https://appdb.winehq.org/
Is there a Linux version of Windows Defender?
Windows is far less secure, and targeted by much more malware due to it’s market share.
https://linuxsecurity.com/news/security-trends/antivirus-linux
Many Linux users don’t bother with antivirus software at all, but yes, there are plenty of options available.
Can it be disabled?
Sure! There’ll be a dialog box that comes up every single time that you wake your PC saying:
“Do you want to activate AwesomeAI™ now? 98 percent of the functions of this OS are crippled or unusable until you activate AwesomeAI™ so Microsoft recommends doing so immediately.”
And the two options will be “OMG Yes!” , or “Maybe Later”.
I don’t even talk to my cat, I can mute for a day. why would I talk to a clanking metals.
Tip for any future product designers: Just because it looks cool in a movie, doesn’t mean it’ll translate well into reality as a useful product.
I am currently a product designer and I approve this message.
I don’t want a fucking experience I just want a computer that works you stupid capitalist fuckhead.
“I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”
The vision of an AI PC, where it may or may not launch the app you tell it to, where one plus one may or may not be two, where deleting a file may delete the file you see, or a random different one.
Sounds great! /s
Imagine the cost of cloud AI on PCs. That only works too some degree for cloud data and being even more wasteful for the rest.
Every document you have, legal and medical, finance and personal, will all interface with the cloud. With numerous parties en route, visible and hidden, and a massive system you may or may not trust.
