All of big tech is really worried about this.

• Apple is worried about its own science output, with many of their office heavily employing data scientists. A lot of people slate Siri, but Apple's scientists put out a lot of solid research.
• Amazon is plugging GenAI into practically everything to appease their execs, because it's the only way to get funding. Moonshot ideas are dead, and all that remains is layoffs, PIP, and pumping AI into shit where it doesn't belong to make shareholders happy. The innovation died, and AI replaced it.
• Google has let AI divisions take over both search and big parts of ads. Both are reporting worse experiences for users, but don't worry, any engineer worth anything was laid off and there are no opportunities in other divisions for you either. If there are, they probably got offshored...
• Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go, but they're still plugging AI shite in places no one asked for it, with many divisions now severely down in headcount.

If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there's a real concern that they'll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn't sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.

I work at a big EU company, MS top partner / strategic account etc. We wanted to implement MS Dynamics CRM in one of our newer business lines, we barely got a reply to our official emails.

After some informal discussions, we were told that salespeople are now only incentivized to sell Copilot, so they don’t really bother with the rest.

If MS is overinvesting to ride the AI hype as a middle man, while letting their core business capabilities (Windows and Office) decline, they will be in trouble in the long term.

I am stuck with Windows 10 & 11 at work, on multiple various machines. Also some versions of Windows Server.

It honestly feels hostile towards the user now. For myriad reasons. It's a constant battle for me to turn pointless crap off that it keeps turning back on with the next big update.

Man, the disclaimer at the bottom that Business Insider is partnered with OpenAI to allow them to train on their articles is really the cherry on top.

It could be that microsoft was just the bootloader to closedAI

Copilot is going to want 50 gigs on YOUR computer's hard drive to store snapshots. MS also wants you to buy dedicated AI hardware to run a few of their apps. They're going to steal your computer's storage and processing resources to create a worldwide AI and surveillance network.

No thanks. I finally switched to Linux. Microsoft can become Skynet without my help.

Isn't that a good thing? The best job in the gold rush was selling shovels. Nvidia is already doing that, so I guess the second best thing is providing lodging, which is what Microsoft is doing.

They own like half the company, so wouldn’t OpenAI’s success be their success?

Paywall

Some Microsoft insiders worry the company's AI strategy has become too focused on its partnership with OpenAI.

A few even grumble that the software giant has turned into a glorified IT department for the hot startup. These comments were part of a recent exclusive story from Business Insider in which Microsoft insiders shared candid views on the company's AI future and its new Copilot tools.

The group at the center of this is Microsoft's AI Platform team, run by Eric Boyd. This sits within Scott Guthrie's Cloud + AI organization.

Insiders say Microsoft is focused less on the internal services that previously made up Azure AI Services and more on the Azure OpenAI service.

One former executive who left as a result of the changes said products like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Bot Service, and Kinect DK are practically gone. Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said these services exist in some form but either aren't part of the Azure AI org, have been renamed, or have been bundled with other products.

"The former Azure AI is basically just tech support for OpenAI," a former Microsoft executive said. "Eric Boyd is effectively maintaining the OpenAI service. It's less of an innovation engine

Windows Recall did it for me. I switched to Pop!_OS Linux and have been pretty content so far.

I cant stand microsoft I have to use windows at work and it drives me nuts.

Hey now! They're also the world's foremost bloatware packager. No one will ever take that away from them.

https://archive.ph/bLaDA