Microsoft Would Love Companies To Buy Its AI. Employees Would Love Microsoft To Go Away

A tale as old as the last time Microsoft tried the same thing.

It’s hard to be a vast corporation.

Not only do you have to (claim to) make more money every three months, but there’s the human side.

Corporations are people too, remember, so they feel things.

In Microsoft’s case, the main feeling seems to be one of grotesque frustration, coupled with pained humorlessness.

You see, the company is dedicating its heart and soul to ensuring that every company on earth allows itself to be enveloped by its Copilot software.

Yes, just like it tried to ensure envelopment by Windows, Excel, PowerPoint and all the other entertainigly mediocre software peddled from its Pearly Gates.

Humans. Damn Them.

This time around, the problem seems to be, well, human rebellion.

As Bloomberg relates it, many of the world’s remaining human employees have rather fallen for Microsoft’s somewhat difficult love partner, Open AI.

More precisely, for its ChatGPT.

Love is a curious thing, one not readily grasped by many engineery types.

So when Amgen’s Senior Vice President Sean Bruich mused: ‘OpenAI has done a tremendous job making their product fun to use,’ one might imagine that quite a few Copiloting Creationists must have screeched: ‘What is he talking about? Ours is the same thing, only maybe a bit worse.’

Ah, but so much in life is about tone, not substance.

So much in love is about feeling heightened emotions, not wallowing in hoary rationalisms.

Clueless In Redmond?

What a quandary it must be for Microsoft to find itself clueless in the face of charm and allure.

Why, my own encounters with Copilot — all involuntary — have already turned me against its very being to the same dark degree as I’m turned against curried eggplant or the National Hockey League.

This is made all the more humorous because Microsoft has actually tried to turn its AI into a distinct brand.

Executives must have thought: ‘Oh, Copilot. That’s so clever. That’s a real brand.’

Yet real human beings have apparently fallen for something called ChatGPT, which might as well be the brand progeny of HAL.

Severe critics, as opposed to mild ones like me, must consider Microsoft to be akin to the wealthy engineer who just can’t understand why lovers don’t come to his door.

Even when he goes to a bespoke clothing store to kit himself out in expensive, tasteless clothing.

(Dear Silicon Valley males, there’s a perfect menswear store for this purpose in Sausalito, California. I can hook you up.)

It’s All Fine. Really.

Naturally Microsoft’s chief of workplace AI initiatives, Jared Spataro, told Bloomberg he’s free from fretting.

He mused that Microsoft is, has always been, the expert at making software for business uses.

Or, the dry might nudge, forcing its useless software on businesses.

I couldn’t possibly nudge you to remember that Spataro once offered: ‘Sometimes, Copilot will get it right. Other times, it will be usefully wrong.’

Really, though, none of us should fret.

Last week, I discovered the true motivation of both OpenAI and Microsoft.

Tucked into the Wall Street Journal was this adorable snippet: ‘A study finds that people who use large language models to research topics had a weaker understanding of those topics afterward.’

The whole point of AI is to make humans stupid.

That way, they become entirely expendable.

I’d call that the perfect tech company business model.

Wouldn’t you?