After you read all the fluff, the real purpose of this website is at the end of each article:
We’re a lean, fast-moving lab made up of some of the world’s most talented minds. We have an exciting roadmap of compute at MAI, with our next-generation GB200 cluster now operational. And we have an ambitious mission we truly believe in.
Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
-@gothburz
I work on that team! We're growing extremely rapidly (I joined 4 months ago from GDM and I'm at the 50th percentile of tenure), if you're interested in E2E model training reach out at https://microsoft.ai/careers/
Would be great to see Microsoft vigorously engage in frontier models directly instead of through their OpenAI proxy (subsidiary?). Microsoft Phi 4 hasn't seen an update in a year.
Just stop. Please stop. Nobody wants copilot. Nobody wants an OS that "learns" by watching what users do. We want an OS that boots reliably and then gets the F out of our way.
Or, double down on AI. Alienate your users. Linux is ready to take up the slack.
I wouldn’t say I am anti-LLM, but I am definitely anti-AGI. And I think this comment is nudging me into a better understanding of why that is.
I much prefer to be the “owner” of my devices and not just the “operator”. In fact, I think any move to a more advanced AI toolset makes a change in how we interact with computers necessary.
Giving such control to an AI is just a proxy to giving it to some organization that I don’t trust. And, it means that I stop being the expert and give that job over to a tool that I, by extension, also don’t trust.
I don’t see where this is solvable unless we end up with personal devices with these capabilities, and while some of that exists I think the bleeding edge will always be controlled by corps with resources, which is a great contrast to times past. What a sad time to be in software.
I kinda want that what you’re describing… Sort’of the promise that Apple made with their AI and didn’t deliver.
It would be amazing to have chat bot with full contextual awareness.
Until the police, or your insurance company, or your ex wife's attornies, start debriefing that AI. You dont own the AI and you wont have control over what it tells other people about you.
We’re a lean, fast-moving lab made up of some of the world’s most talented minds. We have an exciting roadmap of compute at MAI, with our next-generation GB200 cluster now operational. And we have an ambitious mission we truly believe in.
reply