alt Hacker NewsI honestly don't understand Microsoft's AI strategy. It seems to be built around automating the writing process. If you ask MS 365 Copilot (as opposed to the many other Copilots) what it can do, it's deeply disappointing:
"Can you edit the Word document so the format is in line with these requirements?"
"No, but I can help you draft an implementation consistent with the requirements."
"Can you add this section to the 35 individual copies of this document in this OneDrive folder?"
"No, but I can help you draft [something]."
This is NOT the AI revolution anyone was waiting for.
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It looks like you're trying to write something! Click here to have me fuck it up for you!
Here is a fun one. I had a column with around 200 entries and there were some duplicates in it. I just wanted to see which were duplicates and remove some of them.
I selected the cells and asked copilot to tell me which ones were duplicated. Copilot had to ask me to copy and paste the cell contents in its chat box. It couldn't even detect which cells were selected and read them
Why even have copilot inside excel when it can't even read a cell? This is what happens when all you care is about KPI metrics or what not
> This is NOT the AI revolution anyone was waiting for.
It's Clippy. All over again.
This is decidedly the result of a lack of strategy. Microsoft isn’t a single unified borg.
Instead, all the little individual teams got their hands on these capabilities and they figured out where to shove it. At “best” there would have been the head of Windows or Office or whatever saying to all their reports “go do AI!”