Technology

Lately I've been really annoyed by Microsoft products. For a certain work-related thing we were using Microsoft word to collaborate and it randomly would stop letting some of us edit, throwing warnings like "Allow access to your Microsoft 365 account" even though I was already signed in, and clicking on allow access would just bring the warning back upon refreshing.

Which would happen every 20 minutes because it gives me a pop-up to sign in, with three buttons on the pop-up. Two are cancel buttons, and the actual sign in button is invisible. I was already signed in, of course. I couldn't continue working until a refresh.

Moving pictures is the biggest pain for some reason (and it isn't even better in LibreOffice Writer). It's been like this for years.

And then they have the gaul to start throwing AI everywhere when they can't even make their basic systems usable. I'm starting to root for Microsoft's failure these days, because they haven't done anything useful or innovative since the pandemic.

Disgruntled, I suggested that we switch to Google Docs (yes, I know it's Google, but we all already have Google accounts and we needed this done in a few hours), and everyone instantly agreed because I had just said their frustrations out loud.

I’ll normally tell my managers etc. when they have an idea that would not work well in the real world. However, many people seem like they have an almost theistic belief in the power of AI (maybe because they’re deeply invested) so I’m holding my tongue at work.

For the time being I’m doing my job properly but if I’m forced to do things a certain way even if it’s clearly worse I will comply and let them waste their money. I’m tired and I won’t police decisions above my pay grade.

Still biding my time and waiting for the bubble to pop and the next buzzword trend to arrive.

A non-zero number of employees scripted random daily prompts to maintain LLM usage stars.

This is problematic; and a perfect example why end users should not be trusting Windows 11, 12 or later, or any software that Microsoft outputs from now on.

AI CAN'T WRITE SOFTWARE, ONLY HUMANS CAN CREATE AT HIGH LEVELS NEEDED TO CREATE NEW SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS At Best, AI can tell you maybe what libraries might help you get 50% the way there; but it cannot, and should not ever be used to do all the work of a human.

sunk cost fallacy let's gooo

I'm soon going to be forced to use an internal ai tool at my job. I'm not looking forward to it. These LLM's can be helpful in some use cases but it feels like they're some kind of buzzword magic element to make people think there's extra value

It's like when everything was "artisanal" for a while, and stores were attempting to charge more money because they put the word in the title of an item. It feels like I'm taking crazy pills watching everyone attempt to grift.

AI at Microsoft has not been optional for months. Someone I know has a job at Microsoft and has described it as hell. No human guidance or training, when asking questions of higher-ups they're told to "ask Copilot", Copilot is used for all internal documentation such as employee records and user tickets so when they need to find someone's department or answer end-user questions they have to ask Copilot. They said it's like having a full on conversation every time they need a small bit of information that a spreadsheet or database could accomplish much quicker.

"Your performance has dropped in the last quarter. Are you sure you're making use of the AI tools?" "Its because I'm using the AI tools. Its re-implemented an HTTP request library at least 500 different times in 500 different ways"

Nadella has lost his mind

I'm so over this AI nonsense. I use AI as a barometer at work, in that the more they talk about AI, the more I know they are adding fuck all to the organization and aren't actually doing any work.

„Do not use your brain, ask the holy brainbot and it tells you what to think“

sounds like the kind of policy an AI would make 🤔

Can the tech industry ever do a thing in moderation?

one can probably automate the AI tools while you do something else.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but I deal a lot with MS support in my role at work. There is some built in AI that you need to go through in order to open a support case, and it’s about 85% useless, and also has a caveat at the end that says “AI provided information may be incorrect”. However, there are cases where it’s useful, and I don’t have to deal with a human who copies and pastes a novel in their email to tell me they’re working on it.

Ive had cancellations processed after product upgrades and it went through in less than a day, and I didn’t have to read 5 paragraphs of bullshit canned script from a human. So it’s not all bad, I guess.

That’s the extent to which I use AI for work. I can’t imagine another use case where I wouldn’t have to double check everything, and if I have to do that, I may as well just do it myeself.

Here's what's gonna happen: MS is gonna fuck around with the AI to force their desired stack ranking results.