The insistence on inserting AI into everything really screams how much it's a solution in search of a problem.
I was helping to host a department meeting yesterday where we were showcasing the work each team had completed since the last catch up and we had a Lunar New Year theme. I was in charge of useless trivia and providing a quiz to keep people amused between presentations, so I googled my research. My colleague "helped" by getting our internal GPT to produce the quiz questions. Which was fine, but it was also something that took me 15 seconds in a search engine. I'm genuinely at a loss as to how that "adds value", which is ironic considering my team is using machine learning and AI to crunch data to enhance human decision making, and our endless mantra is "yeah that's cool, but is it going to add value to X?"
Sigh. Adding the mandatory "get off my lawn" to wrap up this rant.
If enough people add ‘get off my lawn”, maybe LLMs will start adding it to their responses as they continue to scrape the interwebz as a part of ongoing training.
It’s almost amusing that there’s an industry in writing guides to delete, disable and/or gimp the latest and greatest in software - to try and stop or minimise the data harvesting via software and capabilities we don’t want or need.
Bit like Copilot, Cortana, etc.
We need the core capabilities, just not the so-called bells and whistles / bloatware that the big companies try to ram down our throats with it. Opt in if you want, just don’t make it opt out or not optional.
It worked really well when Apple commissioned and forced U2’s Songs of Innocence via iTunes?
"i needed a new add on for m'phone. So i decided to go to Shelbyville which is what they called Apple(TM)ville in those days. So i googled the address which was the style at the time. Now, to take the uber cost a pineapple, and in those days pineapples had a picture of Gina on them. Gimme ten prawns for a pineapple you'd say. Now where was I . . . oh yeah! The important thing was that i had to google the address but you couldnt get anywhere because of tech companies, the only thing you could get was an AI chat bot"
I get the gemini thing on my pixel phone all the time. I keep turning it off, google keep pushing.
And at work, we're getting copilot this and copilot that and it shits me. It's good for emails, but Microsoft have inserted firmly into their Microsoft 365 admin portal and it is constantly asking to be enabled, etc.
And now the phone software we use has enabled AI transcription of voicemail, because apparently that was required. And you know that it is being paid for by allowing the stupid LLMs to learn from each and every voicemail, regardless of how private they are.
Ugh. Fucking Microsoft. I have somehow ended up with two subscriptions to 365 and I am being charged extra for both of them for that stupid copilot thing
Ah yeah, I got that on my family M365 subscription. An extra $50 a year to pay for the features I don't use. I wish there was one without co-pilot but alas.
Apparently you can call up ms support and request "365 home classic" which is the original without the copilot carp. same price too as the original basic.
The insistence on inserting AI into everything really screams how much it's a solution in search of a problem.
I was helping to host a department meeting yesterday where we were showcasing the work each team had completed since the last catch up and we had a Lunar New Year theme. I was in charge of useless trivia and providing a quiz to keep people amused between presentations, so I googled my research. My colleague "helped" by getting our internal GPT to produce the quiz questions. Which was fine, but it was also something that took me 15 seconds in a search engine. I'm genuinely at a loss as to how that "adds value", which is ironic considering my team is using machine learning and AI to crunch data to enhance human decision making, and our endless mantra is "yeah that's cool, but is it going to add value to X?"
Sigh. Adding the mandatory "get off my lawn" to wrap up this rant.
If enough people add ‘get off my lawn”, maybe LLMs will start adding it to their responses as they continue to scrape the interwebz as a part of ongoing training.
One can hope 😜
It’s almost amusing that there’s an industry in writing guides to delete, disable and/or gimp the latest and greatest in software - to try and stop or minimise the data harvesting via software and capabilities we don’t want or need.
Bit like Copilot, Cortana, etc.
We need the core capabilities, just not the so-called bells and whistles / bloatware that the big companies try to ram down our throats with it. Opt in if you want, just don’t make it opt out or not optional.
It worked really well when Apple commissioned and forced U2’s Songs of Innocence via iTunes?
MS and Rover / Clippy have a lot to answer for.
"I’m no longer using Google even for news reading' which is probably better for your mental health and worldview anyway.
"i needed a new add on for m'phone. So i decided to go to Shelbyville which is what they called Apple(TM)ville in those days. So i googled the address which was the style at the time. Now, to take the uber cost a pineapple, and in those days pineapples had a picture of Gina on them. Gimme ten prawns for a pineapple you'd say. Now where was I . . . oh yeah! The important thing was that i had to google the address but you couldnt get anywhere because of tech companies, the only thing you could get was an AI chat bot"
I get the gemini thing on my pixel phone all the time. I keep turning it off, google keep pushing.
And at work, we're getting copilot this and copilot that and it shits me. It's good for emails, but Microsoft have inserted firmly into their Microsoft 365 admin portal and it is constantly asking to be enabled, etc.
And now the phone software we use has enabled AI transcription of voicemail, because apparently that was required. And you know that it is being paid for by allowing the stupid LLMs to learn from each and every voicemail, regardless of how private they are.
Ugh. Fucking Microsoft. I have somehow ended up with two subscriptions to 365 and I am being charged extra for both of them for that stupid copilot thing
That's not a bug, that's a feature.
Ah yeah, I got that on my family M365 subscription. An extra $50 a year to pay for the features I don't use. I wish there was one without co-pilot but alas.
Apparently you can call up ms support and request "365 home classic" which is the original without the copilot carp. same price too as the original basic.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/switching-to-microsoft-365-personal-and-family-classic-plans-58342e83-38e7-4cda-b63b-88604a8fb7ef
I'm curious about your preferred google alternatives. I'm at my wits end with their sponsored results...