Comment by chris_wot
10 days ago
That little copilot icon will sit there unused and unloved by people who will, much like with online ads, screen it out whilst they do what they actually want to do.
10 days ago
That little copilot icon will sit there unused and unloved by people who will, much like with online ads, screen it out whilst they do what they actually want to do.
For some, but what about the others? The reddit mentality of "everyone hates LLM AI tools" is just a very loud segment. What about everyone else? What about a random Joe who asks it questions to find some path through figuring out why their computer is acting all wonky? What about the people who don't know the first thing about dealing with their water heater suddenly going south, and ask it some basic questions of how to approach that problem? That is, treating it as an OS-native improvement over a search engine.
The list goes on and on, and we have to take time into consideration: people may have default strong feelings against the tech in question now, but often that's just a default stance. Over time, people will dip their toes in, and make use of it to whatever degree makes sense for them. Don't mistake current vocal criticism for the end all, be all, stance that will last forever: people get used to stuff, use it a bit, or more than a bit, time passes, and the tech slowly melds itself into people's lives in some manner and in some form: MS will wait and observer, and evolve the product to suit that slow change over time.
> What about the people who don't know the first thing about dealing with their water heater suddenly going south, and ask it some basic questions of how to approach that problem?
Why would you trust an LLM's advice about an appliance that can hideously disfigure you when they regularly fuck up basic advice about computers?
Unfortunately the majority of people don't know what they don't know. I've seen plenty of cases where an LLM is grossly wrong, but those don't seem to be publicised as much as "LLM does $awesome_thing" in the mainstream media.
Because a new icon in the system tray means nothing to people. People screen out most of what is in the system tray.
If they want to find something via AI, they’ll use their web browser and go to ChatGPT or Gemini.
People ignore the system tray so much, because it is so full of garbage, that Microsoft had to provide a "Hide unused icons" option, and eventually made a control panel to manage which icons you see.
I mean I remember when browser toolbar spyware was rampant, people literally ignored half the screen when they managed to install 30 toolbars.
Ads make money because people click on them.
A very tiny number of people is all you need.