Microsoft Starts Boiling The Copilot Frog

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

In 1968's Star Trek episode, "The Ultimate Computer," Captain Kirk had his ship used to test M5, a new computer. A copilot, if you will, for the Starship Enterprise.

Designed to more efficiently perform the jobs of the human crew, the M5 indeed did those jobs very well yet with such a terrifying lack of understanding it had to be disabled. But not before exacting a terrible price.

Last week, Microsoft 365 Copilot, a copilot, if you will, for the technology enterprise sold as performing human tasks with more efficiency, increased its prices by 5 percent, the first of many finely judged increments in the old style. Unlike the M5, it isn't in the business of physical destruction of the enemy, instead producing commercial victory with the photon torpedo of productivity and the phaser bolts of revitalized workflow.

[...] Some time back, this columnist noted the stark disparity between the hype of the metaverse in business and the stark, soulless hyper-corporate experience. Line-of-business virtual reality has two saving graces over corporateAI. It can't just appear on the desktop overnight and poke its fingers into everything involved in the daily IT experience. Thus it can't generate millions in licensing at the tick of a box. VR is losing its backers huge amounts of money that can't be disguised or avoided, but corporate AI is far more insidious.

As is the dystopia it is creating. Look at the key features by which Microsoft 365 Copilot is being sold.

Pop up its sidebar in Loop or Teams, and it can auto-summarize what has been said. It can suggest questions, auto-populate meeting agendas. Or you can give it key points in a prompt and it will auto-generate documents, presentations, and other content. It can create clip art to spruce up those documents, PowerPoints, and content.

How is this sold? That it will make you look more intelligent by asking Copilot to suggest a really good question while doing an online presentation or a Teams meeting. What's also implied but unsaid: If you're the human at the end of this AI-smart question and want to look smart enough to answer it, who are you gonna call? Copilot.

The drive is always to abdicate the dull business of gathering data and thinking about it, and communicating the results. All can be fed as prompts to the machine, and the results presented as your own.

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