Actual Ad Link: https://www.instagram.com/microsoft365/p/C7j8ipnxIiI/?img_index=1
Awesome article about the ad which sums it up nicely:
https://justinpot.com/watch-me-be-in-three-meetings-at-once/
Three meetings at once. It’s so funny that, when I saw people making fun of it, I assumed it was a meme or an Onion parody. Nope: Microsoft really did run this as an ad on Instagram. This is what they think we want from their supposedly world-changing technology: the ability to attend more meetings.
Now, Copilot’s ability to transcribe a meeting and highlight the key points is cool, and in theory it could make meetings more efficient. It’s easy to imagine, in a healthy work culture, where that gain in time allows people to spend more time doing the actually productive parts of their job.
Instead this ad assumes the opposite will happen. It imagines a future where we use our efficiency gains to attend more meetings. Economists sometimes talk about how the current crop of technology hasn’t lead to commensurate productivity gains—it’s a bit of a mystery in some circles. I would hold up this ad as the explanation: we are all, as a society, using the efficiency gains to attend more pointless meetings.
Some asshole on LinkedIn is creaming his khakis over this
Absolutely stunned by Microsoft’s Copilot! Finally, a tool that understands the art of multitasking at an unheard-of level! Can’t wait to revolutionize my workflow and lead the charge toward a more efficient future. #GameChanger #ProductivityPerfection
#CreamedKhakis
At this point the LinkedIn ass has already painted his own face
What this will mean is middle management will fire all the line managers. Your only contact with management will be through one of their AI’s.
[Robot Voice] Work harder! Your vacation is denied. Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions! There’s no way your solution will work. Drive this bus off the cliff or find another job! Write a 15-page self-assessment of your accomplishments this quarter. Your performance review is 0 out of 5. Your pay is cut 10%. No, I did not read your self-assessment. I didn’t have time. Our company has failed. I’m giving myself a $2M severance. You are fired.
That was both wild and entirely accurate at the same time.
I already had our CEO send us a speech video of him made with ML during a all-hands, although he said just afterwards it was made with ML. I fully expect this to become the norm in the future, even if we can tell the uncannyness for a while, they will not care.
Iike those encouraging videos of N+5, N+6 and all the way up to N+13 (been there, sleeped through them).
Who actually listens to the dravel? Is it just so bosses can feel meaningful?
Oh boy, three fistfights at once!
She’s a goddamn fucking gem, I love her. She has a bunch of great TikToks and is a super smart lawyer. She don’t miss
*doesn’t
I believe they were being colloquial.
That’s for when you want to write that “she doesn’t afraid of anything”
*isn’t
Sir, I’m not sure you understand that consequences will never be the same
*the consequences
So Copilot is going to make me a transcript of a meeting that could have just been an email to begin with? Brilliant.
No, it’s going to make assumptions about what was important in that meeting and try to bullet point it. And that won’t actually work well enough to count on, and if it misses something, you won’t know.
I also can’t imagine many managers will be happy about this, because the whole point of calling a meeting is that they want your attention. After a manager ends up lecturing a meeting full of bots a couple times, and someone misses something that was brought up in a meeting they ostensibly attended, they’ll complain, and IT will be instructed to block it.
And I can’t exactly blame them, honestly. I’m not fan of unnecessary meetings but if I’m managing a team of people, I’d want to know I’m engaging with them, not Copilot.
And as an employee, I’m not about to let an AI be caught doing any part of my job, because that’s just giving management “ideas”
It’s going to be a bunch of AIs sitting around spewing bullshit since all the humans sent their AIs to the meeting.
Reminds me of this scene in Real Genius:
Remember when AI was going to free us up to do better things? LOL just kidding, 3 meetings at once.
I remember when llms were used to simulate subreddits as a singular entity leading to pretty funny results. Wish we could’ve put a pin in it there.
AI, allowing corporate bureaucracy and inefficiency to continue to grow unscathed.
it’s not an ad for you. it’s an ad for your bosses
That really doesn’t lessen my horror.
it was never about making anything better for you. no one’s talking about the fact that all these employers are demanding RTO while also increasing VIRTUAL meetings
it was never about making anything better for you.
And that’s why it’s posted here.
I already don’t trust AI, there’s no way I’d want it to be the arbiter of potentially critical job-related information in a workplace. For probably less money than licensing and running an AI, a company could just hire a stenographer to sit in meetings all day, take notes, and send those notes to concerned parties. Better yet, why not get certain people to send info directly via email, instead of scheduling a bunch a pointless meetings. How’s that for innovation
Right? If an LLM can transcribe all the useful information out of a meeting, it stands to reason that the entire meeting could just be boiled to an email, instead of enabling middle managers to feel useful by tying up other people’s time.
It’s easier to understand this through the lens of the bosses who actually buy this technology. They’re only in meetings. They kind of assume that’s what their workers do, too. They want their workers in more meetings; if that’s all you’re doing, it sounds like being productive.
The workers aren’t buying copilot, and the people who are buying it find this somewhat convincing.
Matches my experience in bigger companies. People who have a “mostly meetings and PowerPoint” job think that sitting in meetings is real productive work. They assume anyone who sits in front of a computer but not in a meeting is probably not busy enough and their job could be outsourced to India.
Even the woman on the ad looks “whelmed” and disappointed in the world of tech. I feel like behind those eyes there are thoughts of quitting and moving to Idaho to raise sheep.
Definitely looks like the AI has been sending her transcripts of the vacation it’s been attending with her family.
Uh, I think she may be a bit too “ethnic” for the vast majority of Idaho.
Disclaimer
Please note that I am not condoning this sentiment, merely calling out Idaho for being majority backwoods regressive.
Also she may be imagining the shitstorm her mother would give her if she did.
It’s quite accurate: Microsoft consulted its ethnographic map of the world for marketers, and it clearly shows black, white, brown and yellow faces predominating on every continent.
Copilot’s ability to transcribe a meeting and highlight the key points
And then send it as an email to all participants. 😂
Or sending a meeting invite to talk with AI voice about the key points.
She looks thrilled
It makes sense if you assume it’s actually targeted at managers who want their employees to be in three meetings at once.
They are ALMOST advocating for over-employment.
They’ll fire you though if you actually got caught
I don’t find that convincing. If I earn three salaries for one month, and then get fired for two of them, that’s still 2 months more salary than I would have had.
Not saying it isn’t in your best interest
They weren’t? Huh
I want an “me” AI that can answer the phone, order groceries delivered, send generated photos of me to everyone at Christmas…
And work remotely on my behalf.
What you see is a dystopian view of the direction we’re headed with AI due to capitalism. What I see is another way to keep 3 bullshit jobs without being able to wfh
Don’t forget to copyright yourself.
I predict that they will track everything everyone does and make a borg ai out of their employees.
It shows just how fundamentally out of touch MS is with, well, everything.
