Microsoft AI Chief Says Conversational AI Will Replace Web Browsers (theverge.com) 277
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman predicts conversational AI will become the primary way people interact with technology,
replacing traditional web browsers and search engines within the next few years. In an interview with The Verge, Suleyman, who oversees Microsoft's consumer AI products including Bing and Copilot, called current search interfaces "completely broken" and "a total pain," arguing that voice-based AI interactions will prove "100 times easier" for users. He said: The UI that you experience is going to be automagically produced by an LLM in three or five years, and that is going to be the default. And they'll be representing the brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organizations, just as each one of those stakeholders in society ended up getting a podcast, getting a website, writing a blog, maybe building an app, or using the telephone back in the day.
The technological revolution produces a new interface, which completely shuffles the way that things are distributed. And some organizations adapt really fast and they jump on board and it kind of transforms their businesses and their organizations, and some don't. There will be an adjustment. We'll look back by 2030 and be like, "Oh, that really was the kind of moment when there was this true inflection point because these conversational AIs really are the primary way that we have these interactions." And so, you're absolutely right. A brand and a business are going to use that AI to talk to your personal companion AI because I don't really like doing that kind of shopping. And some people do, and they'll do that kind of direct-to-consumer browsing experience. Many people don't like it, and it's actually super frustrating, hard, and slow.
And so, increasingly you'll come to work with your personal AI companion to go and be that interface, to go and negotiate, find great opportunities, and adapt them to your specific context. That'll just be a much more efficient protocol because AIs can talk to AIs in super real-time. And by the way, let's not fool ourselves. We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space, or between search ranking algorithms. So, there's already that kind of marketplace of AIs. It's just not explicitly manifested in language. It's operating in vector space.
The technological revolution produces a new interface, which completely shuffles the way that things are distributed. And some organizations adapt really fast and they jump on board and it kind of transforms their businesses and their organizations, and some don't. There will be an adjustment. We'll look back by 2030 and be like, "Oh, that really was the kind of moment when there was this true inflection point because these conversational AIs really are the primary way that we have these interactions." And so, you're absolutely right. A brand and a business are going to use that AI to talk to your personal companion AI because I don't really like doing that kind of shopping. And some people do, and they'll do that kind of direct-to-consumer browsing experience. Many people don't like it, and it's actually super frustrating, hard, and slow.
And so, increasingly you'll come to work with your personal AI companion to go and be that interface, to go and negotiate, find great opportunities, and adapt them to your specific context. That'll just be a much more efficient protocol because AIs can talk to AIs in super real-time. And by the way, let's not fool ourselves. We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space, or between search ranking algorithms. So, there's already that kind of marketplace of AIs. It's just not explicitly manifested in language. It's operating in vector space.
Hard to argue.... (Score:2)
Re:Hard to argue.... (Score:5)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're in the minority. Most people don't want everyone within earshot to know what they're browsing for.
Re:Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're in the minority. Most people don't want everyone within earshot to know what they're browsing for.
Also, everyone within earshot not only gives zero fucks about what you're browsing for or who you're talking to - they just want you to STFU.
Re: Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Informative)
IME most people give zero fucks about who hears their business and also who has to hear about their business. I see people walking down the street talking on speaker phone every time I go out for more than a few minutes.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you trying to start an argument?
I bet I don't get the funny mod.
I do concur with the FP, but I usually talk quite quietly into the near mic. Pretty good success even in noisy environments.
As regards the story... I'm not sure. But I am trying to get a hold of his book. Recommended by some Bill guy?
Re: Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Informative)
This is extremely local culture dependent. Southern less advanced cultures (and large cities where they tend to migrate) are very loud and inconsiderate of others.
Whereas nordic cultures and their neighborhoods tend to be the opposite of that. With Central Europeans and Anglos falling in between the two.
I recall at least one paper on the subject of this related to noise pollution. Japan and Nordics being on one extreme, and certain urban areas in certain US cities with high black populations as well as third world cities being on the opposite end of the spectrum. Fundamentally it appears to be mostly a function of two cultural aspects: desire for personal privacy and sense of personal responsibility for comfort of shared spaces.
Re: Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Informative)
Outright racism is ignoring reality and pretending all groups are the same when they are clearly not. Treat people by their character, not color of their skin, remember?
Re: Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I already talk to my phone for most searches.
Yes, but this genius says AI will replace browsers, not just search engines.
90% of my web browsing is not search and can't be replaced with a "conversation".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
SEO is snake oil.
There are only two real ways to improve your search engine ranking: 1) offer unique, relevant, content 2) pay for placement.
It's evil but I don't believe this is entirely the case ("entirely" doing a fair amount of heavy lifting here). Ignoring (2), search engines attempt to prioritise 1, but ultimately assign some numeric score for ranking. Any score can be gamed and SEO is basically trying to exploit whatever today's metric is.
You can definitely tank your rankings by incompetent fuckups,
Re:Hard to argue.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not hard to argue: the speaking part has little to do with it.
The training data is scraped from web pages. If people stop looking at web pages people will stop making them, and the training data will dry up. Few people are going to make "content" to be digested by M$ in order to be vomited forth mixed with sludge from "brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organizations".
They want to control all the information so they can splatter adverts around it. Unfortunately to control all the information they also have to make it themselves and that's far too expensive.
Co-opting... (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I don't want a UI that will "be representing the brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organizations"?
I don't want an enshittified UI (I know, it's too late). I want a UI that doesn't give a damn what's out there, and displays what I ask it to.
Re:Co-opting... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm worried that an AI will serve me what it thinks I want or what it thinks is best for me, not what I want.
If I search for vacuum tube pinouts then I definitely want to get the specific information I'm looking for and not "but I think that this integrated circuit is better" from the AI.
Re:Co-opting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's a cultural thing and you don't have similar experiences, but round here, small store and stall sellers use that bullshit method to get you to buy their shit.
For example, if I am looking for violet bed sheets (what? I like the color!), they would say "yes, yes, we have it" and promptly produce crimson, blue or red bed sheets.
I ask for simple, black jeans, they produce dark blue jeans with bells and whistles, or black jeans with scratches or torn areas, aimed at "modern audiences".
They do that because that's what they have and they hope I'm too polite to refuse.
I'm polite, but not to that extent.
I'm willing to bet AI will do the exact same thing. It's going to be SHIT.
Re:Co-opting... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I search for vacuum tube pinouts then I definitely want to get the specific information I'm looking for and not "but I think that this integrated circuit is better" from the AI.
When I ask ChatGPT what viscosity and quantity of oil my car takes, it gives me an answer. A correct answer. When I search for the same information, I'm presented with page after page of forums posts of people bickering about it, and most of them are wrong.
Honestly, I'm surprised how accurate AI is considering it's trained on the internet, and most of the internet is wrong.
Re:Co-opting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
ChatGPT is wrong just enough of the time that I can't trust anything it says.
If ChatGPT could return to me with a PRIMARY SOURCE of information--like a scan of a manual or something similar--then I might be willing to trust it, but otherwise, it's just relying on some stochastic mimicry and luck to return an answer that I can't have any confidence in.
Re: Co-opting... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just take the printed version that came with the car from the glove compartment and flick through it to find what I need. Sometimes the paper version is more convenient.
Re: (Score:3)
I take mine to the dealership for regular maintenance. If a mistake gets made, they're responsible, even it it destroyed the engine. And there will never be any arguments over whether or not routine maintenance was done by qualified mechanics in the even of a warranty issue.
Of course, not everyone has access to a reliable dealership, and not everyone can afford the premium price.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
So it will be like doing searches now? Unless you have some generic search, such as the name of a specific product, trying to get results is becoming more difficult. This is especially true when trying to find out how to turn off something in a Microsoft product. Microsoft's own site is borderline useless for getting information. It's becoming like recipe sites: eight paragraphs of the "feature
Re: Co-opting... (Score:2)
You mean like the way Google Search currently doesn't give you the actual information you want until you mangle you search parameters?
Yeah, AI will make that even worse.
Re: Co-opting... (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like the way Google Search currently doesn't give you the actual information you want until you mangle you search parameters?
Yeah, AI will make that even worse.
The end-goal is engagement time. We've passed by the rubicon where success is measured by turnaround time with smaller numbers being better. Now we're at the point where success is measured in how long you can dick around the end-user with continued engagement. More clicks/engagement = more advertising = more success! FOR GREAT PROFIT! HALLELUJAH!
Re: Co-opting... (Score:5, Insightful)
The rate of transfer of information via speech is slower than rate of tranfer of information via reading. This obviously varies by person, however, at least with training, you can read much faster than you can talk/listen. I personally never listen to podcasts or watch videos to get information. Give me a web page or printed material that I can scan quickly for what I'm looking for versus, plodding thru a video with station identification, introduction, background, context, like and subscribe... you're lucky to get to what you want in in 10 minutes. Via reading I could cut that to under 1 minute in most cases.
Additionally, while you are tied up slowly talking and listening to whatever, you can't spend your attention on anything else, precluding you from finding a better answer from another source. Monopolization of your attention/time is an objective.
The last objective, IMHO, of the Evil Empire, is to normalize talking to machines. They want to replace people and friends. They want you to think of your "AI Assistant" as your friend.... Hey! What are you doing on Friday night? Hey? Why not suggest to your friends you all go to [Restaurant/Bar Name here] for natchos and beer... they offer 10% off groups of 4 or more...<cha-ching>
This was more or less the idea behind the idea of the "personal computer"... looks like we're almost there.
Re: Co-opting... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't have to know anything to be designed to try to sell you shit from a list that is related to what you asked about.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Co-opting... (Score:5, Informative)
That you can get a response is meaningless when you can't make any guarantees about the reliability of the response.
I only checked one fact in your example, but it was very wrong. The IRF530N is inadequate as a replacement for a 3CX100 tube. That is, all other things being equal, for applications where you would select a 3CX100 tube, you would not consider the IRF530N.
Why do so many people here still blindly trust the output of an LLM?
Re: Co-opting... (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, I guess you're right, even in 10 years no AI could ever see a request for a product and figure out alternatives.
No, it can vomit forth a mush of alternatives in an irritatingly verbose manner, but that doesn't make it right.
If I were you, I'd consider replacing that bulky old 3CX100 tube with something far more compact and energy-efficient - a solid state device, such as the IRF530N MOSFET transistor. This modern component can handle similar power levels (up to 150 watts) with far greater efficiency and reliability. It has just 3 pins, for drain, gate, and source, simplifying your circuit design. Plus it will save you space on the board compared to a big vacuum tube.
This is absolutely bonkers as a replacement. The 3CX100 and IRF530 (and 540) are targeted at wildly different application areas the former being designed primarily for linearish (i.e. dissipitative) applications at high voltages into the GHz and the latter for low cost, efficient switching at intermediate voltages. Just looking at the SOA, they haven't even specced it for any kind of linear applications, and the power dissipation max is way lower (50-80W depending on who you ask) than the valve.
This is how AI works: it produces mush that sounds convincingly like what a person would generate statistically (with the layering of weird pseudo-politeness that apparently goes down well ig), except they have no knowledge of facts. So it's got somewhere in its representations kind of things that people offer as replacements for old active semiconductors (i.e. cheap modern MOSFETS for switching instead of old darlingtons or bipolars) and has basically smooshed that with "valves are old and can be replaced with better modern stuff", and suggested a completely wrong replacement.
Re: (Score:3)
What a silly argument. "Just have faith! Surely, rapid technological progress towards that specific end is inevitable!"
The fantasy AI you imagine will require a fundamentally different approach. We don't know what that will look like (obviously), how long it will take, if it will ever happen, or if it is even possible.
The parent's point still stands: The AI will have today is laughably inadequate and we have no reason to believe that will change any time soon.
Re: (Score:2)
In that case, I have some good news! Here you go! [ubuntu.com]
Re:Co-opting... (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that but there are things that are just far superior being read than viewed. Technical documentation or instructions are one of them. I know there are idiots that have started doing this stuff on Youtube videos, but tech documentation is far far FAR superior when it can be read from, scanned, skipped, copy and pasted etc. Conversational AI would be no different than video for most of this. Plus there is the privacy issue. If you live alone, you might be OK doing conversational searching. Most other cases, not so much. Either there is a privacy aspect or a bothering someone else within earshot aspect. Some people actually do real work with computers, not just consuming media. Traditional mouse and keyboard interfaces have been being tweaked for 40-50 years now. Touch interfaces, media consumption, conversational AI are just not going to be able to show up and top something that has that much time to mature and be tweaked to perfection, at least as it pertains to people that actually work on/with computers.
Re: Co-opting... (Score:3)
Plus some people can't physically talk.
Cortana who? (Score:3)
Also inB4 "no wifi, less storage than a Nomad, lame"
Maybe it will replace Microsoft browsers (Score:5, Funny)
WHY?! (Score:5, Interesting)
I will never understand why business thinks that people actually want to have to talk to their machines to get them to do things.
The closest I can get to wrapping my head around this is Star Trek. But what people don't understand is that, being a television show, the show runners had to solve narrative problems. By speaking to the computer, the characters were able to communicate wtf they were doing and how this furthers the plot far more efficiently than if you watched them push buttons or type things on a computer.
In the real world, I don't like talking much. Especially when interacting with a machine. I can type way faster and with far less margin for error. Not to mention that if the device can detect that I'm giving it auditory commands, then it needs to have a microphone in it that is always active and has software "listening." No thanks!
There is also literally nothing more annoying in life than being next to someone when they pull out an iPhone and say "hey Siri..." Just STFU and type what you are looking for because there are people around you that don't want to listen to you trying to find a restaurant.
Point is, IMO talking is a less convenient way of interacting with a device. It introduces problems and, accessibility for certain users with special needs or hands-free driving exempted, it doesn't really solve many problems that I can think of.
Re:WHY?! (Score:5, Informative)
Why? A combination of marketing idiots who want to push whatever crap they can sell to the gullible plus siloed engineers who don't know how real people interact with technology.
For the same reason MS came up with the god awful "Modern" (if that meant 1980s then sure) UI by focus grouping wierd people who had too much time on their hands. Probably the same people or their ilk are now telling MS idiots how "Awwwwsarrrrm" talking to devices is.
Frankly I find speech input a PITA - 50% of the time it doesn't work properly and its slow and awkward even when it does. I can type what I want much faster that I can describe it. Similarly in a car I can press a button much faster than I can say "Set A/C on" (which ironically requires a button press on the steering wheel first!)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:WHY?! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's because they want something they can insert between them and everyone else, so they can charge a rent on both sides (to suppliers and to you, the end user). They want to be the information super highway's Uber, for anything and everything you search for or buy online. The browser and the open internet has been a huge pain on that front - though many companies have figured out how to do it. Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book about it called Technofuedalism.
If MS can get out in between of everything you do online, they can lock you in, and then enshitify the experience to profit. That's why.
(You can tell they understand these things, this specific way based on the way Phil Spencer talks about how they "lost the most important generation of gaming" when it comes to XBox - they are definitely telling you exactly how they think about this stuff. You just have to be willing to hear it.)
Re:WHY?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like that idiot Alexa who was convinced my house had a "wig shop" in it, not a "workshop", boy she was good at push my buttons with the stupid answers she gave.
Re: WHY?! (Score:3)
it happened to me with Android auto. it asked me if I wanted to respond to a message.
I said no.
it kept listening because apparently the no was lost to engine noise.
I tried responding "no, I don't want to respond" and that made it happy.
and no, I'm not going to be polite and say please and thank you to a machine. same way I'm not going to answer full sentences to say no .
voice input is useless
Re: (Score:3)
In a previous job, we actually let someone go who was perpetually on the phone talking in a very loud and distracting voice that carried all over the floor. He was spoken to several times by his management but didn't seem to understand how he was disrupting everyone else's work, refusing to use a conference room or keep his voice down because his work "was important".
Now, imagine the entire floor having to speak to their computers.
Re: WHY?! (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, and the rest of us... what was it... oh yeah, we can learn to paint.
Re:WHY?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that if the device can detect that I'm giving it auditory commands, then it needs to have a microphone in it that is always active and has software "listening."
In the minds of our would-be overlords, that's not a bug, nor even a feature - it's a non-negotiable requirement at the very top of the specification list.
Re:WHY?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Literally the only place where voice commands make sense (today) is if you cannot safely take your hands and eyes away from some other task, such as driving.
For every other context, you're probably better off swiping, tapping, and typing. I know if there's anyone around you, they're better off with you swiping, tapping, and typing. Nobody wants to hear you asking Siri / Google for whatever; and while we're on the subject, we absolutely wish you would turn off your speakerphone and hold your phone to your ear during a call too.
Re:WHY?! (Score:4, Informative)
Star Trek is definitely the reason, but the people who then assume that it's best to have all search be audio-entry never really paid attention to the show.
99% of the time, someone's tapping away into an interface to do something or analyze something. 1% of the time, when they're walking around and multi-tasking, they'll call out, "Computer" - [Confirming Chitter] - "What is a woodchuck and why does it chuck wood?"
Sometimes, they even have to tell the computer to be more brief or refine a search. It's not an AI assistant, it's a vocal interface used ONLY when tactile interfaces don't make sense.
Re:WHY?! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This is what they want us to want, because they can make more money this way.
Maybe the tech will get there someday, but it is clearly not there today. I have done a few browser searches and gotten AI summary results at the top that said the exact opposite of what the top four search result hits were saying. It was really quite bad.
It needs to be reliable before people will rely on it.
Re: (Score:3)
This is what they want us to want, because they can make more money this way.
Maybe the tech will get there someday, but it is clearly not there today. I have done a few browser searches and gotten AI summary results at the top that said the exact opposite of what the top four search result hits were saying. It was really quite bad.
It needs to be reliable before people will rely on it.
Yes, Google's AI search assistant or whatever they call it is quite bad. It has given me flat out wrong answers to simple questions. Definitely not ready for prime time.
Re: (Score:2)
I do find myself asking AI services ChatGPT more questions than I used to, though. Mostly because when I ask Google a question about how to do anything vaguely IT related, the first 5 search results are trying to sell me a product or service to fix the problem for me.
Re: (Score:2)
All this "voice" bullshit is just an I/O mechanism...that is probably going to be replaced pretty quickly.
With what...I don't know for sure. But I think tech, in the realm of brain/machine interfaces, is really going to start to accelerate. We're starting to see some of it....
So I used to work fast food (Score:5, Interesting)
I have literally encountered director level employees who are functionally illiterate. Took me a little while to figure out they couldn't read. I would send them an email with a bunch of details and until we got on a call and talked about it they had no idea what I had written. After a couple of times I figured out they couldn't actually read the emails...
Anyway that's why companies want us to be able to talk to our computers. It's because about half the country can't do it any other way. So they just muddle through as best they can. And you'd be amazed how much effort they put into hiding that from the rest of us
Re: (Score:2)
Even in Star Trek, there were still screens showing tons of "information."
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah right (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I was looking at rechargeable hand warmers as a gift for someone. Half of them were advertised as having some type of "AI" control. It's a resistor and a lithium battery...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep...lots of "educated" idiots here.
I particularly liked the one where someone was implying mechanical components of a John Deere engine...would be "digitally signed", and unable to be replaced by an non John Deere mechanic. ...or that tractors were unusable on 70degree (F) days, without A/C.
Censored ChatGPT Browser (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds like a nightmare for people that want to think for themselves and read the entire text. The last thing I want is some AI which is trained to not 'discuss' or show you specific things based on whomever is running this.
From a marketing perspective and defining the narrative perspective, this sounds like a gem. Make people quiz some chatbot to figure out things? Feed them the information that the highest paid "advertiser" wants them to see and hear?
What could possibly go wrong?
--
Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. - Potter Stewart
that'll end well (Score:5, Funny)
"Google, please enumerate the new modules in Rust 1.9."
"Rust was a 2024 movie starring"
"No, Rust the language."
"Language: the principal method of human communication, consisting of words used in a structured"
"The PROGRAMMING language!"
"The first programming language was created in 1843 by Ada Love"
"You $#^@# moron!"
"That content can be found on $#^@#Morons.net. A browser specializing in privacy is recommended."
"Sigh. Where did I put that keyboard?"
"keyboard: a panel of keys that operate a"
"Shut up!"
Re: (Score:2)
while funny, you're assuming it will just stop when you bring up another question and/or correction. Try asking google anything, and it will just talk-talk-talk and refuse to listen to your "stop" commands.
You're right, that's much more likely. I'm reminded of the early days of voice menus.
"Press one for espanol. Press two for a human representative. Press three (2) for some useless bit of (222) infor(2)mat(2)ion. Press four (2222222222222) to repeat these options. (2! 2! 2!) Did you know that (222222222222) you can get absolutely none of this done on our website, doubleu doubleu doubleu (22222 2! 2! 2dammit!) dot myfunkywidgets dot com? That's spelled emm eye (222222222222222222) eff ewe enn kay(222)why
Re:that'll end well (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I work from home and our offices are next to each other. I often her here hollering "representative. representative! REP...RE...SEN..TA...TIVE" into the phone with increasing hysteria.
Yeah, the problem with customer service is that customers' first inclination is to get someone on the phone who can actually fix whatever is wrong, while businesses' first priority is to minimize the amount of money they spend on customer service people by making it as hard as possible to get someone on the phone who can actually fix whatever is wrong. As much as I'd like to think that voice-based technology in other areas might be better, I'm not naïve enough to believe that profit motive won't get in the way of that.
Case in point, I have yet to find any product search system that I would even score a 3 on a scale of 0 to 5. Most are either 1 or 0. They all make it a point to shove things in front of me that don't match what I'm looking for because of a bunch of advertisers desperately hoping that when I searched for Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapters, I might be willing to accept a USB to mini-DisplayPort adapter or whatever other useless non-equivalent product they happen to sell. And they all either incorrectly treat searches for terms A, B, and C as searches for any of A, B, or C (Amazon, Walmart) or they incorrectly treat irrelevant "People who bought X also bought Y" product descriptions as though they were part of the description for *this* product (Google), resulting in a bunch of false positives. And in spite of that poor filtering, that's still the best of the bunch, and the only 2 out of 5.
Why nobody can seem to actually accept that I'd rather have no results than wrong results is beyond me. No results, I can refine my query and try something different to get more results. Wrong results, I have to look through all of the wrong results and conclude that none of them are what I'm looking for and *then* refine my query to try to get useful results.
But it all comes down to engagement as a flawed metric for user satisfaction. You can drive engagement by making people want to come back more, or you can drive engagement by making the website so bad that everything takes twice as long, and without a useful feedback mechanism to say, "These results didn't help me" (which every website is doing their darndest to eliminate because they really don't want to know), there's no way to tell which is which.
At least with voice search, you could theoretically use voice stress detection to flag failures, but only if they actually do so, and only if they don't then disable that data collection because of other prioritize that are more important to them than how much their systems piss off users.
For those of us concerned with privacy (Score:3)
Fuck that with a wire brush.
The long take (Score:3)
Fantastic... (Score:5, Interesting)
Voice based?? (Score:2)
No, not for me, no, no, no
Direct brain interface FTW
You insensitive clod (Score:2)
I'm still using Lynx!
Microsoft says? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything Microsoft says is either wrong or contains a hidden agenda to increase their revenue and steal something from you.
It's a huge disappointment that they never get called out for their sociopathic behavior.
Oh ye gods and little fishes (Score:3)
bing (Score:3)
"Please show me a webpage that look as much as possible as the webpage i want to actually see"
Nope. (Score:2)
As much as these marketers would love to have made the browser killer app, there's no way a text prompt or voice prompt is EVER going to replace all of those use cases. The investor that falls for that line of marketing should loose all of their money for the sheer obviousness of it.
Filtered Internet (Score:2)
Yes, I want the internet filtered by whatever company makes the GPT or the training set the GPT was exposed to.
More turds in the catbox. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, he is a paid fanboy - because as AI CEO he has to toot the flute, bang he drum, and wave the corporate flag of all things AI. But, two remarks are most interesting:
called current search interfaces "completely broken" and "a total pain"
Well, who do think broke them in the first place? "We enshittified the browser, so now we will de-enshittify it by crappifying it. Because here at MS, unlike our rival Google, crap is better than shit.
We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space, or between search ranking algorithms.
Yep, that's what the web is for, a playground for ad business and search engine optimizations. Because at MS and Google, "the web is our playbox to enshittify and crapify the web all we want. Our toybox is like our cat box that we haven't cleaned in 20 years, totally full of it, but now, we will get a big boy toy to crapify it even more".
Re:More turds in the catbox. (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have this on the open web today. We have behind-the-scenes, real-time negotiation between buyers and sellers of ad space, or between search ranking algorithms.
Yep, that's what the web is for, a playground for ad business and search engine optimizations. Because at MS and Google, "the web is our playbox to enshittify and crapify the web all we want. Our toybox is like our cat box that we haven't cleaned in 20 years, totally full of it, but now, we will get a big boy toy to crapify it even more".
IMO, Google's and Microsoft's only real fault in that regard is not being able to move faster than the horde of predatory marketers finding ways to abuse the system for their own ill-gotten gains.
Ads really aren't the main problem, with the exception of certain really invasive ads that make web browsing miserable. People trying to avoid paying for ads is the main problem. Everybody wants more people on their sites, and nobody wants to pay for ads to do that, so SEO companies create these increasingly elaborate networks of websites with fake content to make it look like people searching for X should want to go to site Y or whatever so that those web pages will rank higher in relevant search queries, and at some point, advertisers' ability to produce garbage exceeds the search engine companies' ability to distinguish the signal from the noise.
Worse, this practice drives down the economic value of advertising, which hurts the content creators that depend on those ad dollars to stay in business, *and* it floods the web with garbage that makes it harder to find legitimate content creators, which further degrades their revenue, and before long, the only way you can afford to stay in business is by playing the SEO abuse game, at which point everybody loses.
What *should* have happened is a bunch of well-timed fraud suits and/or federal fraud charges against SEO companies to shut that s**t down about twenty years ago. Absent something stopping those companies from polluting the open web with buckets of noise for every drop of real signal, it's a cat-and-mouse game at best, and a child sticking fingers in a hole in a dike while the water pours over the top at worst. And I don't know how to fix that, beyond that I'm pretty sure that easier access to AI is only going to make things worse by making it easier to create garbage while failing to make it easier to weed out the garbage.
Just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
An office filled with hundreds of people who can only interact with their laptops by talking to it...
This is not the Internet we're looking for... (Score:2)
now imagine (Score:2, Insightful)
Voice interaction is slow (Score:2)
I can type in queries faster than I can speak. And I can read faster than AI can provide an answer via text-to-speech.
The main advantage AI might provide is to enhance my query and to summarize and catalog query returns so I can find the exact information I need more quickly.
voice assistants (Score:2)
We've had voice assistants for some time now. Some people just don't want to talk to their devices, even if the results are some how 'better'.
I'd argue that voice is too slow and cumbersome. Typing can be too. We are missing some new kind of interface, feels like something with more directly connected to the brain.
Re: (Score:2)
We've had voice assistants for some time now.
No. Really. How broken do you have to be to engage with a voice operated search engine?
clippyAI to replace search engines and browsers :o (Score:2)
Scum (Score:3)
The entire original idea of the Web was to share information in whatever way the USER wanted to see it. This SOB wants the entire web to be just like old broadcast tv, with NOTHING from us.
I have a mind (Score:3)
It has, so far, proven to be infinitely more capable than most humans - let alone garbage LLMs - in rational processing, critical thinking, knowledge acquisition and just generally being a functional human being.
Offloading these most basic functions of existence to MS feels like a wonderful idea... in hell
If you're already playing this game... what the heck broke you?
Depends on use (Score:2)
This guy is in charge of Microsoft AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a scary thing, because it illustrates how little he understand the actual role of AI.
Yes, there is a subset of problems that can be solved through voice interaction. But the vast majority need screen support. And for that, what does AI gain by avoiding the use of browsers?
More like AI will replace Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
For most (Score:2)
Just like the voice assistants and apps already do.
People reading here will use web browsers. Random people you meet on the street will talk to AI.
Enshittification continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Well duh (Score:3)
But... (Score:4, Interesting)
If AIs replace the browsers, what's the point of having websites? The AI will mess them up anyway. And without the websites, what will the AIs learn from?
Navel-gazing BS (Score:3)
The ad placements will be awesome (Score:3)
User: Hey, AI! How can I tell git to ignore a file?
AI: A special file will allow you to do that. But first, this answer was made possible by Squarespace. Squarespace is the absolute easiest way to make your website. My users have used them for a few sites and found that it takes about 15 minutes to throw together a landing page. It was incredibly easy with the Squarespace template and it looks great. You can really create a landing page like this, a blog, a store, really anything with Sqaurespace and what's best is that you can get 10% off your first order by using the code "ai" over at squarespace.com. Create a file called gitignore in the directory and add the file you want to ignore.
User: Just gitignore? That's not working.
AI: The file has a special name. Just like Raid Shadow Legends, one of the biggest mobile role-playing games that's also totally free! ...
I for one am shocked (Score:3)
shocked, I tell you, that someone who is beyond balls deep in the mix of technology and marketing woo woo that his company (amongst others) has sprayed utterly ridiculous quantities of cash on, and who needs to generate revenue to satisfy shareholders' desire for RoI, is making all these promises of epoch changing experiences for end users.
What we get instead is parlour game legerdemain, weirdly unsettling reheated word salad (and that's when it's not clearly utter bullshit), Disneyfied colour saturated images, dominated by the bias and prejudices of a small, and not particularly representative group of human beings. If it weren't so enraging it would almost be funny. Especially the bit about search, because let's be honest here, pretty much all of the major products are useless for search, seeing as they just make shit up. It's basically a feature that you cannot trust the output.
Mass market machine-generated slop is an abomination. There are perfectly good, targeted, and useful applications of machine learning with tightly controlled training data, but who wants to drink from the well on offer now? It's more like a firehose laced with sewage; the only things you end up with are the stench, and the information equivalent of typhoid, polluting everything it touches.
Re: right (Score:2)
Re: Might be an improvement (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I prefer PDFs but if it is a copyrighted work it will be DRM'd, so I will download a pirated PDF version then buy the physical book so the content creator gets their earnings. If there is one thing that will keep physical books around forever it is the desire of content sellers to DRM everything possible.