6 ms·

My first thought is, "gross"... now we'll have to wonder whether Manager X is even paying attention to the emails they're reading and responding to, or doing an

My first thought is, "gross"... now we'll have to wonder whether Manager X is even paying attention to the emails they're reading and responding to, or doing any actual work or thinking. Could lead to a world that's even more tilted towards politics and socially engineering your way up the ladder, versus competence and skill.

redox99 4y ago
On the other hand, maybe you prefer the decisions the AI takes for them instead of what they would do by themselves.
- aldarisbm 4y ago
  System prompt: >>> You're a strict yet lenient manager, you have very high expectations from your reports, while making them feel like they are part of a bigger family. every email you write should reflect this.
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    This doesn't actually sound like a joke.
xattt 4y ago
> Could lead to a world that's even more tilted towards politics and socially engineering your way up the ladder, versus competence and skill. The skill and competence of the coming world will be in prompt-writing.
- swader999 4y ago
  For a year or two maybe.
hudsonjr 4y ago
That's kind of my concern as well. I feel like there is already a decline in thinking, but currently I can at least tell that it's the case.
droopyEyelids 4y ago
ChatGPT opened my eyes to the fact that we already should have been wondering about it. I tried using ChatGPT to generate answers to some requests to my team, and it created the most plausible wild goose chase answers I could ever imagine. They would be a terrible waste of time for anyone who received them. Then I started to notice how many of the emails and requests I get are just as bad! Plausible sounding answers directing me to teams that don't exist, or telling me to read documentation that doesn't apply to the question I asked. Asking questions that seems specific but have fundamental contradictions that make them nonsense. With people's limited knowledge and time and lack of attention and care we already live in the world of plausible bullshit hallucinated nonsense.
- aldarisbm 4y ago
  This is why the grounding that office365 seems to be doing will be so important, it will not be 100% but having the response be grounded on actual artifacts (actual documentation, emails, data) will be huge, the fact that it gives you citations for the things it suggests, is huge. Props to the MS team.
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    The actual documentation and emails are like 80% bullshit though. This will just generate more plausible sounding bullshit than a completely naive AI. It would be nice if the thing helps me right excel formulas more conveniently though.
sandworm101 4y ago
Can one bring a sexual harassments complaint against a machine? I see this thing being trained up on material within an HR department only to parrot back some horrible phrase it learned after reading hundreds of harassment complaint discussions. I used to work surrounded by lawyers. Just like doctors drift into discussions of horrible diseases, lawyer drift into discussions of horrible legal situations. Letting Clippy "learn" from that material seems really dangerous. How do you kill/reset this thing once it has become poisoned?
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  You would just bring an HR complaint against the person that didn't proofread what the AI said.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Isn't proofreading one of those low-hanging fruits, one of those those easy and mundane tasks at which AI excels?
    - massysett 4y ago
      If the green squiggles in Word are any indication, not at all. Maybe Microsoft has improved it lately?
    - xen2xen1 4y ago
      Not right now.
- galaxytachyon 4y ago
  There are built in guardrails. Those are so strong it effectively lobotomized the LLM and force to abort its own internal process in favor of just saying: "I am sorry Dave, I am afraid I can't do that". Try to make ChatGPT or Bing to even attempt to write a snarky and negative email to your coworkers. It will refuse to do so. Jailbreak attempts may work, but with how strong the guardrails are, it is unlikely you can consistently succeed. And any failed attemps can be report to sysadmins and forwarded to HR. Too much risk.
agloe_dreams 4y ago
> now we'll have to wonder whether Manager X is even paying attention to the emails they're reading and responding to, or doing any actual work or thinking If my experience in engineering is anything to go by, this worry existed since the dawn of middle management. AI just makes it give good responses instead.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  "BingBot, could you please write an email subtly undermining inter–team cohesion by hinting at gossipy shit-talk without mentioning it explicitly, and also praise my report in a way that demonstrates I don't know or appreciate what they've been doing for the past 2 years, calibrated to hurt their self-confidence without quite causing them to quit?"
  - davio 4y ago
    That's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him
  - KyeRussell 4y ago
    You are all presumably incredibly privileged tech workers that are free to find a better place to work instead of acting like this shit is inherent in a workplace, because it isn’t.
    - antisthenes 4y ago
      There's not enough "better places" for everyone.
- jimcsharp 4y ago
  Sounds good. Cheers.
  - agloe_dreams 4y ago
    K. thanks
roseway4 4y ago
Is it any better or worse than delegating work to a junior team member and not bothering to review the work product? I love the idea that I can rapidly produce a rough draft of a document from notes, something I’m already doing with ChatGPT, albeit not as elegantly as if the functionality were integrated into Docs/Word.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Is it any better or worse than delegating work to a junior team member and not bothering to review the work product? When a junior team member screws up the interpretation, there is someone to hold accountable. With Office 365Bot, there is no accountability for errors.
  - robjan 4y ago
    In any sensible organisation the manager will be the accountable party regardless of whether the frontline staff are human or AI.
costcofries 4y ago
This will fundamentally change the way that M365 enables collaboration. I am truly fascinated by how quickly Microsoft is moving right now, it's really impressive. The moat on AI in enterprise continues to get bigger and bigger.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Congratulations, you have earned one Micro-buck.
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho approves, brought to you by Carl's Junior, and Brawndo, the thirst mutilatior.
roflyear 4y ago
They aren't today believe me!
allenu 4y ago
At least the yearly perf review at Microsoft is going to get easier since you just toss all your notes about what you did for the year to Copilot and have it write your summary. Your manager can do the same thing for their notes about you and compare.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  Even better is if you use their apps you don't have to even make notes. It could just figure it out.
- wcoenen 4y ago
  Speaking of notes, I noticed that OneNote is absent from the list of products that will get Copilot.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
As a dev, I'm very much attracted to the ability to turn a Teams meeting transcript into a documentation page.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  Ooh. I mean, ooo..
fintechjock 4y ago
I was thinking about this last night. The new AI tools are like performance enhancing drugs in sports. Especially in bodybuilding, there was a really painful transition from the world of non-PEDs to PEDs. They solved that by going to natural and non-natural competitions. Other sports didn’t handle it so well (baseball, cycling, etc) Just as people were asking “did Lance / Sammy / Barry / Arnold really do that incredible feat without juicing?” I think that we will now be asking “did Janice really write that blog post or was it GPT-4?” Scary world
- rychco 4y ago
  PEDs do not make you a world class athlete, but you likely cannot be a world class athlete without some sort of PEDs. Much like PED use, top performers will take advantage of the new tools to widen the skill gap with their peers even further.
- strus 4y ago
  EVERY professional athlete is juicing. Most of them just don't get caught.
  - DoesntMatter22 4y ago
    Is Steph Curry juicing? If so how so? EPO? It's not going to make you shoot better. All pro golfers?
    - strus 4y ago
      > It's not going to make you shoot better. Nor do the muscles (from the point where you are strong enough so the ball can reach the basket), and yet you will not see a basketball players that is not muscular. PEDs allow you to gain muscles faster and have greater stamina, all of which is beneficial. > All pro golfers? Of course I was talking mainly about sports where physical performance matters. Although PEDs exists even in e-sport (Adderall).
alach11 4y ago
Maybe this is the beginning of the end of middle management? A large part of the work is keeping up with what your employees are doing, removing blockers, and maintaining alignment with other teams. This makes it vastly easier to keep up with a larger number of reports, making flatter organizations easier to run.

redox99 4y ago

On the other hand, maybe you prefer the decisions the AI takes for them instead of what they would do by themselves.

aldarisbm 4y ago
System prompt: >>> You're a strict yet lenient manager, you have very high expectations from your reports, while making them feel like they are part of a bigger family. every email you write should reflect this.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  This doesn't actually sound like a joke.

xattt 4y ago

> Could lead to a world that's even more tilted towards politics and socially engineering your way up the ladder, versus competence and skill. The skill and competence of the coming world will be in prompt-writing.

swader999 4y ago
For a year or two maybe.

hudsonjr 4y ago

That's kind of my concern as well. I feel like there is already a decline in thinking, but currently I can at least tell that it's the case.

droopyEyelids 4y ago

ChatGPT opened my eyes to the fact that we already should have been wondering about it. I tried using ChatGPT to generate answers to some requests to my team, and it created the most plausible wild goose chase answers I could ever imagine. They would be a terrible waste of time for anyone who received them. Then I started to notice how many of the emails and requests I get are just as bad! Plausible sounding answers directing me to teams that don't exist, or telling me to read documentation that doesn't apply to the question I asked. Asking questions that seems specific but have fundamental contradictions that make them nonsense. With people's limited knowledge and time and lack of attention and care we already live in the world of plausible bullshit hallucinated nonsense.

aldarisbm 4y ago
This is why the grounding that office365 seems to be doing will be so important, it will not be 100% but having the response be grounded on actual artifacts (actual documentation, emails, data) will be huge, the fact that it gives you citations for the things it suggests, is huge. Props to the MS team.
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  The actual documentation and emails are like 80% bullshit though. This will just generate more plausible sounding bullshit than a completely naive AI. It would be nice if the thing helps me right excel formulas more conveniently though.

sandworm101 4y ago

Can one bring a sexual harassments complaint against a machine? I see this thing being trained up on material within an HR department only to parrot back some horrible phrase it learned after reading hundreds of harassment complaint discussions. I used to work surrounded by lawyers. Just like doctors drift into discussions of horrible diseases, lawyer drift into discussions of horrible legal situations. Letting Clippy "learn" from that material seems really dangerous. How do you kill/reset this thing once it has become poisoned?

RandallBrown 4y ago
You would just bring an HR complaint against the person that didn't proofread what the AI said.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Isn't proofreading one of those low-hanging fruits, one of those those easy and mundane tasks at which AI excels?
  - massysett 4y ago
    If the green squiggles in Word are any indication, not at all. Maybe Microsoft has improved it lately?
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    Not right now.
galaxytachyon 4y ago
There are built in guardrails. Those are so strong it effectively lobotomized the LLM and force to abort its own internal process in favor of just saying: "I am sorry Dave, I am afraid I can't do that". Try to make ChatGPT or Bing to even attempt to write a snarky and negative email to your coworkers. It will refuse to do so. Jailbreak attempts may work, but with how strong the guardrails are, it is unlikely you can consistently succeed. And any failed attemps can be report to sysadmins and forwarded to HR. Too much risk.

agloe_dreams 4y ago

> now we'll have to wonder whether Manager X is even paying attention to the emails they're reading and responding to, or doing any actual work or thinking If my experience in engineering is anything to go by, this worry existed since the dawn of middle management. AI just makes it give good responses instead.

jacobolus 4y ago
"BingBot, could you please write an email subtly undermining inter–team cohesion by hinting at gossipy shit-talk without mentioning it explicitly, and also praise my report in a way that demonstrates I don't know or appreciate what they've been doing for the past 2 years, calibrated to hurt their self-confidence without quite causing them to quit?"
- davio 4y ago
  That's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  You are all presumably incredibly privileged tech workers that are free to find a better place to work instead of acting like this shit is inherent in a workplace, because it isn’t.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    There's not enough "better places" for everyone.
jimcsharp 4y ago
Sounds good. Cheers.
- agloe_dreams 4y ago
  K. thanks

roseway4 4y ago

Is it any better or worse than delegating work to a junior team member and not bothering to review the work product? I love the idea that I can rapidly produce a rough draft of a document from notes, something I’m already doing with ChatGPT, albeit not as elegantly as if the functionality were integrated into Docs/Word.

reaperducer 4y ago
Is it any better or worse than delegating work to a junior team member and not bothering to review the work product? When a junior team member screws up the interpretation, there is someone to hold accountable. With Office 365Bot, there is no accountability for errors.
- robjan 4y ago
  In any sensible organisation the manager will be the accountable party regardless of whether the frontline staff are human or AI.

costcofries 4y ago

This will fundamentally change the way that M365 enables collaboration. I am truly fascinated by how quickly Microsoft is moving right now, it's really impressive. The moat on AI in enterprise continues to get bigger and bigger.

peteradio 4y ago
Congratulations, you have earned one Micro-buck.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho approves, brought to you by Carl's Junior, and Brawndo, the thirst mutilatior.

roflyear 4y ago

They aren't today believe me!

allenu 4y ago

At least the yearly perf review at Microsoft is going to get easier since you just toss all your notes about what you did for the year to Copilot and have it write your summary. Your manager can do the same thing for their notes about you and compare.

theGnuMe 4y ago
Even better is if you use their apps you don't have to even make notes. It could just figure it out.
wcoenen 4y ago
Speaking of notes, I noticed that OneNote is absent from the list of products that will get Copilot.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

As a dev, I'm very much attracted to the ability to turn a Teams meeting transcript into a documentation page.

xen2xen1 4y ago
Ooh. I mean, ooo..

fintechjock 4y ago

I was thinking about this last night. The new AI tools are like performance enhancing drugs in sports. Especially in bodybuilding, there was a really painful transition from the world of non-PEDs to PEDs. They solved that by going to natural and non-natural competitions. Other sports didn’t handle it so well (baseball, cycling, etc) Just as people were asking “did Lance / Sammy / Barry / Arnold really do that incredible feat without juicing?” I think that we will now be asking “did Janice really write that blog post or was it GPT-4?” Scary world

rychco 4y ago
PEDs do not make you a world class athlete, but you likely cannot be a world class athlete without some sort of PEDs. Much like PED use, top performers will take advantage of the new tools to widen the skill gap with their peers even further.
strus 4y ago
EVERY professional athlete is juicing. Most of them just don't get caught.
- DoesntMatter22 4y ago
  Is Steph Curry juicing? If so how so? EPO? It's not going to make you shoot better. All pro golfers?
  - strus 4y ago
    > It's not going to make you shoot better. Nor do the muscles (from the point where you are strong enough so the ball can reach the basket), and yet you will not see a basketball players that is not muscular. PEDs allow you to gain muscles faster and have greater stamina, all of which is beneficial. > All pro golfers? Of course I was talking mainly about sports where physical performance matters. Although PEDs exists even in e-sport (Adderall).

alach11 4y ago

Maybe this is the beginning of the end of middle management? A large part of the work is keeping up with what your employees are doing, removing blockers, and maintaining alignment with other teams. This makes it vastly easier to keep up with a larger number of reports, making flatter organizations easier to run.