9 ms·
This is emblematic of the LLM race in general. We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work, and it’s crammed into every Microsoft product. I’m thankful tha
by everdrive 2y ago
This is emblematic of the LLM race in general. We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work, and it’s crammed into every Microsoft product. I’m thankful that my iPhone is old enough not to use LLMs. Companies are afraid of being left behind in the new arms race, but that doesn’t actually mean that the technology actually present use-cases which most people need. (Worse are the meeting summaries or emails which are written by LLMs. The summaries are just not very good, and any sort of LLM writing is a tacit acknowledgement that people don’t really care what they are writing, an that no one is really reading that writing very carefully.)
- _heimdall 2y ago> We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work Unless you work at Microsoft, that's really interesting to me. Can't say I've ever experienced a boss pushing for me to use a certain developer tool.
- hobs 2y agoI have many friends telling me their job is actively pushing for them to use AI, asking them to be creative about the use of AI, and in some cases pivoting the business to AI products which have no profit margin for the business. I have worked at many places, and often as soon as there's enough profit and momentum based on the back of some core product the fad chasing begins in earnest.
- whaleofatw2022 2y agoSuits get to then do talks about how awesome they are for their AI transition and the synergies it brought to their OKRS. Or some bs like that. Work at one or two shops where an expensive product makes the org's life a living hell but two directors or similar get to do a talk about how it has 'transformed' IT. It will all make sense then.
- iamacyborg 2y agoI've experienced this, it mostly comes with eye-wateringly expensive yearly contracts the company has signed where whoever made the decision needs to show that even low single digit percentages of company staff are using the thing they received a license for.
- shortrounddev2 2y agoIt's pretty common in large orgs, I think. Someone gets sold on or just excited about the features claimed by a particular product and becomes the czar for that thing. They want to make the transition to that product successful for their own career reasons. If people aren't using it, then the purchase was a bad move, so people start getting pressured to use the product regardless of how useful it is. Year ago, my company switched from Skype for Business to MS Teams, and we just used Teams the same way we did Skype for Business (PMing each other directly) and the guy who made the transition was always lecturing us about having conversations in public threads instead.
- LordGrey 2y agoI'm in a large org where Copilot is pushed. What I've heard from upper management is that even a very small average productivity gain, multiplied by the number of developers we have, means that we have "saved" x number of man-hours per year. Man-hours can be translated into "number of employees", so if the Copilot license comes in under that employee salary total, it is a win.
- _heimdall 2y agoI get it more for communication tools. I'm surprised to hear Copilot being pushed as it really is just a DX tool. My product is my code, maybe Copilot helps me but the boss should only care about the work getting done.
- bravetraveler 2y agoNot OP or at Microsoft, but also get the same pressure. Our business is financially invested in the hype, so it makes sense. Less about being able to truly say a lot of people use the thing/find benefit. The first part is fine
- rsynnott 2y agoI assume in some (poorly-run) companies, the person whose Big Idea (TM) it was to introduce this stuff may push people to use it, so that it seems like their thing was successful.
- williamdclt 2y agoI've had a little bit of that in a previous startup. It's easy to explain: there's so much content around "AI is going to increase productivity", and "if your company doesn't use AI it won't be competitive". AI evangelists are everywhere, from the internet to their direct network, reinforcing the idea. Investors are also influenced the same way, and put direct pressure on the leaders. So it results in the CEO telling everyone that they should be using copilot (amongst other tools) because it'll improve their productivity, without knowing for a fact whether that's true or not.
- rchaud 2y agoExecs are simply following the manufactured consensus about AI's impact on productivity and innovation. Go with a name brand like Microsoft and get that promotion for digital transformation or whatever. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
- r00fus 2y agoMakes complete sense - some higher-up is betting on LLMs to make a big change to the org. If they're right, then leadership looks amazing (we got in early on a transformative new technology/tool that has resulted in major productivity wins!) If they're wrong - they also look good (we tried the latest fad, pushed everyone to really give it a go, and decided it wasn't worth it). No trial period for CoPilot means everyone wants to get their team to jump in and make the most of it quickly so they can evaluate whether to renew it next year.
- vondur 2y agoThe Zoom AI summary seems to work pretty well for me.
- ARandumGuy 2y agoWhat I don't understand is, what benefit is there for 99% of companies to get in on the ground floor of LLMs? If you're not developing your own model, you're effectively just beta testing someone else's model. And if the sales pitch of LLMs being able to do basically anything comes true, wouldn't most companies still get the same benefit if they just wait? It seems like a lot of companies are so terrified of missing the boat that they don't sit down and do actual risk analysis.
- mrguyorama 2y ago>What I don't understand is, what benefit is there for 99% of companies to get in on the ground floor of LLMs? Wallstreet. These companies are largely based on increasing the share price. That's what shareholders want, that's what the board wants, and that's what the C-suite, compensated mostly in stock, wants. Nothing really matters except increasing the stock price, and right now the AI bubble is so damn superheated that if you do not announce something AI, you might be punished in the stock market as investors pull their money and put it somewhere that is willing to bullshit in order to collect some of that sweet hype money. Because the vast majority of the stock market is literally a "greater fool" system. The point is not to make good companies that will enrich you with strong dividends forever, but rather to pump and dump. The entire point of the public market (for public companies) is that you can bullshit, pump up your stock price, and then dump those pumped up stocks onto a fool because you know the company isn't nearly as valuable as the stock says it is. Private investors are so goddamned wealthy nowadays that it makes zero sense to engage with the public stock market, and the regulation and demands that it requires of you, unless you are trying to dump on bagholders. Your average trader is so goddamned stupid you can literally run a company with no fundamentals and no plan and have a $13 billion market cap. Your entire business can be "sell shares repeatedly to these same losers who are blatantly illiterate, can't do basic math, and are outright gambling addicts" and retire on the free money that these people THANK YOU for taking. You can openly enrich yourself off these idiots, and they will vote for it willingly! The point of being on the public market is to attempt to take advantage of these people and take their money.
- oorza 2y agoI think you'll find most people in leadership positions at most companies are not that forward thinking, proactive, or frankly intelligent. I thought cost-benefit and risk was analyzed on most big company decisions, until I sat in rooms for a Fortune 500 where those decisions were getting made. If you assume that everyone everywhere is doing just barely the minimum to not get fired, you're right more often than not.
- pid-1 2y agoI've brought MS Copilot licenses for my company in ~ February 2023. They were sold in a yearly commitment and offered no trials. A bad deal, but I was afraid of missing out AI productivity gains. I'm definitely not renewing those. Times are hard and the value provided does not justify the cost. I wonder how many companies will do the same.
- syntaxing 2y agoI recently personally resubscribed to copilot after cancelling my subscription a couple months ago since it was not providing value. But now with the new/beta “Edit” mode and being able to specify to use o1, o1 mini, and sonnet 3.5, the $10 a month feels a lot more worth it. The edit mode has outperformed aider for me.
- ellisv 2y agoInteresting because I pay for Copilot and Supermaven, although most of my coworkers don't. To be fair, it was twisting their arms to get them to use linters, formatters, and other tools so I think asking them to use AI auto-complete is a bit much right now.
- Bluecobra 2y agoI've found Copliot to be really good at generating funny memes and haikus for specific issues/tasks where I work. The productivity gains come from me not having to use Photoshop and have more time to browse websites like this one.
- xattt 2y ago> The summaries are just not very good, and any sort of LLM writing is a tacit acknowledgement that people don’t really care what they are writing, an that no one is really reading that writing very carefully.) I tend to write emails aggressively. The friendly option is helpful to tone down the rhetoric.
- charles_f 2y agoI do the same! Lately when something really infuriates me, I tend to lean into it, write the email with insults and all, and let chatgpt make it into something that won't get me fired.
- ada1981 2y agoI disagree about the summaries. I find them to be vey good and helpful. I teach a high level course and each week have the transcript summarized for students; also get feedback on my lecture and help creating the lesson plan for the following week. My father was Dean of one of the top teachers colleges in the world and has been blown away by how useful LLMs can be for education.
- shortrounddev2 2y agoLLMs could and should revolutionize education, with proper human supervision and fact checking since they regularly make shit up too
- rsynnott 2y agoI hope you check them. AI meeting summary things are... well, not averse to making shit up, or getting things exactly wrong.
- ada1981 2y agoSo far so good. Fathom has been great.
- EPWN3D 2y agoPersonally I've found Copilot's meeting summaries to be really good. They're definitely a lot better than most minutes I've ever seen taken contemporaneously.
- dylan604 2y agoThe crazy thing to me means that people are okay with recording 100% of every meeting they ever have. I've been in plenty of meetings where you just don't want things recorded, and no, that does not mean the meeting was shady.
- brookst 2y agoOther than legally sensitive topics, what meetings would you not want recorded? Do people take notes or are they just totally ephemeral?
- dylan604 2y agoThe number of meetings I attend where no notes are taken dwarfs the number with notes taken. Clearly, I must live in a different universe from the rest of everyone here where notes are taken at every meeting
- ElevenLathe 2y agoIMO there is no advantage to having "community" notes taken of a meeting: I take my own notes about decisions made in the meeting that I care about, and items I need to take care of. Therefore, every meeting I'm in has notes taken, though no one else is even aware (unless they are taking their own, which I assume many are). I think this is relatively common (since I can't see how one can function in most knowledge work without some version of this) so I would assume that you probably are in meetings where notes are taken, even if you never see them.
- dylan604 2y agoThis is moving the goal posts, though, and you know it. In a meeting with "notes taken", there is someone tasked with doing so in an official manner usually decided by the person coordinating the meeting. It is also typically known by the meeting attendees that this is the case. Those notes are usually made available after the fact in whatever form is normal for that company. In Zoom type meetings, we all get the "recording" notice during the meeting. What individuals do is not the point of this thread. However, we've seen plenty of examples of where individuals do record on their own devices meetings which were meant to be private but leaked later. Again, that is out of scope for the general purpose of this. Again, you know this. Or at least, you should
- ubermonkey 2y ago"We’re actively pressured to use co-pilot at work" Holy shit, really? That sounds horrific.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoThe papertrail has only value, in dire situations- the only one reading it, editing it and tracking it, are people complicit, explicit or implicit in cooperate crimes.
- behnamoh 2y ago3 years ago, I and many people were using GPT-3 on our iPhones and Apple Watches (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDB3uIEgU0E&t=36s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDB3uIEgU0E&t=36s). For 3 years I wondered why Apple wouldn't make it a native feature. - Was it because they didn't want to use a third-party AI system? No, because Apple Intelligence uses ChatGPT anyway. - Was it because Apple didn't know how to add AI features to iOS? No, if anything they have access to way more APIs than I had when I built the iOS Shortcut in the video. - Was it because Apple didn't take AI seriously? This to me sounds silly but in retrospect, I'm starting to believe this was exactly the case. Apple has been on a wrong trajectory for the past few years: - They were busy building Apple Car. Then when the AI pressure finally kicked in, they stopped the car project. Why were they in the car business in the first place?! And why did they simply tell most Apple Car employees to work on AI now? Cars also have AI but it's not the same thing. - They built Apple Vision Pro but have failed to showcase any real-world use case for it yet. Apple Intelligence isn't even supported on the AVP. I don't want to call it a failed project but by many measures it is. - Apple, and specifically Tim Cook, are great at optimization: from the supply chain to setting optimal prices that extract the most value from customers. But they forgot what allowed them to do this in the first place: a decade-long vision set by Steve Jobs. Current day Apple isn't going to disappear, but it's becoming less and less relevant in the broader tech landscape. In a sense, Apple has become the McDonald's of handheld gadgets. But if I want the latest tech, the most interesting use-cases of AI, or simply ground-braking devices no one has heard of, I'd go to a French/Persian/etc. restaurant instead of Apple's McDonalds.
- vrighter 2y agoThinking AI is silly is not the wrong trajectory. AI IS silly. The law of large numbers applies. 99% accuracy means that thousands or millions of queries daily are just wrong. So AI is not suited for large scale deployments. When I was working with a company delivering a product to thousands (not millions) of customers, we still encountered very rare stuff like data corruption due to memory bit-flips. Quite regularly. Even though that's quite a rare event, much much less than 1% likely. A 1% failure rate for something deployed to millions of places is utterly abysmal. And no, they will not keep improving indefinitely. They've already hit a wall.
- browningstreet 2y agoI think LLMs work best when you go to them and know what you’re getting and how hard you’re going to work to get something good. When it’s just there… you expect something better than that and you can’t quite “work it” the same as when you’re iterating through the native interface, or API. I use LLMs a lot, all day long, but I’ve disabled Apple Intelligence. [I’m also salty how bad typing still is on an iPhone and they’re messing with this stuff.]
- Smaug123 2y agoThe fact that the GPT-style models are literally autocomplete engines, while text autocompletion on phone keyboards remains terrible, really maddens me. Is it that they simply aren't using that style of model for autocompletion, or that the GPTs aren't great at guessing me specifically even though they're superhuman at autocompleting the Internet, or that it would be too slow to run a sufficiently good GPT for this on-device, or what?
- browningstreet 2y agoI fear this may be the best auto correct will ever be.
- brookst 2y ago> any sort of LLM writing is a tacit acknowledgement that people don’t really care what they are writing Couldn’t be further from my experience. I work with a distributed team that has four different native languages, with substantial engineering staff for each. LLMs have made our cross-geo communications so much better. I can get a summary of a standup that happened overnight (to me) and in a foreign language (to me) when I get up in the morning. I can write idiomatically and naturally without worrying it will be confusing or misinterpreted. Plenty of people are not naturally talented writers, especially in your language of choice. LLM writing doesn’t mean they don’t care, it means they DO care about communicating clearly.
- mey 2y agoHow accurate are the summaries?
- brookst 2y agoI’ve found some minor inaccuracies, but nothing catastrophic enough to make me think I’d be better off without them.
- Sateeshm 2y agoBased on my experience, it's very risky. A lot of times, it connects similar but very different things that should be seperate and changes the meaning of the message/discussion
- mh- 2y agoNot OP, but I'll answer from my experience trying several different tools for this: the good ones are roughly as accurate as having a human note taker, familiar with the domain terminology, would be on average.
- Bluecobra 2y agoI turned on Apple Intelligence to summarize notifications from Outlook, Teams, etc. I haven't found it to be very accurate yet, especially for MS Teams.
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- mbesto 2y agoI'm desperately waiting for co-pilot to be implemented at my company for then productivity gains. For example, I assume I'll be able to do the following: - Select text in any report I create and say "rewrite this in a professional tone" - I write a sloppy email with a few bullet points of what I'm trying to get to and have it rewrite it in my tone - Immediately after a call about a new project, present notes of the call with next steps, keep agreements made, etc. - Search Outlook for specific things like "Kevin from PE Firm LLC said he wanted this report by which date, can you tell me?"
- dpweb 2y agoMaybe because nobody really asked for these things gemoji and "rewrite my email". Neural nets are a foundational technology there should be a ecosystem of apps based on it. People pay 1500$ for an iphone because it has apps, not to call and text people. I think its coming and Apple can't just NOT do AI, so I get it, but it will take a little time.
- lostmsu 2y ago> I’m thankful that my iPhone is old enough not to use LLMs. Well, too bad for you, as a 3rd party we had no reason to artificially restrict our handsfree AI voice companion to new iPhone models: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6737482921?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6737482921?mt=8 (shameless self-promotion)
- rsynnott 2y ago> Worse are the meeting summaries These can be quite _funny_, sometimes, but they're certainly not useful, yeah.
- blago 2y ago> Companies are afraid of being left behind in the new arms race... Sometimes it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
- ninininino 2y agoAt companies where the average worker is less intelligent than the mean author of the mean piece of online content used in an LLM's training set, the output from the LLM might be more clever or more well-written than what the average worker at that org would generate themself. At companies where the opposite is true, every LLM output feels like a shittier version of what an employee could have written, like the average Redditor's comment on any given situation.
- nailer 2y agoDo you use a search engine? Do you think search engine results pages are more efficient than getting an answer from an LLM? Apple’s LLM is uniquely useless, because it doesn’t do anything LLM like and Con continually returns “here’s what I found on the web”. Actual consumer LLM apps like Microsoft Copilot are leagues ahead.
- stronglikedan 2y ago> The summaries are just not very good That's the fault of the original author, who should have considered that their work may be summarized by AI, and should have written to that audience in the first place. /s