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Leak Reveals Microsoft Wants Its AI to Be 'Addictive'

61 points by thm

by lousken

0 subcomment

Well they just achieved the opposite of that with github copilot, congrats

by saurik

2 subcomments

Maybe trying to engineer addiction is what should be illegal, and if you want to question "how do you define whether something is addictive" you don't need an objective measure: you determine whether it seems like the people making the product seem to think that's their goal.

by stevenkkim

0 subcomment

Step 1: make copilot in window actually useful.

by noitpmeder

5 subcomments

Literally every company on the planet would jump at the chance for their product to be addictive.

by satvikpendem

0 subcomment

There are some good books on how to make products addictive, like Hooked. What's funny is the author, I guess, got backlash or had remorse writing that book so he put out another book called Indistractable but it's plainly obvious that you as a user would not be able to compete against legions of psychiatrists in these companies whose goal, day in and day out, is to addict you.

by HlessClaudesman

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Copilot, I want you to find product market fit, don't return an answer until you have found it.

by legitster

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I'm not sure what the smoking gun is here. Usefulness and dependence are mostly interchangeable. I'm "addicted" to computers, indoor plumbing, headphones, entertainment, etc.
The crime here seems to be that they used a wrong word - would it have been better if they used "snackable", "irresistible", "enthusiast", or "binge-worthy"?

by neilv

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There are plenty reasons to be critical of Microsoft's AI strategy and tactics (and especially of many other things MS has done), but the linked article seems to be targeted at gamer, rather than at people who care about non-gaming tech industry or public policy.
What seemed a bit more relevant was one of the linked 404 articles, concerning CEO's denial and attempts to dismiss the document, before the document was revealed to be co-authored by the head of the strategic project. But even that article sounds more like social media or political mud-slinging in style, rather than journalism:
> In attempting to distance himself from his own company’s executives and strategy documents, Nadella has revealed that he either does not know how to read or does not know what is happening with some of the company’s highest-profile products.
But what I didn't see what a smoking gun that they were truly looking for addictive (like, say, Facebook/Meta has been caught engineering) rather than something they could've described as essential if they weren't using amped-up business bro language. So rage-baiting over the word "addictive" seems to be missing better questions.

by ChrisArchitect

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[dupe] Discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374079
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408581

by logicchains

0 subcomment

They haven't been doing a very good job. Maybe they asked "CoPilot, please make our AI products like a drug", but it misunderstood and instead of making them addictive like cocaine, it made them uncomfortable to use like a laxative.

by righthand

1 subcomments

That’s probably why they pushed out Phil Spencer and handed over the Xbox division to a very pro-AI employee.

by josefritzishere

0 subcomment

So... that's pretty disgusting. Why are these AI evangelists so gross? It's a useful technology... It's only the Simpsons-Monorail sales pitch that makes it feel icky.

by LetsGetTechnicl

0 subcomment

So their "humanistic" approach is just marketing, huge surprise /s

by 341287

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by baal80spam

1 subcomments

kotaku? Really?

by esafak

2 subcomments

Good on Nadella: After expressing his complete disbelief that such a document could have been written, Nadella adds that the elusive and mysterious authors “may want to go work elsewhere.”
edit: VP of a product I had not even heard of; it's no Copilot. I would not assume it was on Nadella's radar.