It feels like Microsoft doesn't remember how Cortana was received. Why don't you fix Windows' file search instead?
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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I had to download a file search program because Windows is such shit. This program searches both my harddrives in no time and iirc shows folder file sizes.
I've used windows since the 90s. I'm finally switching to Linux when I get a new PC.
File search is fucking terrible on windows, dear lord.
The fact that it's mind-blowing to him is unimpressive to me so. Potato tomato.
They're really up their own arses and don't realise why people use computers to begin with.
I don't need to talk to a computer (nor do I want to). I'm fine using a keyboard. All I need is a machine that performs my tasks fluently and flawlessly.
I think, the main misperception here is that ordinary people do not have half of the enthusiasm about AI, that the tech industry leader have, while those try to throw AI into everything they have to make it (and the corresponding investments) somehow meaningful and profitable.
Some people do want to talk to their computer and would love it if it worked right.
The problem is that it often doesn't work right,cans they're setting it up as though everyone has that as their top priority for their desktop.
Instead of baking it in to the os, expose the bits needed so it can be an installable program. Now people can have it or not, and you open the door for different non-ai tools to also work on the computer.
It's almost like a proper, consistent API would be better than a bot you try to convince to use a dozen bad ones.
Windows to let side loading third party AI onto their baby, with priority access to a bunch of APIs that might actually make them compete on their own OS? I wish.
I might actually be willing to try something very light, if I could control exactly which APIs and methods it could access, plus I could load my own model into it. Why not? “Hey computer, play some lo-fi, open up my email client, and read me today’s unread mail from my inbox.”
But trust is the factor for me here. For example, I don’t want it allowed anywhere near my projects. I don’t want it allowed to screen capture. I don’t want it allowed to do any write operations to my filesystem. I don’t want it allowed to perform Internet activity except within a browser… the list goes on.
Entirely agree. Personally most of what I would want done would be better handled by a macro system that was easy to setup. Most of what I want is pretty usually the same so "remember this setup" is basically good enough.
This what happens when fucking weirdos who have never talked to other people are in charge of tech. they come up with something that can't talk like a person and is always wrong and they are super impressed with it because it's the closest they come to socializing.
I don't want anything to do with AI. I disabled it everywhere. Yet, you keep shoving it down my throat. The more you do that, the less I want to interact with it. Toss more AI on me, and I'll look to disable it.
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LLMs are cool up to a point. It is pretty neat to see something imitate human speech so convincingly. But that's it: neat. Like a phone shaped like a hamburger.
For me to be impressed beyond that, your thing needs to either do something that I can't do better or do something i don't want to do. I can write a pretty good grade 8 essay. I can summarize a paragraph. I can write a dirty limerick. I can complete my own sentence without ~~punctuation~~ suggestions.
When I want to create something, I want to do it myself. Putting my ideas in order and finding the words to say something meaningful is the fun part. Even when I write a work email or a cover letter, I'm not really interested in help. Either I have something to say (don't want help), or I rattle it off in one go (don't need help).
Microsoft, I don't owe you my attention or my money. Make something useful that doesn't suck. Impress me.
imitate human speech
Good point on bringing this up. It's imitation. The moment it needs to make arbitrary decisions it starts committing mistakes due to lack of context, which it doesn't have because it's a fucking machine following IF scripts. It is useless in this sense, but AI creators thought they could circumvent this by programming the AI say: "Oh! Sorry, you are correct, it is exactly what you said" after you give it the context only your human persona can grasp.
Had they called this letters or words calculator, it would be much more ethical than calling this AI. Hence why the bubble is bursting, lying to people about it's capabilities. It is just a new calculator for phrases instead of numbers.
If they hadn't jumped the gun so badly and tainted the launch with crap results, Google would have been well positioned to do something profoundly useful.
If it could actually extract useful information with citations and pointers for next steps and work as an interactive search, that would actually be really really useful.
The whole "hallucinating health advice" and "being terrible" thing really set them back, even if they've improved.
Like you said, I don't really need help creating. I do need help remembering things or finding information: that's why I'm using a search engine in the first place.
At work, there's a person who knows everything about the job. He regularly gets questions where the answer is just the correct way to find out for yourself.
That's what I want. "Oh, you mean X? Try looking at YZ. Oh, you wanted X, but in G conditions. That's over in FOO. It's confusing because reasons written down here..."
You’ve explained my feelings about llms perfectly. I have a lot of coworkers that use it constantly all day for work and are confused that I don’t. TBH I can see that it is saving them time on a lot of tasks, but I like that part of my job. It can’t do all the bad parts of our job (lab work) just the rewarding parts (reading, writing, statistics, figure design, coding).
I dislike AI (LLM) generated output for a myriad of reasons, but there has been one use case I've found useful, as much as I hate to admit it, and that is digesting large volumes of text and summarising it or identifying passages in that text that match my description of what I want to find - generally a better outcome than simple keyword searching, and I can look at the bit it identified, which is not AI content..it's just pointing me to the right part.
And this makes me wonder why Google photos has such a terrible search function.
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AI is becoming impressive. But that doesn't mean I agreed to let companies steal my data and art to train it.
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Because it’s just an inference machine. That’s impressive on its own but you fuckers keep pretending it is intelligent. It’s not. It’s a toddler with an enormous vocabulary and shareholders.
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No matter how "cool" it is its primary purpose, first and foremost, is to generate spam. A trillion dollar industry, effectively, in the service of spamming our search results, inboxes, text messages, science journals, homework assignments, and so much more
Haha, AI hallucinations seem to be infectious.
For some reason it is not mindblowing to me that the Microsoft AI CEO is astronomically out of touch with normal people.
I think it is probably the behavior of Microsoft as a company that makes me feel that way.
I'm amazed by AI and what it can do, compared to what computers could do in the past. Its truly astonishing at how far we've come and we can marvel at the capabilities.
I still dont want to use it though. It's not reliable enough for what I would actually use it for, and if I had a job that could make use of it, I'd be counting down the days until it puts me out on the street.
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