Microsoft insiders worry the company has become just 'IT for OpenAI'

All of big tech is really worried about this.

Apple is worried about its own science output, with many of their office heavily employing data scientists. A lot of people slate Siri, but Apple's scientists put out a lot of solid research.
Amazon is plugging GenAI into practically everything to appease their execs, because it's the only way to get funding. Moonshot ideas are dead, and all that remains is layoffs, PIP, and pumping AI into shit where it doesn't belong to make shareholders happy. The innovation died, and AI replaced it.
Google has let AI divisions take over both search and big parts of ads. Both are reporting worse experiences for users, but don't worry, any engineer worth anything was laid off and there are no opportunities in other divisions for you either. If there are, they probably got offshored...
Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go, but they're still plugging AI shite in places no one asked for it, with many divisions now severely down in headcount.

If the AI boom is a dud, I can see many of these companies reducing their output further. If someone comes along and competes in their primary offering, there's a real concern that they'll lose ground in ways that were unthinkable mere years ago. Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now, and someone could build a cheap shop that doesn't sell Chinese tat and uses local suppliers to compete with Amazon. Tech really shat the bed during the last economic downturn.

Meta is struggling a lot less, probably because they were smart enough to lay off in one go,
or more like their user experience was already so garbage, adding AI to it doesn't make any noticeable change lol
- I don't use a single Meta product on purpose. I'm sure they scrape my data despite my best efforts to not be tracked online.
  I still unfortunately order things from Amazon for the convenience, use Windows for gaming and at work, and occasionally use Google search with heavy boolean search, custom search engines, and browser extensions for filtering out the garbage. I also still use Google Maps and I have an Android based tv where I occasionally watch SmartTube.
  Hell I even get Netflix included with my T-Mobile subscription. My wife watches that.
  And for now, I have an iPhone SE until it dies and I make the switch to a Google phone or something.
  Typing this out makes me wonder what I'm waiting for to find alternatives for this FAANG garbage, but I have no idea how Facebook still exists.
Monopolies don't care about the user experience, only profit. The AI doesnt understand the former, only the latter. The continued degredation of the user experience is a likely indicator of an increase in revenue as function of successful application of AI.
- The AI doesnt understand the former, only the latter.
  Do you possibly mean "The AI evangelists" or something similar?
  Like, I could totally understand it in the "software will also include the biases of those who wrote it" kind of way (a la Amazon's failed attempt at automating job candidate search). If the only incentive you're given as a programmer is "make it make money", then yeah, your AI is going to bias towards that end.
  Just couldn't tell on first reading
- .
- But that's also a path for them to no longer be a monopoly, if the right competitor makes the right moves.
- Try Kagi. Paid search engines are the future in order to extract yourself from the enshittification of "free" search engines.
Someone could legitimately challenge Google on search right now
Not really, unfortunately, because of the sheer mass of the internet the infrastructure to just support the index of it requires massive funding. Even other giants like MS with Bing struggled with this. Short of a radical new way to run a search engine without a massive index, I just don't see it happening.
- It's kind of curious to me about search because honestly my Internet world has only grown smaller and smaller. Where I used to use Google to find new websites, I feel like most of my searches on Google are now to search a handful of sites I already know. Ironically if Reddit had a better search function, a lot of my Google usage would fall off as I'd just go directly there, as it's still the best place I've found for troubleshooting support and real reviews of lots of products. A competitor to Google wouldn't really need to index the entire web for most people, but rather a relatively small number of website super giants like Amazon, Reddit, Wikipedia, etc.
- Kagi literally provides the same quality Google used to.
I'm not sure there could be any sort of legitimate threat to them, but I could definitely see a Netflix situation playing out. That is a popular upstart temporarily seems poised to take over, but then suffers from extreme levels of interference from bigger players who artificially hold the upstart down while they desperately catch up and then ultimately come at least equal while the Netflix equivalent is mostly a shell of what it could've been.
Never underestimate how much buckets and buckets of cash reserves can overcome even incredibly out of touch laziness when it comes to competing with any start ups. Apple in particular could probably afford to let competitors get a decade ahead and still be able to come back based on the ridiculous amount of cash they have to float their business along with.
- Yeah competition won't work in a market where some competitors have such massive amounts of wealth. This is a failure of unrestrained capitalism and it's bad for consumers ultimately.
If the AI boom is a dud,
Whaddya mean, "if"? Emperor wears no clothes...
- AI did boom, but people don't realize the peak happened a year ago. Now all we have is latecomers with FOMO. It's gonna be all incremental gains from here on.
And people will still say AI isn't a bubble.
- There is a bubble in AI, AI isnt a bubble. In the same way there was a bubble in e-commerce that lead to the dotcom crash. But that didnt mean there was nothing of value there, just that there was too much money chasing hype.
- I think it will hinge on one thing: Will AI provide an experience that is maybe worse, but still sufficient to keep the market share, at lower cost than putting in the proper effort? If so, it might still become a tragic "success"-story.
No. They are still capable of pressure typical for oligopoly (censoring out mentions of their competition, tactically buying out things which could help that competition and shutting them down, defamation, lobbying for laws directed against their competition).
Unless that happens too fast for them to realize.
Summary: stick to open source if you want usability.
- How does that address web search and online shopping?
slate
slag?

I work at a big EU company, MS top partner / strategic account etc. We wanted to implement MS Dynamics CRM in one of our newer business lines, we barely got a reply to our official emails.

After some informal discussions, we were told that salespeople are now only incentivized to sell Copilot, so they don’t really bother with the rest.

If MS is overinvesting to ride the AI hype as a middle man, while letting their core business capabilities (Windows and Office) decline, they will be in trouble in the long term.

To be fair, you can be their Platinum Ultra Tier Level Partner or whatever, and they'll still not reply to you for a week. And when you get the reply it looks like it was written by ChatGPT anyway, and says nothing.
- It was written by copilot, thank you very much
They are purposely enshittifying windows already, they don’t give a shit about making a functional OS anymore and are in the milking their products for all their worth phase and right now Ai is the hot seller.
Hopefully they will be so shortsighted and suffocate themselves with this Ai hype.
- Hopefully they will be so shortsighted and suffocate themselves with this Ai hype.
  waves from over in the linux corner seize the day, and microsoft's throat :P
- Well, maybe it's good they'll die finally.
Windows actually aren't a very big share of their revenue, but Office is yeah.
- It's kind of crazy to me that their AI product is already 50% of the revenue of their OS product. The thing that a stupidly high amount of computers require to even function for most people.
Sounds like a really good opportunity for competitors to sweep in and start attacking
There's the slight hope that decreased service additionally to the bad reliability leads some governments to look for alternatives.
How do I short MS, hm
If MS is overinvesting to ride the AI hype as a middle man, while letting their core business capabilities (Windows and Office) decline, they will be in trouble in the long term.
They aren't just overinesting in AI, they are foreclosing the future of programming and software design as a prestigious, respectable and valuable career.
It doesn't matter if the AI works or not, it just matters that programmers sat there and took it because they thought they were special and the ruling class would never betray their trade.
Well here we are kids if you want a realistic career that will pay the bills dont follow your heart and go into programming and computers, that is a passionate hobby you shouldnt expect to be highly paid for it. Go into the trades, anywhere else, programming as a career is fucked (and again it has nothing to do with whether AI works or not).

I am stuck with Windows 10 & 11 at work, on multiple various machines. Also some versions of Windows Server.

It honestly feels hostile towards the user now. For myriad reasons. It's a constant battle for me to turn pointless crap off that it keeps turning back on with the next big update.

Linux is waiting for you. You know you want it.
- I realize gaming on Linux is already very doable (I have a steam deck), but for me specifically, I need the majority of the mod developers to have shifted over to Linux gaming before I can switch. I primarily play games that tend to be heavily modded and it's really common to need to run some sort of 3rd party tool to mod. One that is often not Linux compatible. I realize there are utilities that can sometimes help with this, but between extremely spotty mod documentation and my own lack of familiarity with Linux, that kind a tricky ask for me to accomplish. I've pretty much given up on playing modded games on my steam deck for now. I hope someday most of the gaming world will switch, but until then I feel somewhat chained to Windows if I want to enjoy my hobby.
- Windows 11 is beyond fucked and I am sure whatever is following will be even more creep.
  Linux is the solution, most just don't realize it yet.
It honestly feels hostile
Very well put. I have the same feeling and it gets worse with every iteration.
- Reading stories in which MS shoots itself in the foot, I am so glad there are 0 Windows 11 installations at home and Windows 10 installations are old (up to date but every install is at least 1 year old) so they don't become enshittified.
Use Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC until it lasts (~2027 iirc). And pray that Linux gets enough first-party support from hardware vendors till then, otherwise we're properly fucked.
- I'm not using Linux in any enterprise capacity, but the compatibility improvements I've seen since the last time I tried out a distro for fun are immense.
  So immense infact that I'm migrating all my home studio and gaming stuff over to Linux and making it my official daily driver via Nobara.
  I'm honestly amazed by how well music production software and hardware works on Linux now. I'm so relieved because I thought this whole Windows enshittification thing was just another part of my life where I seemingly have no control over being made into a product and having all of my data sold constantly.
  A recent migration to GrapheneOS and this new discovery of Linux's amazing capabilities for my use case are such a breath of fresh air. I now have the choice to reject the exploitative practices of these tech companies that have zero respect for people and that makes me happy.
  The more we use and recommend Linux the more of a chance we get of first party support in the future!
Windows is a OS that works against you since at least 10.

Man, the disclaimer at the bottom that Business Insider is partnered with OpenAI to allow them to train on their articles is really the cherry on top.

That's a shit circle. I figured most of their articles were already written by LLMs.
- It might be, but to be fair, that's what the glorified autocompletion is actually good for, if it's actually used a supporting tool, and not to pump out quantity over quality.

It could be that microsoft was just the bootloader to closedAI

Microsoft is having its IBM moment

Copilot is going to want 50 gigs on YOUR computer's hard drive to store snapshots. MS also wants you to buy dedicated AI hardware to run a few of their apps. They're going to steal your computer's storage and processing resources to create a worldwide AI and surveillance network.

No thanks. I finally switched to Linux. Microsoft can become Skynet without my help.

Isn't that a good thing? The best job in the gold rush was selling shovels. Nvidia is already doing that, so I guess the second best thing is providing lodging, which is what Microsoft is doing.

They own like half the company, so wouldn’t OpenAI’s success be their success?

It's the "all your eggs in one basket" problem.
Boeing turned to shit after acquiring another company (not sure of the name), and it changed the culture and leadership
- I think you mean McDonnell Douglas, it's what happens when companies fire all the engineers in charge and replace them with beancounters.
- Boeing turned to shit because successive executive teams looted the company.
  I am not following how bombardier acquisition plays into this
I think maybe execs and investors might feel it's all the same, but if you're a project manager for cloud infrastructure for enterprise services or you've been working for years on releasing a new component of Bing search that you think is a real gamechanger and some muckity-muck at the top says, 'Oh, don't worry about that anymore: a property manager that's owned by a private equity partner of one of our big investors wants the chatbot that schedules apartment viewings in Huntsville to be more flirty, so go massage the prompts to make it convincingly laugh at bad jokes,' some of those folks are liable to start grumbling that this isn't the role that they were pitched when they took this job.
This ain't about the money, this is about control.
Imagine having to deal with that front man haha
Success . . . . yes. Yes that's it.

Paywall

Some Microsoft insiders worry the company's AI strategy has become too focused on its partnership with OpenAI.

A few even grumble that the software giant has turned into a glorified IT department for the hot startup. These comments were part of a recent exclusive story from Business Insider in which Microsoft insiders shared candid views on the company's AI future and its new Copilot tools.

The group at the center of this is Microsoft's AI Platform team, run by Eric Boyd. This sits within Scott Guthrie's Cloud + AI organization.

Insiders say Microsoft is focused less on the internal services that previously made up Azure AI Services and more on the Azure OpenAI service.

One former executive who left as a result of the changes said products like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Bot Service, and Kinect DK are practically gone. Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw said these services exist in some form but either aren't part of the Azure AI org, have been renamed, or have been bundled with other products.

"The former Azure AI is basically just tech support for OpenAI," a former Microsoft executive said. "Eric Boyd is effectively maintaining the OpenAI service. It's less of an innovation engine

Windows Recall did it for me. I switched to Pop!_OS Linux and have been pretty content so far.

Great os, I switched a year ago, no complaints! Plays games, edits videos, no crashes, to anyone reading, get it!

I cant stand microsoft I have to use windows at work and it drives me nuts.

Only reason I like using windows at my work is the only other choice is Mac, and my work mac is only sorta barely usable for what I need
- I'm in the opposite boat, I have to use macOS for work, and I much prefer Linux. But macOS is way* better than Windows, so I don't complain too loudly.

Hey now! They're also the world's foremost bloatware packager. No one will ever take that away from them.

https://archive.ph/bLaDA

And judging by the recent Claude Sonnet 3.5 results, OpenAI may not even be the top AI company anymore.

Nah, it hasn't changed. It's garbage.

No shocked pikachu?