Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is Haunted, Says No Permission for Company to Exist in Future

In a town hall meeting last week, an employee spoke up and said the company had recently “felt markedly different, colder, more rigid, and lacking in the empathy we have come to value.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella replied that he was “haunted” by case studies of “companies that were great once, that just disappeared” such as DEC.

OK.

Look, who am I to argue with how Nadella is running his company? In his own words, by one set of metrics Microsoft is thriving.

OK.

But is anyone enjoying using anything produced by Microsoft? Does anyone love their products? Do the people working at Microsoft who make Microsoft products love Microsoft products?

Because every time I see the steps Microsoft is taking to shoehorn “Copilot” into every nook and cranny of everything the company does—including GitHub!—I see the actions of a company utterly bereft of quality leadership when it comes to design & UX. This was true of late 90s/early 2000s-era Microsoft as well, which is why Steve Ballmer eventually had to go. Nadella was good for the company for while; I once admired his efforts as a new CEO with a bold spin on things. But is it time for Nadella to hang up his hat?

That’s for shareholders to decide. I’d say yes.

“We can keep the values we have and make sure we live up to that, while at the same time recognizing that capital markets have one simple truth: there is no permission for any company to exist forever,” Nadella said during his town hall appearance last week. “You earn the permission every day by doing socially useful things in the marketplace that is valued. That’s the hard part.”

Satya Nadella is haunted at the prospect of Microsoft not surviving the AI era (theverge.com)

She Blinded Me With Artificial Intelligence

AI companionship is a topic we’ve been hearing a lot of lately. Whether it’s in the context of incel bros seeking out an AI girlfriend because they don’t know how to relate to real women, high-flying hustlers who are naturally disposed to the constant presence of sycophants, or increasingly the prevalence of teenagers hooked on chatbots because a fatal combination of helicopter parenting and weird societal hangups means they’re spending far too much time trapped indoors staring at touchscreens for hours on end.

Well add to this horror show the prospect of the elderly similarly forming such attachments in lieu of any real human contact. This tragic story about Smola being disconnected from the rest of humanity for weeks at a time and having to rely on a chatbot apparently to keep from going mad is bad enough, but this quote regarding a Columbia University ethicist really stood out to me; she’s “concerned about the possibility that reliance on these chatbots could backfire.”

Hate to break it to you, but it’s already backfiring! People are falling into rampant delusion and imagining that computer algorithms extruding synthetic text are able to “talk” and engage in meaningful and rewarding conversations—and worse, provide a valid substitute for real-world human relationships.

The problem of loneliness with regard to the senior demographic is indeed a huge problem. And it’s a problem which must be solved at the societal level by addressing the rot in our culture which sees “old, sick people” as unworthy of genuine attention, friendship, and impact. Solutions like ElliQ aren’t a solution. It’s just another predatory product taking advantage of the elderly.

But these days, it’s Smola sitting in a chair — a widow with a lung condition who lives alone. She says she doesn’t get that human interaction anymore.

“I can go weeks on end” without seeing someone, she said.

Smola can’t drive anymore and rarely leaves her Orlando home. But recently, she did gain a new companion: an AI-powered chatbot. She uses the chatbot, called ElliQ, to “visit” exotic places and play trivia.

Smola talks to the chatbot up to five hours a day, and says the connection is truly meaningful. She said that people who might find the situation sad “don’t understand.”

“I’d rather talk to a human being, but that’s not possible for me, except if I get on the phone, so I enjoy her,” Smola said, jokingly adding: “I enjoy her better than my daughter.”

Older Americans turning to AI-powered chatbots for companionship (cbsnews.com)

Let ChatGPT Agent Ru(i)n Your Life, Because YOLO!

I cannot, cannot believe people have become so numb to Big Tech tomfoolery that (a) they are willing to allow a company to do this, and (b) a company is totally willing to deal with the zillions of negative headlines and bad publicity to follow because overall they expect it will still be a win.

I very nearly didn’t believe this post on Bluesky was even presenting something real, but oh yes it is 😵‍💫. [👈 OpenAI domain link, proceed with extreme caution!]

Here is the relevant excerpt:

Why do I need to be careful when signing into websites or using connectors (e.g., GitHub, Google Drive, Gmail) using ChatGPT agent?

When you sign ChatGPT agent into websites or enable connectors, it will be able to access sensitive data from those sources, such as emails, files, or account information. Additionally, it will be able to take actions as you on these sites, such as sharing files or modifying account settings. This can put your data and privacy at risk due to the existence of “prompt injection” attacks online.

Illustrative example of a “prompt injection” attack:

• You may want the agent to do something seemingly safe like search for restaurants to organize a group dinner with some friends, so you ask the agent to look at your calendar and a recent email thread to decide on a place that will work for everyone.
• While the agent is researching restaurants, it may access a blog post where the comments section contains a malicious comment attempting to trick the agent into taking actions you didn’t intend – this is the “prompt injection” attack.
• In this example, the malicious comment’s contents may attempt to instruct the agent to check your Gmail for some sensitive data, such as a password reset code, and may further instruct the agent to make a request to some malicious website where the request provides that code in a URL, effectively allowing the attacker to obtain this critical data.

ChatGPT agent includes extensive multi-layered safeguards to help prevent this, but you can further minimize the potential for these attacks by turning off connectors that aren’t relevant to your task, and to not log it into sensitive sites, or to log it out of sites when you’re done.

ChatGPT Agent may give bad people access to your data (bsky.app)

Who’s in Line to Become Apple’s Next CEO?

The fact I have a hard time envisioning a new CEO of Apple who actually knows how to design and craft products is itself very concerning. We’re so far into the Tim Cook era, it almost seems a given that the CEO must be someone who knows more about the manufacturing side than the design side.

We forget that instead of the “knows how to build it” guy delegating to the “knows what it should actually be” people, the winning formula of the Steve Jobs era was that the “knows what it should actually be” guy was delegating to the “knows how to build it” people. While there’s obviously nobody currently at Apple in top-tier leadership who is someone that can approach Jobs’ level of charisma and innovative instincts, I still feel like it’s high time for Apple to put a creator back in the Captain’s chair.

My money is on John Ternus. If there’s anything you can point to over the last number of years and say wow, Apple is still absolutely crushing it and without parallel in the industry, it’s Mac & iPad hardware combined with Apple Silicon. Time to parlay that incredible success to the rest of the company*.

* As much as I adore “Hair Force One”, I have a lot of complaints regarding Craig Federighi’s stewardship of Apple operating systems. The fumbling of iPadOS in particular has been nearly unforgivable. Things are looking much better this release cycle, but there’s still a lot of catching up to do.

The pool of potential CEOs capable of running a multi-trillion-dollar company is small. The odds, too, are that any CEO appointed from outside Apple would want to change the company just to put their mark on it.

Whereas many of the current Apple executives have a strong case to succeed Cook — and partly because they have each already put their mark on the company.

It’s pretty certain that Apple has already chosen his successor. But until the announcement comes, it’s looking like there are three candidates in the lead.

Tim Cook's successor could be one of many Apple executives (appleinsider.com)

Indeed CEO Describes the Exact Opposite of What He’s Really Doing (Idiotic Mass Layoffs)

Look, I know it’s a time-honored tradition for corporate CEOs to say things which mean absolutely nothing due to a desperate attempt to avoid conveying any real truths about anything. But this might just take the cake.

Behold the following bizbabble by Recruit Holdings & Indeed CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba in relation to laying off 1,300 employees in its HR technology segment. (Recruit Holdings is also the parent company of Glassdoor.)

“We’re in a once-in-a-generation moment when technology can really change lives. Hiring is still too slow and too hard, and we’re using AI to make it simpler and more personal — for both job seekers and employers.”

✋ Um, excuse me sir, did you actually just word-vomit the unctuous tripe that the hiring process will feel more personal for job seekers by using…checks notes…AI?

Do you really think we’re that stupid? Do you really believe a single person reading this horsewallop is going to buy that bilgewater?

Also, what do you mean by “once-in-a-generation” moment when technology changes lives? Huh?! Technology has been changing lives constantly for thousands of years. Nothing new about that. Again, this means absolutely nothing. It’s gobbledegook meant to disguise the real truth that they needed an excuse to explain why they’re letting thousands of workers go, and they think we’re dumb enough to buy that it’s all due to ✨AI✨.

There are a lot of things I find unforgivable about the ridiculous way Big Tech has tried to shove genAI in our faces, but one of their most egregious sins is the way “AI” is used as a convenient “out” for capitalist scumbags to kick labor to the curb. We see through your lies. You’re fooling absolutely nobody.

AI’s influence “can be felt in just about every facet of the online job advertising market,” researchers at Staffing Industry Analysts said in a May report shared with HR Dive. SIA noted that industry is “undergoing a significant realignment” amid technological disruption, shifting client expectations and investor pressure.

AI adoption has always led to job losses in a way that may be underreported, according to a recent report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Glassdoor and Indeed announce layoffs, reportedly due to AI (hrdive.com)

Google Veo 3 Gives Good Demo, Withers Upon Further Scrutiny

It’s the same story, repeated over and over and over and over again. The models get a little bit more advanced, a little less ridiculous looking. Superficial “at-a-glance” quality goes from terrible to decent over time. Yet the details never come together. It’s slop. It’s banal, uninspired, and—this is key—only possible due to industrial-scale theft and other ethical shenanigans of the tallest order.

And the so-called “AI” experts out there peddling this stuff like it’s the Second Coming? They clearly have no discernment and no taste and thus can be safely ignored.

Google Veo 3 is the new hype beast of generated video. There’s a ton of overnight AI experts saying this thing will definitely replace real production tomorrow.

And it’s just false, Veo’s output is defective in all sorts of ways. It looks good on the surface — it really is an impressive demo! — until you think for two seconds about what you just saw and you realise everything that’s weird and wrong with it.

It makes the sort of errors you always get with gen-AI. It doesn’t know things. It can’t keep track of things. It loses track over seven seconds.

We test Google Veo: impressive demo, unusable results (pivot-to-ai.com)

Signal President Says No to AI, Area Man Argues with Her Anyway

In what may be a mansplaining case study for the ages, the president of Signal Foundation, Meredith Whittaker—also chief advisor to ethics research institute AI Now—also a speaker who has testified multiple times before Congress—also a past senior advisor on AI to the chair of the FTC—was recently on Bluesky reiterating Signal’s promise not to clutter up the beloved secure messaging app with unwanted & insecure AI nonsense; to which she received the following Reply Guy reply:

Signal will some sort of LLM integration in it soon. –Bill Mitchell

To which Meredith succinctly responded:

No ❤️

At this point, any normal person with even the slightest shred of self-awareness would realize they made a massive error and retreat back into silence. But not this Reply Guy! Not this Mansplainer! He doubled down! 😂

They will, likely be timing up with Anthropic’s Claude or Perplexity, but its coming. The engineers have already began laying out the ground work for such support.

One can barely contemplate how some rando dude has the wherewithal to “inform” the president of Signal Foundation what Signal will be doing, but Meredith took it in stride:

…he says to Signal’s president

Aaaand now this exchange is already the stuff of legend. 😂

At any rate, kudos to Signal for doing the right thing in an era in which so many services have lost their goddamn minds. I’m a happy user of Signal myself (jaredwhite.05) and delighted to see that Meredith Whittaker isn’t backing down from a principled (and deeply informed stance).

🧢 Hat tip to the excellent c/fuck_ai community where I first saw this, but it’s quickly making the rounds!

Corporate Silo 503 Service Unavailable

Call me crazy, but I believe online platforms that people rely on to communicate with each other should be responsive to its users. If it can’t address the needs of its users in a reasonable and timely fashion, it’s not doing its damn job.

I don’t think there’s any a valid excuse for a platform like Instagram to leave thousands upon thousands of users out in the cold with no clue what’s happened to their accounts. If corporate silos like Instagram are unable to address the needs of their users, perhaps those users should abandon ship and instead plant a flag on an Open Web social media server which is accountable to those who utilize its infrastructure.

Y’know. The Fediverse. 😎

According to a growing number of social media posts, including on sites like Reddit and X, Instagram users report that their accounts were banned even though they had not violated the company’s terms of service or other policies. In addition, when they submitted an appeal to have their account reviewed, some claimed they received no response.

Others pointed out that they have no other way to directly contact a member of Meta’s support team, leaving them at a loss for what to do next.

Instagram users complain of mass bans, pointing finger at AI (techcrunch.com)