From the Editor’s Desk: Microsoft, Consumers, and AI, a Comedy (Premium)

After the iPhone was released and took the world by storm, I met with the Windows Mobile team in Silicon Valley. Everyone in this meeting was carrying a Palm Treo Pro running Windows Mobile, which by then was a few years old but still the best device using their platform at the time. And they were eager to explain to me their plan for defeating Apple’s latest hit product.

I will never forget this meeting. Someone from the team is pontificating, downplaying the threat. I’m typing on my laptop, taking notes. And then they said this.

“The iPhone proves what we’ve said all along, that consumers would embrace a friendly, touch-centric device.”

I stopped typing, with my fingers hovering above the laptop’s keyboard. I missed what they said next, but they kept going. I had stopped listening. Finally, I put my hands down, looked up at the person speaking, and interrupted them.

“Do you even listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth?” I asked.

History shows that I was correct to doubt the veracity of this statement. Microsoft’s response to the iPhone was belated, and it didn’t arrive until 2009 with Windows Mobile 6.5, a “lipstick on a pig” release that pasted an iPhone-like touch-centric home screen on top of the old stylus-based Windows Mobile interfaces that still dominated the platform. But it didn’t end Microsoft’s licensing relationship with its slow-moving hardware partners, nor did it result in a first-party app store. In short, it didn’t move the needle at all, and Windows Mobile 6.5 arrived two years after the iPhone. It wasn’t until 2010 and Windows Phone 7 that Microsoft finally made a reasonable push, and we all know how that turned out: Being so late to market isn’t the only reason that failed, but it was one reason.

What’s that phrase about not learning the lessons of history?

Flash forward 15+ years, and Microsoft is at it again, pontificating to an audience that either doesn’t exist or simply isn’t there. Microsoft, the company that has failed at AI and repeatedly failed with consumers, is now telling us what it is that consumers expect from AI. Oh, the hubris.

I can tell you what consumers don’t want from AI. Microsoft. Or Copilot.

To be fair to Microsoft, it didn’t come up with this information on its own. One imagines it used the Deep Research feature in Copilot, and it came up short again. OK, I’ll try to stop. What it did do was commission a study from Edelman Data & Intelligence, which I feel obligated to point out is owned by one of its PR firms. And then use that information as the basis for … whatever the heck this is.

“AI offers a new way forward: our research finds that it counteracts decision fatigue by lightening the mental burden of weighing one’s options,” Windows general manager Nicci Trovinger writes. “After using AI when making a decision, 84 percent percent of people report experiencing positive emotion.”

OK, I can’t stop.

Our research? I mean, Microsoft did pay for the study. So I guess that explains the ownership angle.

But 84 percent … experienced positive emotions using AI to make a decision?

Have you ever used AI to make a decision? I’m not sure what the collective world’s experiences are, but I will say that I spend a lot of time cursing technology, and that I feel like AI has exacerbated that so far. I’m usually pretty satisfied with the images I create with AI, while accepting the dulling sameness of the style used. But decision making? I have my doubts. Especially if any of those people were using Copilot.

Microsoft goes on to describe those born between 1995 and 2012 as “Generation AI” because they were “raised on increasingly intuitive digital tools” and “learned how to embrace emerging technologies.” I guess that makes me “Generation Videogames,” but this generation is actually called Generation Z if you’re keeping score. And those who rely on AI the most might more accurately be called “The least greatest generation.”

Come on, Paul. Focus.

I can’t.

“Generation AI is 16 percent more likely to use AI tools than those who are older, and when they do, they’re finding more than answers,” they continue. “They’re unlocking a greater sense of relief and confidence, a result that users of all ages can learn from.”

Maybe I’m missing the point. But 16 percent is not a big gain over those born before Generation AI. And I feel like the point of AI is to get results, accurate results, and not just feel “relief and confidence” and then pretend that this acceptance is a lesson the rest of us should learn.

We’re told that Generation AI “carries a compound burden,” which is like a middle-aged white guy arguing that others don’t understand the challenges they face. Mental health is at an all-time low with this group because of ” the ambient weight of everyday social pressures, persistent economic uncertainty, digital isolation, and the long tail of a global pandemic.” Maybe it’s at all-time low because of AI? Maybe it’s an all-time low because of Big Tech enshittification here. I’m just spit-balling, and because I know someone will ask, no, Microsoft did not commission my study.

Anyway, this mental load is unrelenting, and Microsoft thinks that AI–not a government that works for its citizens, a solid jobs market, or universal health care–is the solution. In this sense, Microsoft is deploying a familiar “when you’re a hammer, everything is a nail” strategy. After all, Microsoft doesn’t provide universal health care. But it does sell AI.

Moving on, Generation AI is a mess. 68 percent of these people are “over-thinkers” who worry about decisions before and after they’re made. And they need the misplaced confidence that only AI can give them. Until they hit middle age, that is, when knowing all the answers happens automatically.

AI is judgment free, which is a nice cocoon to embrace when you have nothing but bad ideas, I guess. It “reflects back” the curiosity of someone who, after all, is just asking questions. The search engines that Generation AI grew up on, none of which were named Bing, never turned data into “something truly actionable.” You know, like Bing does, if anyone would just freaking look.

Generation AI has an “emotional delicacy” that’s pampered by AI in a way their more pragmatic parents could ever muster. It’s a “conversational advisor”–perhaps even a conspirator–that will match their shy “thirst for knowledge with specificity, flexibility, and patience.” AI won’t get mad at their daughter for repeatedly failing the one class she needed to graduate from college like some unnamed parent in this curiously-specific example did. “Viva la difference!” it says.

Generation AI doesn’t read–shocker–so it relies on AI instead of books. Generation AI doesn’t like people and their contrary opinions, and so it relies it on AI instead of human tutors. Generation AI is overwhelmingly optimistic that AI “will improve our lives and the world we live in,” which only demonstrates how little they know about the world we live in. And then it happens.

“Only 15 percent of all consumers say they fully trust AI when making important decisions,” the study notes, shining a harsh light on the only fact in this entire document. Granted, 59 percent of consumers trust their gut when making a decision, which all the YouTube videos I watch suggest is a bad idea.

I could go on. But I will end on this perfect point.

“This isn’t the first time Generation AI has lived through a major technological shift, and it won’t be the last,” Microsoft notes, perhaps not seeing the irony. After all, the technology shifts that this generation has endured, bless their fragile souls, all involved moving away from Microsoft. From the web to mobile, digital personal assistants, video games, and now AI, if there is anything that Generation AI has shifted away from Microsoft, it’s you.

But congratulations on demonstrating why so clearly. Do you even listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth?