The future of Windows - AI

[maflynn]

I have to say MS is completely out of touch.

Microsoft is pushing the narrative that we will no longer use a keyboard or mouse to interact with computers. I can see it now, in a office setting everyone is yelling in to their computers as they try to dictate an email, or moving around a large spreadsheet.. I would love see how the payroll people will receive this, as they audibly announce the salary increase for people and how that will be received.

then there's game playing, not sure how he expects that to work.

In all seriousness though, Microsoft is really pushing to integrate and leverage AI in the OS, and eveery aspect of computing. I can't find the link, but there were reports that a lot of code is already being produced by AI for Windows updates. Someone took a deep dive on the code (not sure how), and stated the mistakes that AI makes over and over are present in the patches being pushed out to us. Again, I can substantiate that, but with them laying off so many developers its quite plausible that MS is relying on AI to produce code in some form.

Microsoft CVP thinks we'll be ditching mice and keyboards in a future version of Windows in favor of AI chats

"In 5 years I strongly believe you'll be able to hire a security expert, but actually under the hood, it's an AI agent. The way you interact will be a lot like you do with humans today. You'll talk to them in Microsoft Teams, they'll join meetings, you'll send them emails and assign them tasks," Weston continued. "So in your daily work life, that will set folks up to do less of what we call the "toil work," the work we don't love today, and allow you to focus on what humans are good at. Ideation, creativity, vision, connecting with humans on what products are necessary. These agents will be net amplifiers, and will enable us to do things we could only dream of just a few years ago.

Windows 12 and 13: goodbye mouse and keyboard! Will user interaction be voice-only?

Here's the actual video and look at the down votes, nearly 4,000 negative votes compared to 550 thumbs up

I'm not a fan of Linus or his channel, but I do agree with his points.

 

[pshufd]

Our son's group uses AI throughout their development jobs but the work produced by AI is verified by people and there are things that AI doesn't know which has to be done by hand. What you are saying about introducing bugs and not learning from post-mortems also happens with people. Development teams need a repeatable process for fixing bugs and the processes that led up to the bug happening.

If you work in the corporate world, sometimes you get orders from management where you know it will make a mess of things but you follow orders, tell your manager your disagreements and hope someone listens or you clean up the mess later on.

 

[edubfromktown]

I agree, Microsoft is far more about marketing fluff/fantasy than ever before.

I use AI tools a few times per week for time consuming non-coding related tasks at the day job.

Humans will still be required for much of what this gem of graphic (that I stumbled upon on LinkedIn) summarizes quite well.

 

[maflynn]

I use AI tools a few times per week for time consuming non-coding related tasks at the day job.

I use AI daily for both coding and non-coding functions. The funny thing is, you can ask chatgpt the same request 3 times and get 3 different solutions, so its not quite there yet. As I mentioned, MS is seemingly replacing programmers with AI and the quality of the updates/patches is being called into question.

Humans will still be required for much of what this gem of graphic (that I stumbled upon on LinkedIn) summarizes quite well

I've been a developer for much of my career, and code reviews were inconsistent across the companies I worked for over the years. Some teams had a highly organized and documented process, others considered it QA'd if the comments were created as per the standards. I've been programming since the late 1980s on various platforms and languages and code reviews seem to have gotten the short end of the stick far too often.

Back to the MS situation, I'm still shocked that they think talking to the computer is far more efficient then using a mouse (or trackpad) to point to a specific item, and entering complex data via a keyboard.

 

[pshufd]

I use AI daily for both coding and non-coding functions. The funny thing is, you can ask chatgpt the same request 3 times and get 3 different solutions, so its not quite there yet. As I mentioned, MS is seemingly replacing programmers with AI and the quality of the updates/patches is being called into question.

I've been a developer for much of my career, and code reviews were inconsistent across the companies I worked for over the years. Some teams had a highly organized and documented process, others considered it QA'd if the comments were created as per the standards. I've been programming since the late 1980s on various platforms and languages and code reviews seem to have gotten the short end of the stick far too often.

Back to the MS situation, I'm still shocked that they think talking to the computer is far more efficient then using a mouse (or trackpad) to point to a specific item, and entering complex data via a keyboard.

We had processes in place. Developer runs local tests, then full regression nightly tests. If all is good, then they request code review and module owners or seconds review the code and the tests run. The merge request submissions include regression tests run and the submitter has to explain any regressions. People take reviewing code and tests seriously - if something goes wrong, the engineer and all of the people who reviewed it are on the hook for blame.

Serious regressions that get out to customers go through post-mortem. I had one in 2018 that asked me why I made a decision in 2008. I checked my engineering notebook and explained my decision and the committee went on to the next engineer to ask them to explain the regression from their perspective. You basically need cover for your decisions as it can come back to haunt you. Criminal liability is possible in some engineering fields but I don't think that's the case for software engineering.

 

[edubfromktown]

I use AI daily for both coding and non-coding functions. The funny thing is, you can ask chatgpt the same request 3 times and get 3 different solutions, so its not quite there yet. As I mentioned, MS is seemingly replacing programmers with AI and the quality of the updates/patches is being called into question.

I've been a developer for much of my career, and code reviews were inconsistent across the companies I worked for over the years. Some teams had a highly organized and documented process, others considered it QA'd if the comments were created as per the standards. I've been programming since the late 1980s on various platforms and languages and code reviews seem to have gotten the short end of the stick far too often.

Back to the MS situation, I'm still shocked that they think talking to the computer is far more efficient then using a mouse (or trackpad) to point to a specific item, and entering complex data via a keyboard.

MS has been full of beans for decades. All they care about is exacting maximal licensing fees, same from Ballmer days and historically check out Hackers by Stephen Levy for a deeper dive on the roots of their shylock software licensing tactics.