Actual Ad Link: https://www.instagram.com/microsoft365/p/C7j8ipnxIiI/?img_index=1
Awesome article about the ad which sums it up nicely:
https://justinpot.com/watch-me-be-in-three-meetings-at-once/
Three meetings at once. It’s so funny that, when I saw people making fun of it, I assumed it was a meme or an Onion parody. Nope: Microsoft really did run this as an ad on Instagram. This is what they think we want from their supposedly world-changing technology: the ability to attend more meetings.
Now, Copilot’s ability to transcribe a meeting and highlight the key points is cool, and in theory it could make meetings more efficient. It’s easy to imagine, in a healthy work culture, where that gain in time allows people to spend more time doing the actually productive parts of their job.
Instead this ad assumes the opposite will happen. It imagines a future where we use our efficiency gains to attend more meetings. Economists sometimes talk about how the current crop of technology hasn’t lead to commensurate productivity gains—it’s a bit of a mystery in some circles. I would hold up this ad as the explanation: we are all, as a society, using the efficiency gains to attend more pointless meetings.
So Copilot is going to make me a transcript of a meeting that could have just been an email to begin with? Brilliant.
No, it’s going to make assumptions about what was important in that meeting and try to bullet point it. And that won’t actually work well enough to count on, and if it misses something, you won’t know.
I also can’t imagine many managers will be happy about this, because the whole point of calling a meeting is that they want your attention. After a manager ends up lecturing a meeting full of bots a couple times, and someone misses something that was brought up in a meeting they ostensibly attended, they’ll complain, and IT will be instructed to block it.
And I can’t exactly blame them, honestly. I’m not fan of unnecessary meetings but if I’m managing a team of people, I’d want to know I’m engaging with them, not Copilot.
And as an employee, I’m not about to let an AI be caught doing any part of my job, because that’s just giving management “ideas”
Remember when AI was going to free us up to do better things? LOL just kidding, 3 meetings at once.
I remember when llms were used to simulate subreddits as a singular entity leading to pretty funny results. Wish we could’ve put a pin in it there.
AI, allowing corporate bureaucracy and inefficiency to continue to grow unscathed.
I already don’t trust AI, there’s no way I’d want it to be the arbiter of potentially critical job-related information in a workplace. For probably less money than licensing and running an AI, a company could just hire a stenographer to sit in meetings all day, take notes, and send those notes to concerned parties. Better yet, why not get certain people to send info directly via email, instead of scheduling a bunch a pointless meetings. How’s that for innovation
it’s not an ad for you. it’s an ad for your bosses
That really doesn’t lessen my horror.
it was never about making anything better for you. no one’s talking about the fact that all these employers are demanding RTO while also increasing VIRTUAL meetings
it was never about making anything better for you.
And that’s why it’s posted here.
It’s easier to understand this through the lens of the bosses who actually buy this technology. They’re only in meetings. They kind of assume that’s what their workers do, too. They want their workers in more meetings; if that’s all you’re doing, it sounds like being productive.
The workers aren’t buying copilot, and the people who are buying it find this somewhat convincing.
Matches my experience in bigger companies. People who have a “mostly meetings and PowerPoint” job think that sitting in meetings is real productive work. They assume anyone who sits in front of a computer but not in a meeting is probably not busy enough and their job could be outsourced to India.
Even the woman on the ad looks “whelmed” and disappointed in the world of tech. I feel like behind those eyes there are thoughts of quitting and moving to Idaho to raise sheep.
Definitely looks like the AI has been sending her transcripts of the vacation it’s been attending with her family.
Uh, I think she may be a bit too “ethnic” for the vast majority of Idaho.
Disclaimer
Please note that I am not condoning this sentiment, merely calling out Idaho for being majority backwoods regressive.
Also she may be imagining the shitstorm her mother would give her if she did.
It’s quite accurate: Microsoft consulted its ethnographic map of the world for marketers, and it clearly shows black, white, brown and yellow faces predominating on every continent.
Copilot’s ability to transcribe a meeting and highlight the key points
And then send it as an email to all participants. 😂
Or sending a meeting invite to talk with AI voice about the key points.
Not exactly related to this, but I can’t wait for our eventual AI avatars to sit in meetings for us so they can lay us off and have our AI avatar literally take our job, likeness, and persona.
There’s a montage scene in ‘Real Genius’ where a student is going through freshman year at a college. The first time he goes into a particular classroom there are ten students one one tape recorder. Each time he arrives there are more recorders, until finally there’s nothing but recorders and the professor has left a tape machine of his own to play the lecture.
Yes, Val Kilmer was in another movie besides Tombstone!
Is that what sovcits are doing
I’ve been working to find a way to give my personal to AI. toxic assholery for everyone
She looks thrilled
As someone familiar with Microsoft’s meeting culture, this is pretty accurate. If you want to attend every meeting in the day, you will be in three meetings at once. At a minimum.
They are ALMOST advocating for over-employment.
I want an “me” AI that can answer the phone, order groceries delivered, send generated photos of me to everyone at Christmas…
And work remotely on my behalf.
Even understanding that marketing people tend to be a different breed, I cannot comprehend someone who would think “we can put you in more meetings” is this super compelling pitch.
Like even accepting the premise that this works (which I don’t really), there would be any number of ads to be made about how Copilot can attend meetings for you, and you can just keep working instead and not have to be bothered with it. But no somebody made the ad thinking that increasing the meetings was the part that people are gonna get excited about.
Like even accepting the premise that this works (which I don’t really), there would be any number of ads to be made about how Copilot can attend meetings for you, and you can just keep working instead and not have to be bothered with it. But no somebody made the ad thinking that increasing the meetings was the part that people are gonna get excited about.
I feel like this is the same guy who told the Kellogg’s CEO to suggest that folks struggling to pay higher prices for basics should try cereal for some meals.
That last section of the article you highlighted makes me think about Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Imagine if everyone going to bullshit meetings actually did something productive for society, or did something that they themselves found fulfilling. Makes me sad.
Imagine if everyone going to bullshit meetings actually did something productive for society, or did something that they themselves found fulfilling.
At some point I’ve decided this is at least 25% of the point of most of the Star Trek storylines, and I’m here for it, sadness and all.
The great thing about working from home is I can do something else while I’m in meetings.
It’s fun to think about a world in which all software is open source.
And maybe there aren’t a million developers each building their own password reset functions and website search fields and stuff.
It shows just how fundamentally out of touch MS is with, well, everything.
Can I have three jobs at once?
