That’s unfair. We have been listening to you all this time. And sometimes watching. And once we’re done with recall, also recording so we can watch and listen again or train our AI to watch you instead. Because honestly who wants to watch people work. That’s gross.

• Nadella (probably)

Not only that, from the article they are actively trying to become a Consultancy As A Service company, where somehow companies would pay a subscription fee to… talk to their AI, I guess?

The picture in the article clearly shows a virtual lady trying to kick a guy’s virtual balls. I think that says all one needs to know about the experience.

Why do you assume there is a strategy? If there had been one we wouldn’t be at this point. It’s really sad to think that’s what it boils down to, but it is just:

Big toddler wants to show how big and powerful he is

Big toddler is offended that nobody wants to play with him any more

It’s all about bullying others and pretending that whatever happens was the plan all along. Except now nothing happens and we are all just waiting for the bully to get bored and go play with his new ballroom.

Layoffs aren’t caused by AI efficiency.

Efficiency is how CEOs justify being still able to run (no, GROW) their company with 40% less people. Besides AI, there are the dear old “you have to work harder” efficiency (see: 996 culture) and the organizational efficiency where they are all “removing managerial layers, enabling quicker execution” (see Amazon for instance).

See how these things became all fashionable again at the same time with tech company CEOs? It’s because they are just excuses and hopes, at this point. And AI is the least bad-sounding of them, because it smells like progress, magic and automation (while even the most rabid of investors will recognize that working employees to death doesn’t scale beyond the limited numbers of hours there are in a day).

Speaking of which… when we get there with our pitchforks and burn down the data centers, could you give us a 20 minutes lead?

is “potato frontier” an auto-correct fail for Pareto or a real term? Because if it’s not a real term, I’m 100% going to make it one!

AI-washing layoffs. They will replace shit with AI but that’s a better story than “we have to reduce costs because we don’t have cheap ways to refinance our $1B debt”.

Credit isn’t cheap and Iran is not going to make it cheaper, investments in software have tanked, so the only story that still can be told almost with a straight face is that they still have big growth opportunities thanks to the magic of AI.

Maybe there’s some alien civilization who’s actively pointing a radio signal in our direction so they can communicate with us. I don’t know… maybe the aliens are observing how friendly we are to each other and really want to connect?

I’m not a gamer, but I read that people were paying gamers in other countries to play as them and “power up” their characters. If that’s true, it could conceivably be a “job” for AI.

On the other hand, how do people buy games that are so frustrating that you actively pay money to someone (person or AI) to play them for you? It goes completely against my idea of what a game represents.