Microsoft: AI tools can lift "the cognitive load of thinking" & "nudge you in the right direction"

[highplainsdem]

That promise - which anyone who wants to do their own thinking and control their own direction will realize is also a threat - came from Pete Kyriacou, corporate vice president of Microsoft Devices, at Microsoft's presentation of its new AI tools yesterday (see https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218293107 ).

From CNET: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-microsofts-ai-push-means-for-your-windows-laptop/

The event showed that for Microsoft, this next era is starting with a tool called Copilot. The new systemwide digital helper works something like an AI chatbot and is meant to help you do everything from managing your PC's settings to finding the right playlist to listen to. Microsoft Copilot will also work across apps like Bing and Edge, and it'll begin rolling out to Windows 11 on Sept. 26 in the next update.

Microsoft, like Google, has been aggressively ramping up its efforts in artificial intelligence throughout 2023, thanks to the overnight success of online chatbot ChatGPT (which Microsoft backs). The incorporation of such technology into Windows is significant because it gives a glimpse of how the way you use a laptop could evolve.

-snip-

"You as a user had the cognitive load of thinking what to ask, or having to generate from scratch to initiate the conversation," he told CNET in an interview, referring to older voice-enabled assistants. But newer agents like Copilot, said Kyriacou, can "nudge you in the right direction."

Microsoft's Windows operating system accounts for roughly 69% of the worldwide desktop OS market as of August 2023, according to StatCounter. Suffice it to say that Microsoft's decisions regarding the direction of Windows are a big deal.

-snip-

Google is headed in the same "let us do your thinking for you" direction.

As pointed out in a Verge article in the OP yesterday that I linked to above, their new AI tools for YouTube will be "nudging" content creators there:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883749/youtube-generative-ai-dream-screen-creators

AI tools will also begin informing what kind of content creators make. A new AI feature in YouTube Studio will generate topic ideas and outlines for potential videos. The AI suggestions will be personalized to individual creators, YouTube says, and based on what’s already trending with audiences. Additionally, an AI-powered music recommendation system will take a written description of a creator’s video and suggest audio to use.

-snip-

The slew of new AI-powered YouTube products could mark a shift in how creators plan, make, and structure their content. AI-driven insights will likely shift what kind of content creators double down on, and AI-generated content — already viral on YouTube — will become more common.

-snip-

I've pointed out here a number of times since last winter, when ChatGPT was dropped on society as a great free tool for cheating and students became its first and loudest advocates, that however much some people had resented essay questions and term papers, writing teaches people how to think. It helps them clarify their reasoning. And chatbots doing that writing take all or most of that crucial educational experience away.

As, outside the classroom, adults using generative AI to write also hand over much of their own thinking and creativity to the bot.

And I started to run into the term "cognitive burden" being used by promoters of AI.

They love to talk about how awful a "cognitive burden" is and how they'd like to remove that burden from our poor tired human brains.

Just google

"cognitive burden" ai

and you'll see what I mean.

But this article - what that Microsoft exec said yesterday - was the first time I saw this combination, saying so openly that they want to lift "the cognitive load of thinking" and "nudge you in the right direction."

That is the direction Big Tech wants to go.

And they want us to love the convenience of AI taking over our thinking and nudging us in a particular direction. The direction their AI tools determine is right for us.

[Happy Hoosier]

1. My team is experimenting with AI for prototyping

AI can’t do our jobs…. At least not yet. But we are seeing some utility is helping define what we refer to as the “solution space.” It helps present options for solutions outside our own paradigm. So far, we find that these options are all fatally flawed, but we have gotten a couple of nudges in the direction of innovative approaches to details we hadn’t thought of. That’s at least a little useful.

[highplainsdem]

22. I have seen AI companies try to relabel their AI's hallucinations or errors as

"creativity" that should spark new ideas. But I think human brainstorming is best and would hate to see individuals or businesses or organizations start to rely on AI for brainstorming.

Late last year and early this year I posted about a novelist self-publishing on Kindle and using AI for a lot of her writing. Though she used it quite a bit and was even being paid to promote an AI writing tool, she admitted that using it very much started to shut down her own creativity. She was no longer waking up with ideas for her writing, had in effect dissociated her mind from it except when she was giving directions to the AI.

[Chainfire]

2. Or it could just speak for you, relieving you of all that dreadful thought and contemplation.

I look forward to the day, coming soon, when we can fill in a form, something like the MMPI, and have our on custom AI to relieve us of the burden of unnecessary decision making. Freedom!

[highplainsdem]

24. You can already have AI write emails for you, given just a few words as a

prompt. And the person receiving it can have their AI assistant boil it down to just a few words, then take a response given in just a few human words and turn it into a much longer email, which your AI assistant will summarize for you, and so on forever.

Which not only is a seriously dumb and expensive way to communucate (expensive in terms of computer time and environmental cost; using something like ChatGPT for just a few prompts can require a liter of water for cooling at the data center), but potentially the most pointless, wrongheaded game of Telephone ever played.

[Best_man23]

3. Nope, Nope, Nope

AI is a tool, like a hammer or a kitchen knife. You control the tool, not the other way around.

Do not let the machine think for you.

[EYESORE 9001]

4. Sorry, I'm not subcontracting my thought processes to a bot

Some probably think my ramblings are like something a bot would slap together

Instant karma, as I had to correct autocorrect, which thought ‘bit’ was a better choice than ‘bot’.

[dalton99a]

5. Better Living Through Microsoft AI: Give us your credit card number and leave the driving to us

[mitch96]

6. "nudge you in the right direction" and what prey tell is the "right" direction? Of course what the

programmers and their handlers say is "the right way"...
Correct me if I'm wrong and it's like "suggestive thinking" on Faux noise.
If you are so deep in the echo chamber shit pot you don't know it's brown and smelly.
m

[leftyladyfrommo]

8. That's what I thought, too. It could lead you miles

down the wrong direction.

[2naSalit]

21. I think that's the point.

Look who is driving this move and how they seem, seem to be unstoppable. This is the authoritarianism of the uber wealthy the next step in world domination, especially in democratic societies. If they can lead us into the web of lies and entrap us, they will eat us.

It's time to eat the rich.

[patphil]

7. lifting our cognitive burden, and nudging us in the right direction?

Sounds very Republican. We'll tell you what to think, what to do, how to act, what to say, and how to feel.
If all decision making is taking out of our hands, will we de-evolve into a non-sentient species?
Do we lose self awareness when we abdicate the think process to AI, and thus slip back into the realm of animals?
Descartes axiom, "I think, therefore I am". may no longer apply.
We could become like H.G. Wells Eloi; forever children...afraid of the dark, no longer living our lives, just passing through them.

AI can be very helpful, or very devastating to humanity. It needs to be strictly controlled.

[niyad]

9. "the cognitive load of thinking"!!! Did that phrase give others the same chill

of horror that it did me?

[highplainsdem]

10. That's exactly why I posted this as soon as I saw the article.

[niyad]

11. And I thank you for doing so.

[highplainsdem]

12. You're welcome. I spend a lot of time skimming AI news, and I've been attacked here

at times for posting about the problems with AI and the threats it poses.

But I think ignoring those threats is as foolish as ignoring the threats from climate change.

It can get depressing to read about, let alone post about. There are times I've been tempted just to shut it out, ignore the news, retreat into a bubble of my own life and other interests. Creative interests.

But I can't use a keyboard for writing or pick up one of my guitars without thinking of all the writers and musicians I've known who are threatened by AI. I can't think of all the friends who were teachers without feeling sorry for teachers now having to deal with AI-turbocharged cheating that AI can't detect, and with AI companies who'd like to replace a lot of teachers with bots. I can't think of actors I knew or look at a film or TV show without being reminded they're fighting to keep AI from wiping out most of their jobs. I can't talk to sales reps on the phone or in a store without wondering how long they'll have those jobs.

We're a human community, and we can be harmed by AI. Especially if it's controlled by the powerful and wealthy to increase their power and wealth.

So I'll keep posting about AI, despite some people here who seem to be stuck on suggesting I watched Terminator too often. Or who seem so infatuated with some small benefit AI brings them personally that they don't care that it was trained on data sets of stolen intellectual property, and that it threatens to upend our economy and cause massive unemployment, and also threatens our democracy with a flood of misinformation and deepfakes.

[edisdead]

14. "Attacked"

Sure.

[highplainsdem]

15. LOL! Another predictable reply from someone who just called the OP "paranoia" in another

reply.

[edisdead]

16. I mean it was a predictable post that I was replying to.

[edisdead]

13. The paranoia over this is amusing

People are going to people. Just as any advancement in tech has aided us this will be the same. Imagine if we had to share our thoughts to each other over mail or physically going to see each other. But we don’t we type it into our devices and click the post button. AI isn’t going to destroy humanity or its arts. After all these years people still play chess. Because they enjoy doing it or for other reasons.

Also AI isn’t going anywhere. It is going to advance and be part of our lives one way or another forevermore. Does it have the possibility to spread propaganda? Yep just like all media since the dawn of time. And most of us won’t be here for a lot of it. We sit here and post on a 1990’s era message board while the people who will actually work with and engage with AI in meaningful ways are light years ahead of where some of us are in terms of tech savvy.

There DOES need to be legislation surrounding it and we are severely lacking in this department even for existing tech.

[highplainsdem]

17. I'm sorry you can't see that all the warnings about AI and resistance to it

are sensible rather than paranoia.

Also sorry you found it necessary to ridicule DU as a "1990’s era message board."

It works very well.

I'm not a techie, but I taught myself enough code to build a website and used a vBulletin message board with it.

This type of software is ideal for discussions of particular areas of interest, especially when anonymous posting is allowed.

If you follow someone on social media, you'll inevitably see a lot of posts about subjects that don't interest you.

If you post about anything controversial on Facebook, you may find yourself in endless arguments with relatives unless you block them. Like an eternal argumentative Thanksgiving dinner, minus the food.

Why do you think so many DUers have been here 15+ years?

Maybe if you'd been here more than 8 months you'd understand that.

But if you start with condescension toward message board software, you probably never will.

[edisdead]

18. Uh huh

All I see is doom and gloom posts from you over and over.

[highplainsdem]

20. Tell me, which side are you on in the strike by WGA and SAG-AFTRA that's in

large part about keeping the studios from replacing writers and actors with AI?

Which side are you on, with journalists organizing to try to stop cost-cutting execs from replacing them with AI that churns out mediocre at best, and laughably or dangerously inaccurate at worst, articles in minutes?

Which side are you on, as teachers struggle to continue teaching and gauge if their students are learning despite more and more students turning in assignments and papers done by AI?

Which side are you on, when AI is used to create deepfake porn in minutes from any photos, including those of children?

Which side are you on, when AI-generated images deliberately made to mimic famous artists practically flood out their genuine work shown online, with the AI travesties sometimes showing up at the top of search engine results?

[leftyladyfrommo]

25. AI and robotics scare me to death. The music and art

world are already seeing possible nightmare situations. What bothers me the most is not being able to tell truth from fiction.

Humans are so short sighted.

[highplainsdem]

26. The humans pushing AI are shortsighted. Or so selfish they don't give a damn how

much harm they do.

[milestogo]

19. I'm so tired of cognitive thinking.

Its a real "load".

[highplainsdem]

27. The AI peddlers want us to view it that way.

[HAB911]

23. cognitive load of thinking

funniest shit I have ever heard

[highplainsdem]

28. I wish it were just funny. I might've seen it as funny if I hadn't already

seen AI being marketed as something to save humans from a "cognitive burden" - as I explained in the OP.

[BootinUp]

29. I wish they would just get it over with and stop telling me

about it. Seriously, if I didn't see so much AI bs everywhere I know I wouldn't give a crap about it.

[highplainsdem]

30. They have to make money off it. They can't unless a lot of

individuals and businesses use it, and pay for it. The free AI tools that have been offered were just bait.