The novelty factor

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Spotted this post the other day….  “In our recent analysis of Copilot for Microsoft 365, we observed a notable trend: a 64% decrease in user interac
[See the full post at: The novelty factor]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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lmacri

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“10 out of 14 test users”

Definitely a relevant sample group there. We should base all our development and marketing on this group….

/sarcasm

cheers, Paul

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IT Manager Geek, NaNoNyMouse

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This is a sample test from an it professional doing a pilot project.  Sample testing does give you  good data. Why the sarcasm?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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User who knew they were in a test.
Initial use is guaranteed to be high as they “test”.
14 test users isn’t enough to spot trends, all you can really get is “does it work”.

The results are more subjective rather than quantitative.

cheers, Paul

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So have you tried AI in all of the places on the web that it’s showing up?

No. I don’t find the new AI useful.

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NaNoNyMouse

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Hi, under the for “what it’s worth” heading, our org is piloting CoPilot, and for the moment, very early days, CoPilot along with Team Premium / Pro is going to be worth every penny with it’s ability to take minutes and summarize a meeting (managing / maintaining meetings for our stakeholders is one of our biggest priorities).

That said, I’ve no doubt the “Novelty Effect” will play itself out this year and we won’t know the real benefits till about a year from now.  Though the author hasn’t redeemed himself by complaining about the lack of Excel support and that the document / workbook has to be on OneDrive; as these are known issues / limitations, with Microsoft promising increased CoPilot / Excel interaction later on (though I won’t hold my breath).

Like many other tools in our computer software chest, we’ll learn what CoPilot will provide us in the end and hopefully we’ll concentrate on it’s benefits versus having it to do everything (I point to the infamous using a Spreadsheet as a Word processor or visa-versa period, before saner thoughts took over).

Take care,

IT Manager Geek

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Are you impressed or having waning interest over it?

I’ve had no interest in it whatsoever.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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bowled845, samak, GeeBeeDee, Douglas, LH, David F, WSbobby-p, Microfix, NaNoNyMouse

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My reservations are with mainstream AI distributors in general, given their track records over the years.
Here’s looking at you Google, Microsoft and Adobe
I recently read that Adobe AI scans your DC documents.
The rust in trust continues with more crud to mitigate..

https://borncity.com/win/2024/03/23/stop-disable-the-scanning-of-documents-by-adobe-ai-solutions/

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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GeeBeeDee, NaNoNyMouse

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Microfix wrote:

I recently read that Adobe AI scans your DC documents.
The rust in trust continues with more crud to mitigate..

https://borncity.com/win/2024/03/23/stop-disable-the-scanning-of-documents-by-adobe-ai-solutions/

Will Adobe ever look at your content while you’re using generative AI in Acrobat and Acrobat Reader?

We do not look at your document, prompt(s), or generated responses except in the instances described below.

Reported content, bugs, or vulnerabilities. When you report content (e.g., for being harmful, illegal, offensive, etc.), we investigate it by manually reviewing the document, prompt(s), and generated responses to make adjustments to the service to address the issue.

User-Provided Feedback. For Acrobat Individual users* and Acrobat Reader users that provide feedback, you have the option to share with us your document, prompt(s), and generated responses during a document session for product improvement purposes that do not include training a Large Language Model (“LLM”). Examples of product improvement include improving the operability of generative AI in Acrobat and Acrobat Reader, as well as reducing hallucination, bias, and toxicity. If you do not wish to share your content, please uncheck the product improvement checkbox when you first provide feedback on a document.

Do we train LLMs on your PDFs?

We do not, and do not permit our service providers to, use your documents, outputs, or textual prompts to train any LLMs that deliver Acrobat and Acrobat Reader’s generative AI capability.

Generative AI features in Acrobat — Content usage and handling practices FAQ

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I played with Copilot a bit when it first showed up on my Win 11 Home 23H2 pc a month ago. My first real test was two days ago, when I asked, in response to something I had read:

Is the English word “really” used in German slang?

Copilot’s reply:

“Ja, wirklich! The English word “really” is indeed used in German slang. Germans often incorporate English words into their everyday conversations, and “really” is one of those borrowed terms. Here are a few ways it’s used….”

But then Copilot gave me five examples of how the German word “alter” (literally “old man”) is used, these days, as German slang for “dude”. Copilot’s response, while asserting that German has borrowed “really” to express disbelief, did not offer one single example. Instead it provided five completely irrelevant examples.

I asked Copilot a follow-up question:

What are examples of the English word “really” used in German to express disbelief?

And guess what? Copilot gave the identical reply (“Ja, wirklich”, etc, word for word) as it did to my first question. All focused on “alter” rather than “really”.

I asked Copilot a third question:

Has slang German borrowed the English word really?

The reply: same, word for word, as Copilot’s reply to questions 1 and 2.

Does Microsoft have work to do on Copilot? For sure.

Is my interest in AI waning? Too soon to tell.

My interest in Copilot may wane for another reason. Microsoft is imposing a requirement that you log into Windows with a Microsoft Account. “For users who have not signed into Windows with an account, Copilot offers the ability to send up to ten messages, allowing you to experience a preview of its capabilities. After reaching this limit, signing in is necessary to continue using Copilot.”

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/welcome-to-copilot-in-windows-675708af-8c16-4675-afeb-85a5a476ccb0#:~:text=For%20users%20who%20have%20not,necessary%20to%20continue%20using%20Copilot.

Dell XPS17, 11th Gen Intel I7, 64gb RAM, Windows 11 Home 23H2

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AlexEiffel, Cybertooth

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Susan:

What you describe is called FOBLO.  No, I have no interest in AI.

Mark

 

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I have no interest in the add-ons (in fact I wish I could find the post where techniques to show how to turn Copilot off were shown). I similarly don’t like Leo or any of the cute-named add-ons to various apps and browsers.
I have been a subscriber to OpenAI but have now dropped back to the free version as I didn’t get enough use out of it.
However I am finding the free version of Perplexity to be of use as a Web app but not my default search app. I use the tools an AI can provide perhaps once or twice a week.

Al

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TechTango

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I use it every now and then, mostly as a ‘search engine’ – it nicely summarizes the search query and lists the sources. And I use it to figure out things I simply can’t find using a search engine. For example, I had a problem with GFI LanGuard where an Agent failed the Remote Registry test, despite all settings being correct. At first I tried GFI support, but they only list a couple of KB articles and I already had seen those. Now there’s one thing I burned myself on over the years and that is I have NTML disabled in the entire domain. So I tried to figure out if Remote Registry is using NTLM. Searching didn’t yield any usable result, so I decided to ask Copilot and sure enough, it nicely listed all protocols used by Remote Registry and NTLM as one of them.

My wife use Copilot to create all kinds of images and the results don’t disappoint so far – it’s fun.

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TechTango, b

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So far, I’ve learned that neither AI nor a program such as Grammarly can do what human intelligence can do. Developing good writing skills requires study and practice. Self-editing and feedback from human readers will always be part of the writing process. In the end, the results will be far better than what any AI or computer program can do.

The most problematic for both AI and grammar programs is ambiguity and meaning. A case in point is the last sentence of the second paragraph of Susan’s post. Does ‘rather’ mean ‘somewhat’? Or does it mean ‘alternatively’? Whether to punctuate here or not depends on which meaning of ‘rather’ is intended. But, to begin with, neither AI nor a program such as Grammarly can even identify the ambiguity, let alone resolve it (= decide which meaning).

This, apart from the need for a semi-colon after the closed paren, which neither AI nor Grammarly reported is needed – at least not in free versions.

And, I’m talking only about punctuation here — which, though underpinning meaning, does not address the larger issue of content.

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NaNoNyMouse

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I did not find it that useful, certainly nothing I would pay for. I think there is some evidence that this technology is still in its infancy and so far many are not exactly impressed. I am of the opinion that this is more a technology thrown into the mix, then people really asking for it. A solution looking for a need that may or may not be as big as anticipated by some. Time will tell if it improves enough to find a use case, or if it becomes a under achiever destine for the Alexa, Cortana grave.

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“have you tried AI in all of the places on the web that it’s showing up?”

Haven’t tried it at all and probably never will.

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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bowled845, PL1

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I use the Brave browser and its built AI, Leo that is powered by “Mixtral 8x7B, a model created by Mistral AI to handle advanced tasks”.

I find AI helpful when I have longer questions about a subject.  One that may take two sentences to clarify.

If the answer makes sense, I check the individual web sites that Leo used to create the answer.

If there were say four websites (that I can vet) used by Leo to get a answer in 6 to 8 seconds, VS using a search engine that might take 10 minutes or more to find the same websites using shorter search phrases, I’m inclined to sample Leo first.

At some point, AI user interaction will stabilize and provide better clarity as to it’s longer term usefulness and durability.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Andy M

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WCHS wrote:

human intelligence

In many cases, that’s an oxymoron…

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Andy M, WCHS

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“Initially, users exhibited a robust engagement with Copilot for Microsoft 365, leveraging its features extensively.”

Leveraging its features?

Do you mean “using it?”

When you engage in such silly corporate-speak, I can’t hear you for the sound of my eyeballs rolling back into my head.

“However, this engagement significantly diminished over time”

Maybe they weren’t “leveraging its features” as much as “playing with the new toy.”

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Mark, samak, WSbobby-p, NaNoNyMouse, Cybertooth, WCHS

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