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.
Oh boy, three fistfights at once!
She’s a goddamn fucking gem, I love her. She has a bunch of great TikToks and is a super smart lawyer. She don’t miss
*doesn’t
I believe they were being colloquial.
That’s for when you want to write that “she doesn’t afraid of anything”
*isn’t
Sir, I’m not sure you understand that consequences will never be the same
*the consequences
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.
What this will mean is middle management will fire all the line managers. Your only contact with management will be through one of their AI’s.
[Robot Voice] Work harder! Your vacation is denied. Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions! There’s no way your solution will work. Drive this bus off the cliff or find another job! Write a 15-page self-assessment of your accomplishments this quarter. Your performance review is 0 out of 5. Your pay is cut 10%. No, I did not read your self-assessment. I didn’t have time. Our company has failed. I’m giving myself a $2M severance. You are fired.
That was both wild and entirely accurate at the same time.
I already had our CEO send us a speech video of him made with ML during a all-hands, although he said just afterwards it was made with ML. I fully expect this to become the norm in the future, even if we can tell the uncannyness for a while, they will not care.
Iike those encouraging videos of N+5, N+6 and all the way up to N+13 (been there, sleeped through them).
Who actually listens to the dravel? Is it just so bosses can feel meaningful?
Some asshole on LinkedIn is creaming his khakis over this
Absolutely stunned by Microsoft’s Copilot! Finally, a tool that understands the art of multitasking at an unheard-of level! Can’t wait to revolutionize my workflow and lead the charge toward a more efficient future. #GameChanger #ProductivityPerfection
#CreamedKhakis
It shows just how fundamentally out of touch MS is with, well, everything.
and in theory it could make meetings more efficient.
How about making an agenda for the meeting, sticking to the agenda, and sending out a copy of the proceedings to every attendant and other who need it?
If you have a meeting without these things it’s not a meeting. Its a gathering of people talking about vaguely similar interests.
Fixing the meeting culture is easier than inventing technology to decoy bad leadership.
Not even the lady in the ad looks happy about this lol
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.
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.
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.
Definitely looks like the AI has been sending her transcripts of the vacation it’s been attending with her family.
AI will be used to conduct three meetings at the same time. Employees will still be expected to personally attend all of them.
We were afraid of totally extermination by AI. Reality is worst and boring, as usual
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”
It’s going to be a bunch of AIs sitting around spewing bullshit since all the humans sent their AIs to the meeting.
Reminds me of this scene in Real Genius:
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.
Copilot’s ability to transcribe a meeting and highlight the key points
And then send it as an email to all participants. 😂
Meeting for the meetings meeting
Yo dawg, i heard you like meetings.
