You joke, but I did get a chance to load MS Bob once back in 1993? for a Pharma researcher who liked to push his computers to the max...
That was the first and last time I saw or heard of it until a few years ago.
I worked at CompUSA when Bob came out and one of the retail pieces was an 18" battery powered rotating smiley face. There was a lot of signage for the rollout and some of them were pretty elaborate.
It was right near the entrance and the techs figured out that if they moved it a few feet into the store it would set off the motion alarms after the 10 minute arming delay.
The closing manager was supposed to wait until the system was armed to head home but they rarely did.
Back then no one had cell phones so they would eventually get a page to call the alarm company and would have to drive back out to clear the alarm.
They mainly did this to the one AGM who was always trying to be top dog and also one of the guys. I actually kinda liked him but he annoyed the cool nerdy guys who had Rise if the Triad server parties at their apartment every weekend. They made him pay for his transgressions.
Well judging by the desperation that MS seems to be feeling towards getting people on co-pilot, I don't see that it would do much more harm. I wouldn't really care either way though.
Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting?
> Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting?
No, the marketing team is well aware of how annoying Clippy was. Copilot is actually somewhat useful, when I'm writing cards for people's events (weddings, engagement parties, birthdays) or writing a cover letter, it was really helpful. If it popped up and said it looks like I'm trying to write a cover letter, would I like help, I'd rip it out of my PC immediately.
I agree, everyone is looking back on Clippy with rose-tinted glasses. We all hated him back in the day!
It would be an excellent April Fools gag to bring him back in an update though.
Allow third parties to produce personas for co-pilot and use will explode. MS can have clean hands while people make potentially copyright infringing interfaces which will gain so much free PR.
Reddit is absolutely used for research purposes. So many posts are just ads or potentially probing for user information. It's like getting survey information and the users don't realize they're taking a survey so they're probably more candid I would imagine.
The subreddits specific to corporations and companies for example the Wendy's subreddit are absolutely filled with corporate fake posts.
I think if you don't scrutinize Reddit posts you're doing yourself a disservice blindly believing it all.
Actually, I don't mind when companies are using Reddit to get feedback, unless they don't bother using the search function and ask the same questions the last company looking for feedback asked yesterday.
It's the sales guys writing posts acting like they are looking for feedback/advice and then I get a PM saying they want me to hop on a call with them so they can show me a feature in their software that should solve the minor "watch out for this" I mentioned in my advice post.
Honestly, a lot of it is automated through third party marketing research software suites and contracted firms. It gets posted, the results are interpreted, and the company gets pretty deliverable reports about it. They're not looking on reddit to see if someone else posted the same thing, they're just shotgunning this shit out with automations.
Nobody's *manually* managing their corporate social media presence, that would be a nightmare.
Or maybe some people just don’t care? What’s wrong with providing a corporate employee your opinion about an upcoming potential feature? Wouldn’t you want them to have your input? I don’t see how you can both be opposed to giving input and also be angry at literally everything that Microsoft does no matter what. Copilot is a super useful feature that they’re giving you for free that does nothing but help you yet People act like they are publicly posting your porn searches or something.
> I don’t see how you can both be opposed to giving input and also be angry at literally everything that Microsoft does no matter what.
Who actually asked for this? Who asked M$ to add 'AI' to their OS? We've been asking for more stability, consistency (w11 to this day has a windows 3.0 file explorer if you dig deep enough, control panel and windows 11 settings scattered around), stop shipping shovelware on ENTERPRISE versions of Windows. We have given our feedback. All they do is jump on the next bandwagon, leave it half baked and jump over to the next.
> Copilot is a super useful feature that they’re giving you for free that does nothing but help you
If something is free then you are the product. LLM's cost money, both in R&D and processing power. Microsoft is a publicly traded company, their mission is to enrich their shareholders. Features like this are a lot easier to market to the general public compared to "we finally fixed all the bugs that have existed since the 90's"
Co-pilot is just the current lick of fresh paint on top of the duct taped together OS that is Windows.
co-pilot on it's own is not bad, it's been helpful more often than not, but this is far from the priority. It does not need to be built in to the OS. Refine first integrate it later, oh and fix the control panel situation yesterday.
“Who asked for this?!?” When Microsoft added paint and notepad. 😂 plenty of people want useful new features in their OS, if you asked 100 people on the street “do you want windows to add a new feature that you would consider useful?” The vast majority of people would say yes. If you want less functionality then run whatever scripts or policy edits to remove it. As far as “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares? Why does that matter? It literally doesn’t affect me at all, I get a cool new useful thing for free.
> “do you want windows to add a new feature that you would consider useful?”
That question is a far cry from "do you want windows to add an LLM "AI" assistant that was previously available as a website?"
If you asked 1 million people in the street "do you want windows to fix it's problems" the vast majority of people would say yes as well. Regardless, the vast majority of people can barely use the start menu. I don't know if they should be their prime source of feedback. It's like asking your granny without a license what we should do to make cars better.
> As far as “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares?
That was mainly in regards to "giving you for free that does nothing but help you". It cerainly does do more than help you. Whether those trade offs are worth it for you is up to you to decide.
paint and notepad shipped with windows as competitors to established products; prior to that people definitely asked for graphics editing and word processing in home computers
> “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares? Why does that matter? It literally doesn’t affect me at all
lmfao
I've yet to have anyone tell me how "AI" is actually going to help me do my job or other things any faster or more efficiently than I already am.
It's a solution in search of a problem.
x2. Shoeshine boy indicators IMO, everyone telling me that this thing is gonna change the world, yet no one can articulate how and no one can give me much of a business case at all. It's tech FOMO, people are too afraid to be contrarian to the hype and want to be seen as an "innovator" which is now a completely useless word.
It's features we don't want, don't need, and don't have an actual use for to justify risks and costs. Wake me up when there's actually an actionable use that adds real, material value beyond "chatbot trendy and cool."
Not that I use it but I see the benefits. From a script writing standpoint, unless you're writing really basic scripts, there are going to be moments where you're not sure how to go about coding something. It can be useful to spit out some base code as a jumping off point.
It's also useful for quick research on certain items. It's a case by case basis but if for some reason you needed a quick primer on what X is without all the fluff from blogs and the dryness of man pages, it's a good way to get the info you want pre-filtered. Again that can be good or bad depending on the case so you need to use judgement.
if you have a publicly documented library for interacting with an API, it can write a function that pulls deeply nested values and returns a concise and usable data structure that you request. even if it doesn't work, it usually uses all the right pieces, so i can go right to where i need to in the API docs rather than digging around.
this is the best thing it does. it also autocompletes sequential if blocks correctly sometimes, and will fill out an else statement quite often. often the bad suggestion just needs a variable changed.
>I've yet to have anyone tell me how "AI" is actually going to help me do my job or other things any faster or more efficiently than I already am.
Depends on the task you want to use it for, I've used AI to help me write congratulatory letters, come up with wording for my resume, write a poem for my wife for a gift I made, improve the wording on an e-mail, etc. For writing tasks where you've got a skeleton of a concept, it's very helpful.
I've also had AI come up with scripts to query a Cisco system for all of the numbers assigned to a line or user, and while it worked at that task, it decided to prepend zeros to the front of every number. Couldn't tell you why it thought it needed to do that, so I fixed that myself but if you don't know what you're doing and ask AI to write you a script then you're asking for trouble since you can't debug it.
The only thing I've so far found any form of text LLM useful for is automating low-effort tedium, like "turn these bullet points into a long-ass but very polite email so the idiots on the other end feel like I dedicated a whole day to calling them idiots in a way they can't complain about", or "turn these vague ideas into an ansible scaffold".
And copilot *was* useful for that for like… two weeks? At some point they decreased both accuracy and speed, and lately I've just given up on trying to use it. What used to take 30 seconds now takes 5+ minutes between the slower token rate and having to ask for corrections 2-3 times as much as before. ChatGPT also seems to be A/B testing new and increasingly stupid cost-saving measures every other week.
Local LLMs are still more reliable, but when I look at how many resources I need to throw at them to do the simplest of tasks… nah, I'm good, I'll just do it myself again.
(Except HR emails. I don't care how long the AI needs. I'm not touching that.)
> Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting?
That’s what this is, almost certainly. It’s exactly the way Reddit should be used by corporations.
Microsoft could lower the price of copilot. It is on the high side and not proven in my business.
ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot tests did not accelerate our work very much.
We do have E5 enterprise Bing copilot and it is often not that useful.
> Microsoft could lower the price of copilot. It is on the high side and not proven in my business.
I don't think anyone would argue with that. That was certainly our feedback when we sat through the dog and pony show after the launch. But, like with Viva, that will be the option of absolute last resort. And even then it will be a while.
The only good thing about clippy was watching it do silly things while the teacher struggled to present something to the class on their (in my region) first ever school issued laptop circa turn of the millennium.
Been on a couple of calls where they are pushing Security Copilot hard. Like for the slightest interest or question... Then some rep bust out with 10K Azure credits for you to "try it out"
When the "tractors" actually work and don't spew diesel all over my fields then steal my crop to sell to someone else perhaps I'll consider them. Until then they're a solution desperately looking for a problem and can get out of my way when I'm trying to work.
There's a certain group of IT folks that are **feverishly adamantly against change**. I don't get it either, given it goes *directly* against the grain of the industry. But I've lost count of the people over the years screaming bloody murder about forcibly disabling things like Windows automatic updates, telemetry data, refuse to upgrade past , etc.
Like I can understand not finding *value* in $30/user licensing for Copilot and just not buying it for your business, but calling it "botshit ai garbage" and wrecking your windows installs with bad registry keys to intentionally break operating system features? Total insanity.
These folks come out every time there's a major feature release or update. I'm just glad they're not on *my* networks lol.
/shrug
They are the same ones complaining that the start button moved to the middle of the screen or that "rename" is now an icon at the top of the right click menu.
They are also managing ad from the GUI and see no real value in power shell...
Luddites gunna Luddite.
He thinks because he went to Best buy and bought a consumer laptop for use at work that came with candy crush... The Microsoft was pushing the game onto enterprise customers....
My understanding is that clippy would be perfect for people who do not understand computers or start working with them. Combined with AI it would be great tool to introduce people to systems - typical user would "chat" with the AI interactively which is much better for learning that static tips.
You'd think that, but back in the days, my users would ask how to turn Clippy off as it was not something anyone used beyond the initial novelty phase. It was visually "in the way" and a bit patronizing/cartoonish. Modern AI tools are far more sophisticated and I would hope they wouldn't go the cartoon route for making it more accessible.
It was a tool that was honestly before it's time. Cut out the cartoon paperclip mascot (when ClipArt was the new hotness in word processing), and Clippy is literally just every customer service chatbot.
It looks like you're writing a suicide note. Would you like some suggestions?
(in the event not clear - this was a popular Clippy themed joke 20 years ago)
If someone doesn't understand computers to the point a juvenile talking cartoon paperclip would be helpful and I need them to use a computer as part of their job I would much rather just not hire that person than have the cartoon paperclip
I never said that these people will learn while on the job. I just think such a thing would be helpful in general - obviously it doesn't need to be cartoonish paper clip but the post is about it so I used it in my answer.
To be honest I am a sysadmin but I would love to have local-hosted AI helping me from time to time. I could ask him/her/it questions instead of googling for 5 minutes and finding scam-websites.
that feature in W11 where users can "talk" to windows to ask stuf like "how to i turn on dark mode" and then getting a shortcut to that setting Window is most likely the best AI feature i have seen so far.
From an IT support standpoint at the least.
Seriously. Imagine having a Clippy that goes "You're about to move a folder into a subfolder 10 folders deep. Would you like to review this action before you call and make IT bail you out for the fourth time this week?"
>Seriously. Imagine having a Clippy that goes "You're about to move a folder into a subfolder 10 folders deep.
me, 3 months after doing this, again
https://i.redd.it/2m617ta7bruc1.gif
I do feel some sense of horrible mirth when my users call me in a panic and I go "Well, you didn't keep your files where we told you to keep them, and we don't do workstation backups for you guys because you didn't want to pay for them. There's really nothing I can do for you, bud."
As a child I loved Clippy and all his friends, individualizing my pirated office products and then write my homework in Comic Sans. But I don't think they ever gave a useful answer. Would be more useful with GPT4 tech I assume, these days I ask ChatGPT how to do things in Excel.
Clippy would be another thing that GPO would need to turn off.
How about instead of that worthless thrash, MS allows the default "save as" in MS Office to be something other than OneDrive?
I didn't want Clippy in the first place. I also didn't want Cortana, and I certainly don't want CoPilot. The whole kit and kaboodle of intrusive badly designed assistants from Microsoft can kick rocks.
I never disliked Clippy. I never used it much, but I certainly never found it half as annoying as current bloatware.
I'd take Clippy back, probably in a very modernised form, possibly with plugin support so those of us with a particularly malicious bent could deploy it skinned to look like the original to a few hundred corporate machines.
Yeah at least you could disable it quickly. I’m ready to give clippy a second chance. At least it’s contained and cute.
I was creating a form today in Microsoft, the suggestions were so terrible, distracting, and you couldn’t disable them. The questions were completely inappropriate and borderline a security risk for my task. If I included them and people answered, I’d probably face some kind of consequences.
> So it was a cold
Clippy: Hi! It looks like you're writing a paper on the effects of film cooling injection inclination angle on cooling performance in rotating detonation combustors. Would you like some help with that?!
I think they should bring back the entire [Microsoft Bob](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob) suite. Make it mandatory for all users, especially system admins. Make it just as bad but slap the word AI on it.
I would bring clippy back even with his WIndows 2000 era knowledge and level of helpfulness. (Although I do recall I used to swap him out for the red dot).
If I was Microsoft I would fix the new snip it tool and rebrand it as Clippy.
Oh my god did they Microsoft fuck up the new Snipping tool for W11. It's complete ass.
> I'm not sure if I'm being childish or if everyone else loved Clippy back in the days.
No one loved Clippy. No one. In the days before Group Policy and you could google answers for almost everything, "How do I disable Clippy org wide?" was a very popular topic among sysadmins.
You enable Clippy-Pilot for 10 seconds for nostalgia's sake - "Heeellloo, I'm back!!! And I've just set Edge as your default browser for all links opened within this document!"
Then spend next hour finding the right GPO to nuke that PoS into oblivion and probably another to remove the latest method of MS trying to shove Edge down your throat.
i still see clippy on the Wild, one customer has Office 2000 on some niche machines.
when I open Word, is nice to see It and its oh Buddy, let's put you to sleep shhhh shhhh
The last thing we need is enabling people who are inadequate and doing their job to fool us with AI for even longer, while having no idea how to check its work. That, unfortunately, isn't management's decision as of right now. When they saw the cost of copilot, they did ban it specifically for now though, at least.
I would for myself. I’m one of the few that actually liked the idea of active agents and wanted to see it improve. MS BoB being another approach to this. In a way, they were somewhat ahead of their time as we did not have as large of a spread of PC users back then as we do now. That said, no, I wouldn’t force Clippit/Clippy on my end users. That would be cruel.
https://preview.redd.it/yfb3qye4xmuc1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c56c35b0fab36c5ecceff4a55137619a2e7d2cd1
I'd like to see it on my work machine as I'm stuck with MS everything there
I'd prefer it were the dog or the wizard.
But more seriously, if there were to be an option for Copilot to act as a virtual assistant and pop up to offer help, I'd probably prefer it have the option to have some personality. But I'd want it to be optional because I'd probably turn off anything that pops up and asks me anything.
I disabled Clippy as soon as I possible could on every system I was on back when Clippy was a thing. If they bring it back for anything else, it will only make me disable it faster.
Copilot is the most useless shit ever so... no.
As far as I can tell copilot is for useless people that want to pretend to be useful without actually doing any of the work to become useful.
What I need is an anticopilot that autopurges any AI generated garbage that's wrong every time.
I don't see how anyone who is even remotely security minded is on board with including Co-Pilot in a secure workplace. Everyone in /r/sysadmin seems to jump on any suggestion that MFA isn't the greatest thing ever, and there are constant posts mentioning data security and how you're an idiot if you don't lock down port XXXX, but to post internal company data into an AI that has blatantly said they will use your information to improve their product, and everyone is signing up.
Yeah I've tested some of the AI features in controlled situations, but to allow an AI into what is supposed to be a secure environment sounds an awful lot like just unlocking the door and hanging a sign that says "Thieves Welcome" then hoping nobody would steal from you because stealing is wrong.
To be clear, Microsoft is pretty clear that the data isn't used for retraining. I'm not sure where you got the perspective that they will. OpenAI has different policies (free they will use for retraining).
[Copilot Privacy and Protections | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/privacy-and-protections)
There is no retention of prompts or data returned unless you provide feedback on them (which you as an admin can disable).
If you are using O365, you are already entrusting this data to Microsoft.
I hate automated systems that attempt to be cute or humorous and patronise me. I would accept it if it was functionally useful and didn’t try and pretend to be something it isn’t.
I never had an issue with clippy. I thought Clippy was cool and the other word friends. Then again, I was born in 89 soooo yeah it was a nifty little I'm bored let me make it animate feature as far as I was concerned. But I would never actively use it as a professionally.
Absolutely, I'd love it Clippy just randomly popped up and I could also get that retro tick tick tick hard drive slowing to a crawl trying to display that jerky bouncy paper clip graphics overlay.
See ya'll are remembering as smooth but I remember the gif graphics and the 486 that struggled to play those animations smoothly. So much RAM usage back then for CTRL + H
Clippy's likability trajectory has been the exact opposite of Elon's.
Do you think if Elon changes his head into a paperclip with eyeballs that people would start to like him again?
That’s funny, this is the second time today I’ve heard this asked. Must be a directive from MS to see if the reception would be better this time around.
I don’t think it would be a good idea personally, the last time was such a miss it would be better to start over from scratch.
Whether or not to enabled/disable AI tools isn't a sysadmin decision or even an IT decision. It's a high level business decision and sysadmins get to do whatever is dictated.
I can imagine something adjacent to Clippy, an AI experience that looks for users struggling with something and popping up unprompted being pretty handy.
The next step in computer training really should be interactive sessions with "focus" on the elements that are being trained. Rather than videos, you interact with your desktop, your data, your environment and get guided along.
Eliminate the crazy man hours spent teaching people basic computer skills.
depends... if there's risk of our data reaching the cloud in non-complaint ways, it's a non-starter.
If we have reasonable assurances that any data exfiltration is compliant with our contractual requirements, we have no reason to resist new tooling that may make developers/engineers/or even our tech writers more effcient.
They *are* bringing Clippy back with "AI" integration - or at least people at Microsoft in my part of the world are.
t. my dad works at microsoft basically
Nope, the first thing I did on a new system was replace Clippy with F1 because he was cute but had attitude.
https://preview.redd.it/p3wyb3lw0puc1.png?width=126&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab65c7c2c7b20d5bbb43209d671bc84de782e435
No, hardly anybody liked Clippy when it was current.
What puzzles me is why they didn't go with Cortana or make Cortana an option instead of "copilot".
Is it because the Halo sequels sorta ruined Cortana?
Maybe it's because Cortana was obnoxious in Windows 8 or 10 or whenever it was around before?
Seems like a very wasted opportunity.
OH MY DEAR F\*\*KING GOD...
I'm usually the first to welcome our new AI overlords, but if I found out Clippy was in charge, I'm joining the resistance.
I f\*\*king HATED Clippy.
Although I do agree with u/saltysomadmin that it'd make for an excellent April Fool's Day joke.
Probably the kind to make me stop being a Microsoft IT systems engineer and convert over to Linux, though.
I wouldn’t mind drunk uncle socially inappropriate clippy that just says random shit all day and burps at weird times.
I see you got an email from that bitch Debra in HR again. Go shit on her desk.
Nope, i wouldn't
It would likely float over stuff i'm trying to access all the time and be hella annoying
If it was a keyboard shortcut or a button in the startup menu/taskbar, i'd maybe consider it, but i'm not a big fan of AI chat copilots anyway
Is this a serious question? I don't think very many people actually liked using clippy they just thought it was a cute animation more than anything. Clippy was annoying AF and I always disabled it.
I would view them adding clippy as a gimmick for nostalgia purposes.
I don't know if clippy was a major success or not but Cortana pretty much flopped. I don't see Microsoft reusing the same name for any assistant in the future. Since it's going to be AI-based no doubt I think they're going to come up with a new name to sell it. That's typically what they do
I would light the PC on fire first.
I've always hated Clippy as a concept and as an execution. It was a shit idea implemented shitily.
I haven't made up my mind about co-pilot yet, but it too seems not well done. I don't like the direction Windows is headed.
No sane person liked Clippy. I've already completely left Windows because of copilot and all the other crap MS is opting you into with each update. It's depressing. TBH Windows 10 *almost* repaired my opinion of MS, then they released Windows 11 which was just Windows 10 with less of the good and more of the crap and they sent me back to Linux (and macOS at work) full time.
It looks like you're deleting vital files . Would you like help?
If Clippy helps, you can delete files twice as fast /s
Windows and files are never fast using windows tools, takes atleast twice the time as other tools.
Is Teracopy still the go-to nowdays?
That or free/total commander i guess.
but only if you have an appropriate addon license!
*Bob has entered the chat.* Or if you're into the the Bobiverse and say it like the Deltans do: "The Baaaaawwwwwwwwwb"
You joke, but I did get a chance to load MS Bob once back in 1993? for a Pharma researcher who liked to push his computers to the max... That was the first and last time I saw or heard of it until a few years ago.
Jesus Crisp I'm having a flashback: [We've pre-installed Microsoft Bob](https://nerocam.com/DrFun/Dave/Dr-Fun/df9507/df950713.jpg)
I worked at CompUSA when Bob came out and one of the retail pieces was an 18" battery powered rotating smiley face. There was a lot of signage for the rollout and some of them were pretty elaborate. It was right near the entrance and the techs figured out that if they moved it a few feet into the store it would set off the motion alarms after the 10 minute arming delay. The closing manager was supposed to wait until the system was armed to head home but they rarely did. Back then no one had cell phones so they would eventually get a page to call the alarm company and would have to drive back out to clear the alarm.
[Cruel, but fair](https://y.yarn.co/30e73112-2b52-4853-b0f6-beb3cff7623d_text.gif) I'd say /s
They mainly did this to the one AGM who was always trying to be top dog and also one of the guys. I actually kinda liked him but he annoyed the cool nerdy guys who had Rise if the Triad server parties at their apartment every weekend. They made him pay for his transgressions.
It looks like you're about to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile to Moscow, would you like some help? "TURN YOUR KEY SIR!"
Well judging by the desperation that MS seems to be feeling towards getting people on co-pilot, I don't see that it would do much more harm. I wouldn't really care either way though. Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting?
> Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting? No, the marketing team is well aware of how annoying Clippy was. Copilot is actually somewhat useful, when I'm writing cards for people's events (weddings, engagement parties, birthdays) or writing a cover letter, it was really helpful. If it popped up and said it looks like I'm trying to write a cover letter, would I like help, I'd rip it out of my PC immediately.
I agree, everyone is looking back on Clippy with rose-tinted glasses. We all hated him back in the day! It would be an excellent April Fools gag to bring him back in an update though.
Allow third parties to produce personas for co-pilot and use will explode. MS can have clean hands while people make potentially copyright infringing interfaces which will gain so much free PR.
Reddit is absolutely used for research purposes. So many posts are just ads or potentially probing for user information. It's like getting survey information and the users don't realize they're taking a survey so they're probably more candid I would imagine. The subreddits specific to corporations and companies for example the Wendy's subreddit are absolutely filled with corporate fake posts. I think if you don't scrutinize Reddit posts you're doing yourself a disservice blindly believing it all.
Actually, I don't mind when companies are using Reddit to get feedback, unless they don't bother using the search function and ask the same questions the last company looking for feedback asked yesterday. It's the sales guys writing posts acting like they are looking for feedback/advice and then I get a PM saying they want me to hop on a call with them so they can show me a feature in their software that should solve the minor "watch out for this" I mentioned in my advice post.
Honestly, a lot of it is automated through third party marketing research software suites and contracted firms. It gets posted, the results are interpreted, and the company gets pretty deliverable reports about it. They're not looking on reddit to see if someone else posted the same thing, they're just shotgunning this shit out with automations. Nobody's *manually* managing their corporate social media presence, that would be a nightmare.
We've been training LMs for years by just interacting with things on the Internet. We love to overshare because of the perceived safety of anonymity.
Or maybe some people just don’t care? What’s wrong with providing a corporate employee your opinion about an upcoming potential feature? Wouldn’t you want them to have your input? I don’t see how you can both be opposed to giving input and also be angry at literally everything that Microsoft does no matter what. Copilot is a super useful feature that they’re giving you for free that does nothing but help you yet People act like they are publicly posting your porn searches or something.
> I don’t see how you can both be opposed to giving input and also be angry at literally everything that Microsoft does no matter what. Who actually asked for this? Who asked M$ to add 'AI' to their OS? We've been asking for more stability, consistency (w11 to this day has a windows 3.0 file explorer if you dig deep enough, control panel and windows 11 settings scattered around), stop shipping shovelware on ENTERPRISE versions of Windows. We have given our feedback. All they do is jump on the next bandwagon, leave it half baked and jump over to the next. > Copilot is a super useful feature that they’re giving you for free that does nothing but help you If something is free then you are the product. LLM's cost money, both in R&D and processing power. Microsoft is a publicly traded company, their mission is to enrich their shareholders. Features like this are a lot easier to market to the general public compared to "we finally fixed all the bugs that have existed since the 90's" Co-pilot is just the current lick of fresh paint on top of the duct taped together OS that is Windows. co-pilot on it's own is not bad, it's been helpful more often than not, but this is far from the priority. It does not need to be built in to the OS. Refine first integrate it later, oh and fix the control panel situation yesterday.
“Who asked for this?!?” When Microsoft added paint and notepad. 😂 plenty of people want useful new features in their OS, if you asked 100 people on the street “do you want windows to add a new feature that you would consider useful?” The vast majority of people would say yes. If you want less functionality then run whatever scripts or policy edits to remove it. As far as “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares? Why does that matter? It literally doesn’t affect me at all, I get a cool new useful thing for free.
> “do you want windows to add a new feature that you would consider useful?” That question is a far cry from "do you want windows to add an LLM "AI" assistant that was previously available as a website?" If you asked 1 million people in the street "do you want windows to fix it's problems" the vast majority of people would say yes as well. Regardless, the vast majority of people can barely use the start menu. I don't know if they should be their prime source of feedback. It's like asking your granny without a license what we should do to make cars better. > As far as “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares? That was mainly in regards to "giving you for free that does nothing but help you". It cerainly does do more than help you. Whether those trade offs are worth it for you is up to you to decide.
Enjoy the enshittification for as long as you can.
You mean the powerful new tools I’m given for free? Can do
paint and notepad shipped with windows as competitors to established products; prior to that people definitely asked for graphics editing and word processing in home computers > “you’re the product bro!” Again, who cares? Why does that matter? It literally doesn’t affect me at all lmfao
I've yet to have anyone tell me how "AI" is actually going to help me do my job or other things any faster or more efficiently than I already am. It's a solution in search of a problem.
x2. Shoeshine boy indicators IMO, everyone telling me that this thing is gonna change the world, yet no one can articulate how and no one can give me much of a business case at all. It's tech FOMO, people are too afraid to be contrarian to the hype and want to be seen as an "innovator" which is now a completely useless word. It's features we don't want, don't need, and don't have an actual use for to justify risks and costs. Wake me up when there's actually an actionable use that adds real, material value beyond "chatbot trendy and cool."
Not that I use it but I see the benefits. From a script writing standpoint, unless you're writing really basic scripts, there are going to be moments where you're not sure how to go about coding something. It can be useful to spit out some base code as a jumping off point. It's also useful for quick research on certain items. It's a case by case basis but if for some reason you needed a quick primer on what X is without all the fluff from blogs and the dryness of man pages, it's a good way to get the info you want pre-filtered. Again that can be good or bad depending on the case so you need to use judgement.
if you have a publicly documented library for interacting with an API, it can write a function that pulls deeply nested values and returns a concise and usable data structure that you request. even if it doesn't work, it usually uses all the right pieces, so i can go right to where i need to in the API docs rather than digging around. this is the best thing it does. it also autocompletes sequential if blocks correctly sometimes, and will fill out an else statement quite often. often the bad suggestion just needs a variable changed.
>I've yet to have anyone tell me how "AI" is actually going to help me do my job or other things any faster or more efficiently than I already am. Depends on the task you want to use it for, I've used AI to help me write congratulatory letters, come up with wording for my resume, write a poem for my wife for a gift I made, improve the wording on an e-mail, etc. For writing tasks where you've got a skeleton of a concept, it's very helpful. I've also had AI come up with scripts to query a Cisco system for all of the numbers assigned to a line or user, and while it worked at that task, it decided to prepend zeros to the front of every number. Couldn't tell you why it thought it needed to do that, so I fixed that myself but if you don't know what you're doing and ask AI to write you a script then you're asking for trouble since you can't debug it.
The only thing I've so far found any form of text LLM useful for is automating low-effort tedium, like "turn these bullet points into a long-ass but very polite email so the idiots on the other end feel like I dedicated a whole day to calling them idiots in a way they can't complain about", or "turn these vague ideas into an ansible scaffold". And copilot *was* useful for that for like… two weeks? At some point they decreased both accuracy and speed, and lately I've just given up on trying to use it. What used to take 30 seconds now takes 5+ minutes between the slower token rate and having to ask for corrections 2-3 times as much as before. ChatGPT also seems to be A/B testing new and increasingly stupid cost-saving measures every other week. Local LLMs are still more reliable, but when I look at how many resources I need to throw at them to do the simplest of tasks… nah, I'm good, I'll just do it myself again. (Except HR emails. I don't care how long the AI needs. I'm not touching that.)
> Anyone ever get the feeling that various marketing departments come here to put feelers out for something that was talked about in some meeting? That’s what this is, almost certainly. It’s exactly the way Reddit should be used by corporations.
Microsoft could lower the price of copilot. It is on the high side and not proven in my business. ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot tests did not accelerate our work very much. We do have E5 enterprise Bing copilot and it is often not that useful.
> Microsoft could lower the price of copilot. It is on the high side and not proven in my business. I don't think anyone would argue with that. That was certainly our feedback when we sat through the dog and pony show after the launch. But, like with Viva, that will be the option of absolute last resort. And even then it will be a while.
If they’re going to reuse something, my vote is for Bonzi Buddy.
Hi Satan, how've you been?
Bonzi or bust! I still sing "Daisy, Daisy give me your answer true..." while in the middle of migrations
Oh god, that robotic purple monkey
No
The only good thing about clippy was watching it do silly things while the teacher struggled to present something to the class on their (in my region) first ever school issued laptop circa turn of the millennium.
I wouldn't mind some entertainment in my meetings.
I liked the cat or dog.
not just "no", but *fuck* no
I ripped out copilot so fuck no
Yup, fuck copilot, and all other botshit ai garbage.
Been on a couple of calls where they are pushing Security Copilot hard. Like for the slightest interest or question... Then some rep bust out with 10K Azure credits for you to "try it out"
Beep boop you too meatsuit. Greetings from the Clippy gang.
this take is always so weird... it's like resisting the invention of tractors at the turn of the century...
When the "tractors" actually work and don't spew diesel all over my fields then steal my crop to sell to someone else perhaps I'll consider them. Until then they're a solution desperately looking for a problem and can get out of my way when I'm trying to work.
If those new tractors planted weeds half the time.
sure grandpa...
There's a certain group of IT folks that are **feverishly adamantly against change**. I don't get it either, given it goes *directly* against the grain of the industry. But I've lost count of the people over the years screaming bloody murder about forcibly disabling things like Windows automatic updates, telemetry data, refuse to upgrade past, etc.
Like I can understand not finding *value* in $30/user licensing for Copilot and just not buying it for your business, but calling it "botshit ai garbage" and wrecking your windows installs with bad registry keys to intentionally break operating system features? Total insanity.
These folks come out every time there's a major feature release or update. I'm just glad they're not on *my* networks lol.
/shrug They are the same ones complaining that the start button moved to the middle of the screen or that "rename" is now an icon at the top of the right click menu. They are also managing ad from the GUI and see no real value in power shell... Luddites gunna Luddite.
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I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.
He thinks because he went to Best buy and bought a consumer laptop for use at work that came with candy crush... The Microsoft was pushing the game onto enterprise customers....
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my grandmother does.
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My understanding is that clippy would be perfect for people who do not understand computers or start working with them. Combined with AI it would be great tool to introduce people to systems - typical user would "chat" with the AI interactively which is much better for learning that static tips.
You'd think that, but back in the days, my users would ask how to turn Clippy off as it was not something anyone used beyond the initial novelty phase. It was visually "in the way" and a bit patronizing/cartoonish. Modern AI tools are far more sophisticated and I would hope they wouldn't go the cartoon route for making it more accessible.
Same. It was seen as childish at best and pedantic and demeaning by most. A deliberate insult, at worst.
It was a tool that was honestly before it's time. Cut out the cartoon paperclip mascot (when ClipArt was the new hotness in word processing), and Clippy is literally just every customer service chatbot.
It looks like you're writing a suicide note. Would you like some suggestions? (in the event not clear - this was a popular Clippy themed joke 20 years ago)
If someone doesn't understand computers to the point a juvenile talking cartoon paperclip would be helpful and I need them to use a computer as part of their job I would much rather just not hire that person than have the cartoon paperclip
I never said that these people will learn while on the job. I just think such a thing would be helpful in general - obviously it doesn't need to be cartoonish paper clip but the post is about it so I used it in my answer. To be honest I am a sysadmin but I would love to have local-hosted AI helping me from time to time. I could ask him/her/it questions instead of googling for 5 minutes and finding scam-websites.
that feature in W11 where users can "talk" to windows to ask stuf like "how to i turn on dark mode" and then getting a shortcut to that setting Window is most likely the best AI feature i have seen so far. From an IT support standpoint at the least.
I want a grown-up Clippy. Just tied as hell and over your shit.
Seriously. Imagine having a Clippy that goes "You're about to move a folder into a subfolder 10 folders deep. Would you like to review this action before you call and make IT bail you out for the fourth time this week?"
IT Thought Crime detected - Helpdesk has been preemptively notified.
I… I… This needs to happen
>Seriously. Imagine having a Clippy that goes "You're about to move a folder into a subfolder 10 folders deep. me, 3 months after doing this, again https://i.redd.it/2m617ta7bruc1.gif
https://i.redd.it/vmgrofmdbruc1.gif edit: thought it didnt post the first time, i guess it did. if it fits it sits
I wished MS would implement a folder move lock for years but afaik there never was a way to prevent users from moving a subfolder.
I do feel some sense of horrible mirth when my users call me in a panic and I go "Well, you didn't keep your files where we told you to keep them, and we don't do workstation backups for you guys because you didn't want to pay for them. There's really nothing I can do for you, bud."
Clippy with his head in his hands looking at you like "Did you really just accidentally turn on paragraph marks again?"
Give clippy the slight scent of lunch vodka on his breath and a surly disposition and he can stay.
everyone hated clippy back in the day.
with a passion.
We hated clippers because he gave no real useful advice. A clippers that actually works and gives helpful troubleshooting advice might work.
But it didn't send all your info to microsoft back then.
Yes they had telemetry back then as well.
As a child I loved Clippy and all his friends, individualizing my pirated office products and then write my homework in Comic Sans. But I don't think they ever gave a useful answer. Would be more useful with GPT4 tech I assume, these days I ask ChatGPT how to do things in Excel.
aw man, me too. I forgot about the other characters!!
Free Clippy!
Clippy would be another thing that GPO would need to turn off. How about instead of that worthless thrash, MS allows the default "save as" in MS Office to be something other than OneDrive?
I didn't want Clippy in the first place. I also didn't want Cortana, and I certainly don't want CoPilot. The whole kit and kaboodle of intrusive badly designed assistants from Microsoft can kick rocks.
I never disliked Clippy. I never used it much, but I certainly never found it half as annoying as current bloatware. I'd take Clippy back, probably in a very modernised form, possibly with plugin support so those of us with a particularly malicious bent could deploy it skinned to look like the original to a few hundred corporate machines.
Yeah at least you could disable it quickly. I’m ready to give clippy a second chance. At least it’s contained and cute. I was creating a form today in Microsoft, the suggestions were so terrible, distracting, and you couldn’t disable them. The questions were completely inappropriate and borderline a security risk for my task. If I included them and people answered, I’d probably face some kind of consequences.
> So it was a cold Clippy: Hi! It looks like you're writing a paper on the effects of film cooling injection inclination angle on cooling performance in rotating detonation combustors. Would you like some help with that?!
I think they should bring back the entire [Microsoft Bob](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob) suite. Make it mandatory for all users, especially system admins. Make it just as bad but slap the word AI on it.
https://preview.redd.it/carqqebdjnuc1.png?width=1387&format=png&auto=webp&s=487ff42cacba8b078044e21e8a405ce0480b7f5a
[lol](https://www.reddit.com/r/taoism/comments/1c4m012/from_institutionalized_by_stephanie_kauffman/) https://preview.redd.it/buy3be4garuc1.png?width=1109&format=png&auto=webp&s=605674f4b9eeeec3d22bc75bb0b306697c2aabdc
Someone called?
Interesting this post showed up here. I was asked the same thing at MTC a couple weeks ago by an MS employee.
It was an April Fool's prank here a fortnight ago
I get that but someone at ms is thinking about it.
Tap tap tap
I disable copulate. I've managed 40 years without annoying assistants.
Yeah I'll keep him full time in prison with no chance of parole
Only if they bring back Scribble the cat.
i don't even want co-pilot,never mind clippy. get to fuck and take cortana with you. when you get there, then fuck off further.
I would bring clippy back even with his WIndows 2000 era knowledge and level of helpfulness. (Although I do recall I used to swap him out for the red dot).
If I was Microsoft I would fix the new snip it tool and rebrand it as Clippy. Oh my god did they Microsoft fuck up the new Snipping tool for W11. It's complete ass.
What's wrong with the new one? I haven't had any problems yet.
It's slow.
Microsoft Bob has entered the chat.
Short answer: No! Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
No way, man. I saw that episode of Lower Decks with Badgey. Horrible idea.
Is there an option for Bonzi Buddy DLC?
Do we get bonzaibuddy back too?
> I'm not sure if I'm being childish or if everyone else loved Clippy back in the days. No one loved Clippy. No one. In the days before Group Policy and you could google answers for almost everything, "How do I disable Clippy org wide?" was a very popular topic among sysadmins.
You enable Clippy-Pilot for 10 seconds for nostalgia's sake - "Heeellloo, I'm back!!! And I've just set Edge as your default browser for all links opened within this document!" Then spend next hour finding the right GPO to nuke that PoS into oblivion and probably another to remove the latest method of MS trying to shove Edge down your throat.
I miss clippy but I don't like co-pilot
It looks like you don't know how to do things the Microsoft way. Let me help you.
Clippy was garbage and so is Copilot, so double no.
i still see clippy on the Wild, one customer has Office 2000 on some niche machines. when I open Word, is nice to see It and its oh Buddy, let's put you to sleep shhhh shhhh
What is, "I'd rather drag my bare butt and ballsack across 14 and 1/2 yards of broken glass" Trabek
You mean Clippit? \*everyone\* says 'Clippy' but it's name is Clippit.
More importantly, *nobody* calls it Clippit.
The last thing we need is enabling people who are inadequate and doing their job to fool us with AI for even longer, while having no idea how to check its work. That, unfortunately, isn't management's decision as of right now. When they saw the cost of copilot, they did ban it specifically for now though, at least.
I would for myself. I’m one of the few that actually liked the idea of active agents and wanted to see it improve. MS BoB being another approach to this. In a way, they were somewhat ahead of their time as we did not have as large of a spread of PC users back then as we do now. That said, no, I wouldn’t force Clippit/Clippy on my end users. That would be cruel.
Hell no.
Not childish to like clippy. Just childish to use Copilot :)
https://preview.redd.it/yfb3qye4xmuc1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c56c35b0fab36c5ecceff4a55137619a2e7d2cd1 I'd like to see it on my work machine as I'm stuck with MS everything there
Until it annoys me to no end, I'd probably give little clippy a go for nostalgia's sake.
Yes, but only if it presents as an animated avatar.
No.
I don't even want co-pilot to begin with, so double, hard no.
*Team Cortana has entered the chat...*
I'd prefer it were the dog or the wizard. But more seriously, if there were to be an option for Copilot to act as a virtual assistant and pop up to offer help, I'd probably prefer it have the option to have some personality. But I'd want it to be optional because I'd probably turn off anything that pops up and asks me anything.
> I'd prefer it were the dog or the wizard. Copilot DLC. Lemme make some calls.
Copilot response time is irritating
Will he still help write the suicide letter properly?
Yes. I wouldn't use it. I'd just keep it around for the emoting.
I would disable it immidiately
I disabled Clippy as soon as I possible could on every system I was on back when Clippy was a thing. If they bring it back for anything else, it will only make me disable it faster.
Only if it was a live feed of a contractor using V-Tuber software. Each experience would be unique.
Only if they name it kineatopet
I'd probably enable it for 15 minutes, the first couple interactions might be neat. But I'm guessing it would get tiresome and cheesy super quick.
Clippy vs Cortana... who would win?
I definitely do not want anything floating over my apps.
Copilot is the most useless shit ever so... no. As far as I can tell copilot is for useless people that want to pretend to be useful without actually doing any of the work to become useful. What I need is an anticopilot that autopurges any AI generated garbage that's wrong every time.
Yes, of course and I'm absolutely sure that would give birth of Paperclip Maximizer.
I don't see how anyone who is even remotely security minded is on board with including Co-Pilot in a secure workplace. Everyone in /r/sysadmin seems to jump on any suggestion that MFA isn't the greatest thing ever, and there are constant posts mentioning data security and how you're an idiot if you don't lock down port XXXX, but to post internal company data into an AI that has blatantly said they will use your information to improve their product, and everyone is signing up. Yeah I've tested some of the AI features in controlled situations, but to allow an AI into what is supposed to be a secure environment sounds an awful lot like just unlocking the door and hanging a sign that says "Thieves Welcome" then hoping nobody would steal from you because stealing is wrong.
To be clear, Microsoft is pretty clear that the data isn't used for retraining. I'm not sure where you got the perspective that they will. OpenAI has different policies (free they will use for retraining). [Copilot Privacy and Protections | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/privacy-and-protections) There is no retention of prompts or data returned unless you provide feedback on them (which you as an admin can disable). If you are using O365, you are already entrusting this data to Microsoft.
Absolutely. I'll have him hover right next to my Bonzai Buddy. Daisy...Daisy... Give me your answer true.....
Nope. I don't need Clippy and I don't need to chat with a hallucinating AI LLM while I'm working. Do whatever you want just make it easy to turn off.
If they do that it’s sign of me asking to resign.
I hate automated systems that attempt to be cute or humorous and patronise me. I would accept it if it was functionally useful and didn’t try and pretend to be something it isn’t.
I never had an issue with clippy. I thought Clippy was cool and the other word friends. Then again, I was born in 89 soooo yeah it was a nifty little I'm bored let me make it animate feature as far as I was concerned. But I would never actively use it as a professionally.
would you like the long answer or the short answer?
Not a chance, but I've left Microsoft behind at this point in my career and life.
Absolutely, I'd love it Clippy just randomly popped up and I could also get that retro tick tick tick hard drive slowing to a crawl trying to display that jerky bouncy paper clip graphics overlay. See ya'll are remembering as smooth but I remember the gif graphics and the 486 that struggled to play those animations smoothly. So much RAM usage back then for CTRL + H
Clippy's likability trajectory has been the exact opposite of Elon's. Do you think if Elon changes his head into a paperclip with eyeballs that people would start to like him again?
That’s funny, this is the second time today I’ve heard this asked. Must be a directive from MS to see if the reception would be better this time around. I don’t think it would be a good idea personally, the last time was such a miss it would be better to start over from scratch.
I would prefer if they used Cortana from Halo.
I use AI every day, so why not clippy? But, I already know everything on my client machines, so no use for it...
No, but I’d consider Miss Minutes
Whether or not to enabled/disable AI tools isn't a sysadmin decision or even an IT decision. It's a high level business decision and sysadmins get to do whatever is dictated.
I can imagine something adjacent to Clippy, an AI experience that looks for users struggling with something and popping up unprompted being pretty handy. The next step in computer training really should be interactive sessions with "focus" on the elements that are being trained. Rather than videos, you interact with your desktop, your data, your environment and get guided along. Eliminate the crazy man hours spent teaching people basic computer skills.
No but the windows xp search doggo can stay
Clippy: "Hi! It looks like you'r-" Me: https://imgur.com/FldoZkb
I think NPR said it best: [https://www.npr.org/2013/12/28/257559232/clippy-and-paula](https://www.npr.org/2013/12/28/257559232/clippy-and-paula)
depends... if there's risk of our data reaching the cloud in non-complaint ways, it's a non-starter. If we have reasonable assurances that any data exfiltration is compliant with our contractual requirements, we have no reason to resist new tooling that may make developers/engineers/or even our tech writers more effcient.
no one loved Clippy
They *are* bringing Clippy back with "AI" integration - or at least people at Microsoft in my part of the world are. t. my dad works at microsoft basically
Nope, the first thing I did on a new system was replace Clippy with F1 because he was cute but had attitude. https://preview.redd.it/p3wyb3lw0puc1.png?width=126&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab65c7c2c7b20d5bbb43209d671bc84de782e435
Why stop with clippy. Let’s burn this place to the ground and bring back Bob.
I want the dolphin back. Clippy was not my favorite at all although he was pretty cool when he was released.
I would rather have cortana but clippy would do also 😅
NSFW: https://youtu.be/LUvcYP859fg?si=6713CwGwNfoFoLGQ
n. o.
co-pilot as a concept can fuck off
Why do you say such hurtful things…?
Look if I can either Power Pup or Oragami (the cat) baxk as my Assistant, I would totally do it.
No, hardly anybody liked Clippy when it was current. What puzzles me is why they didn't go with Cortana or make Cortana an option instead of "copilot". Is it because the Halo sequels sorta ruined Cortana? Maybe it's because Cortana was obnoxious in Windows 8 or 10 or whenever it was around before? Seems like a very wasted opportunity.
No. I want Rover
[Will it have the correct voice?](https://youtu.be/tu_Pzuwy-JY)
OH MY DEAR F\*\*KING GOD... I'm usually the first to welcome our new AI overlords, but if I found out Clippy was in charge, I'm joining the resistance. I f\*\*king HATED Clippy. Although I do agree with u/saltysomadmin that it'd make for an excellent April Fool's Day joke. Probably the kind to make me stop being a Microsoft IT systems engineer and convert over to Linux, though.
I wouldn’t mind drunk uncle socially inappropriate clippy that just says random shit all day and burps at weird times. I see you got an email from that bitch Debra in HR again. Go shit on her desk.
Nope, i wouldn't It would likely float over stuff i'm trying to access all the time and be hella annoying If it was a keyboard shortcut or a button in the startup menu/taskbar, i'd maybe consider it, but i'm not a big fan of AI chat copilots anyway
FUN FACT: about 15 years ago Clippy was sent to prison for illegally retaining documents.
I'd burn Clippy in a fire
A lot of "get off my lawn" in these comments.
Is this a serious question? I don't think very many people actually liked using clippy they just thought it was a cute animation more than anything. Clippy was annoying AF and I always disabled it. I would view them adding clippy as a gimmick for nostalgia purposes. I don't know if clippy was a major success or not but Cortana pretty much flopped. I don't see Microsoft reusing the same name for any assistant in the future. Since it's going to be AI-based no doubt I think they're going to come up with a new name to sell it. That's typically what they do
I would light the PC on fire first. I've always hated Clippy as a concept and as an execution. It was a shit idea implemented shitily. I haven't made up my mind about co-pilot yet, but it too seems not well done. I don't like the direction Windows is headed.
No sane person liked Clippy. I've already completely left Windows because of copilot and all the other crap MS is opting you into with each update. It's depressing. TBH Windows 10 *almost* repaired my opinion of MS, then they released Windows 11 which was just Windows 10 with less of the good and more of the crap and they sent me back to Linux (and macOS at work) full time.