Even in the wide world of dubiously useful AI chatbots, Copilot really stands out for just how incompetent it is. The other day I was working on a PowerPoint presentation, and one of the slides included a photo with a kind of cluttered looking background. Now, I can probably count the number of things that AI is genuinely good at on one hand, and context aware image editing trends to be one of them, so I decided to click the Copilot button that Microsoft now has built directly into PowerPoint and see what happens. A chat window popped up and I concisely explained what I wanted it to do: “please remove the background from the photo on slide 5.” It responded on that infuriating obseqious tone that they all have and assured me that it would be happy to help with my request just as soon as I uploaded my presentation.

What?

The chatbot running inside an instance of PowerPoint with my presentation open is asking me to “upload” my presentation? I explained this to it, and it came back with some BS about being unable to access the presentation because a “token expired” before requesting again that I upload my presentation. I tried a little longer to convince it otherwise, but it just kept very politely insisting that it was unable to do what I was asking for until I uploaded my presentation.

Eventually I gave up. The photo wasn’t that bad anyway.

You don’t even need to ban it. You just need to open up the marketplace to alternatives. Cory Doctrow has been pushing the idea that the best retaliation is to simply repeal anti-circumvention laws and allow companies to begin chipping away at the walled gardens of the tech giants. For example, John Deere famously puts software locks on its tractors so that even simple repairs require the owner to pay for a technician to come out and “authorize” the newly installed part or else the machine will refuse to start. This system could almost certainly be bypassed, but right now the law not only allows manufacturers to lock their tractors, it also forbids anyone else from unlocking them. If the EU simply repealed the law that bans circumvention then some clever EU citizen could legally reverse engineer the software running on those tractors and start a business selling unlocking software. They could make it a one-time purchase at 10x the cost of an official tech visit and make money hand over fist while still saving their customers time and money in the long term.
And of course it’s not just tractors. Make a third party app store for the iphone that charges half the commission of Apple. Make a tool that allows seamless account migration from Google to the independent cloud provider of your choice. A huge amount of corporate rent seeking is enabled by anti-circumvention laws.

For what its worth, Slotin in particular knew the consequences. If i recall correctly, he had a reputation for being a bit of a “cowboy” when it came to experimental protocol. I believe the lab even had specially made tools for handling the core, but Slotin insisted on using a screwdriver because it was easier.

In case you’re wondering how to get a list of all the apps installed on your phone, these instructions worked for me https://www.javathinking.com/blog/how-to-get-the-list-of-all-apps-on-android-device-using-terminal/

I just wrote a quick script to check my list against the google doc. The official Merriam Webster app and the official Letterboxd app both got flagged.

Time to once again pitch my idea for a Super Smash Bros style fighting game with all public domain characters and a new DLC released every January 1st.

Every time I see a headline like this I’m reminded of the time I heard someone describe the modern state of AI research as equivalent to the practice of alchemy.

Long before anyone knew about atoms, molecules, atomic weights, or electron bonds, there were dudes who would just mix random chemicals together in an attempt to turn lead to gold, or create the elixir of life or whatever. Their methods were haphazard, their objectives impossible, and most probably poisoned themselves in the process, but those early stumbling steps eventually gave rise to the modern science of chemistry and all that came with it.

AI researchers are modern alchemists. They have no idea how anything really works and their experiments result in disaster as often as not. There’s great potential but no clear path to it. We can only hope that we’ll make it out of the alchemy phase before society succumbs to the digital equivalent of mercury poisoning because it’s just so fun to play with.