Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to Its New AI Assistant

https://www.404media.co/microsoft-wants-to-make-people-addicted-to-scout-its-new-ai-assistant-internal-documents-reveal/

by cdrnsf • 2 months ago

66 121 2 months ago

404media.co

cyanydeez• 2 months ago

"We forced all the employees into AI, and now apparently, our internal AI usage is high; this means this project will get high usage from general consumers."

When your dogfood is really an opiate, you might have a problem.

Traubenfuchs• 2 months ago

It‘s not an opiate, it‘s salvia divinorum or rather something even more awful like diphenhydramin.

Psychonaut wiki:

Notably, it is frequently reported to produce significant nausea and bodily discomfort ("body load"). Most people who try diphenhydramine do not report positive effects and do not wish to repeat the experience.

It is generally considered to have low abuse potential due to its dysphoric effects.

RajT883• 2 months ago

Benadryl?

CrzyLngPwd• 2 months ago

Don't all businesses with AI want people addicted to it?

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374079

analogpixel• 2 months ago

Simple, add an Anime Girl that pretends to like you.

warumdarum3• 2 months ago

They botched the phone, thry botched AI, just overall so obsessed with themselves, they tend to forget the customers

nullable_bool• 2 months ago

Remember when they tried banning the term "Microslop". Thats the type of delusion youre dealing with.

warumdarum3• 2 months ago

The operating system of the company is still : "win & bulldooze" while not honestly developing USPs that would bind customers to them

GuestFAUniverse• 2 months ago

An ad free, minimal notification, calm design and thus _Pro_ like in (former times) _pro_fessional signature edition OS would be too simple.

Instead we get a marketing platform. Because "growth"... whatever that means until (and after) the next bubble pops. Plus: that euphemistic /bubble/ is more like a puss and cancer ridden zombie needing constant life support. Keep the numbers high, yeah! Cheer the numbers!

warumdarum3• 2 months ago

Certainly has a cooperate socialist product feel too it..

x______________• 2 months ago

After some time in the industry, once you reach a certain amount of zeros in your revenue, the org mindset almost always changes from something of a survival state into messiah-mode where everything it does and produces must-be and will-be accepted as the next best thing since sliced bread, at no matter the cost.

It's a human trait, Microsoft is not immune.

croes• 2 months ago

Keep some hate for the other companies. They want the same, they are just not as open about it as MS

righthand• 2 months ago

That’s probably why they pushed out Phil Spencer and handed over the Xbox division to a very pro-AI employee.

OgsyedIE• 2 months ago

To be fair, the fundamentals that pre-2019 Xbox (and all other consumer gaming) relies on were already slowly going away and have recently been confirmed to have an extremely tiny chance of recovery, if at all. Embracing the pivot to gambling and tobacco-style customer retention philosophies is purely an effort to salvage the sunk costs in an industry whose traditional customer base is being forced to shrink and input costs are being forced to rise by largely macroeconomic headwinds.

radlad• 2 months ago

What fundamentals are those?

noitpmeder2• 2 months ago

Literally every company on the planet would jump at the chance for their product to be addictive.

Defletter• 2 months ago

Who'd've guessed that the profit motive being the primary if not sole concern would sometimes (often) create incentives that are hostile to humanity.

chatmasta• 2 months ago

Yeah but you’re not supposed to say it out loud. The bigger part of this story is Nadella saying (paraphrased) that he has no clue who wrote the document and that guy should look for a new job.

whynotmaybe2• 2 months ago

Imagine a world where every car company would get money every time someone uses their car.

Instead of monthly subscription for self driving or heated seat, it would just cost a few cents a minute.

This would be a strong push to try to destroy public transportation everywhere

gruez• 2 months ago

Imagine a world where every car company would get money every time someone uses their car.

So oil companies? Moreover car companies do get more money with more car use. More driving means more parts required, more servicing needed (from their dealership network), and cars that need to be replaced sooner. It's not as instantaneous as uber charging your card every time you do a ride, but I don't see how that makes a material difference.

danorama2• 2 months ago

I don't think that's actually true. Heck, from my own experience, I can definitively say it's not actually true. I've worked in several organizations where I helped create and sell products whose job was to provide value, then let people get on with their day. I wouldn't have worked at those places otherwise.

Not saying that intended addictiveness is not common, but let's not normalize corporate sociopathy.

trumpdong3• 2 months ago

That's because your employer doesn't think they can ever be addictive.

yoyohello133• 2 months ago

No that’s just the goal of bad companies. I work for a company that does not, in fact, want our product to be addictive. We want our product to help people. Stop normalizing this behavior as ‘just business’ and start calling out bad people for what they are.

noitpmeder2• 2 months ago

Name and praise?

stevenkkim• 2 months ago

Step 1: make copilot in window actually useful.

saurik3• 2 months ago

Maybe trying to engineer addiction is what should be illegal, and if you want to question "how do you define whether something is addictive" you don't need an objective measure: you determine whether it seems like the people making the product seem to think that's their goal.

tetris11• 2 months ago

"you know it when you see it"

dmbche2• 2 months ago

More demonstrating intent

saurik3• 2 months ago

I guess I worded that poorly; it isn't merely that we don't need an objective measure: we literally don't need a measure at all, as the crime would be attempting to cause it, whether or not it was even possible to do, and so we simply do not care if the activity was addictive. If you are going out of your way to exploit the psychology or physiology of other humans in an attempt to use that to sell your product, maybe that is what should be illegal.

This would then mean that "our expert witness has strong evidence that my client's product area is not 'addictive', so my client could not ever be said to be engineering addiction" would not be a defense any more than "the plan my client came up with to kill their alleged victim could not possibly have worked, so my client can not be charged with attempted murder" is (at least generally, afaik) not a defense.

vitally3643• 2 months ago

Shockingly, a huge amount of human behavior cannot be strictly defined and is best evaluated with situational, subjective judgement. Crazy.

legitster5• 2 months ago

This applies to any business that wants a repeat customer.

RajT883• 2 months ago

You are right! We should regulate all businesses the same way.

techblueberry3• 2 months ago

You’re implying there’s no distinction between addiction and use. And I think you’re excessive cynicism is just wrong in practical ways,

I always buy my nails from Home Depot. I’m not addicted to nails. Home Depot does not reasonably think they can get me addicted to nails.

threwawew• 2 months ago

I would argue that intent should not even matter. Whatever punishment/consequences are deemed appropriate, they should apply based on the system's actual exploitation of addictive tendencies in humans. Otherwise you're just incentivizing people to get better at covering their tracks.

LetsGetTechnicl• 2 months ago

So their "humanistic" approach is just marketing, huge surprise /s

HlessClaudesman• 2 months ago

Copilot, I want you to find product market fit, don't return an answer until you have found it.

esafak• 2 months ago

Good on Nadella: After expressing his complete disbelief that such a document could have been written, Nadella adds that the elusive and mysterious authors “may want to go work elsewhere.”

edit: VP of a product I had not even heard of; it's no Copilot. I would not assume it was on Nadella's radar.

fyrn_• 2 months ago

The author is his vice president of Microsoft Scout, "with AI assistance, but fully reviewed" as has been reported elsewhere.

He's blatantly pretending not to know

neilv• 2 months ago

There are plenty reasons to be critical of Microsoft's AI strategy and tactics (and especially of many other things MS has done), but the linked article seems to be targeted at gamer, rather than at people who care about non-gaming tech industry or public policy.

What seemed a bit more relevant was one of the linked 404 articles, concerning CEO's denial and attempts to dismiss the document, before the document was revealed to be co-authored by the head of the strategic project. But even that article sounds more like social media or political mud-slinging in style, rather than journalism:

In attempting to distance himself from his own company’s executives and strategy documents, Nadella has revealed that he either does not know how to read or does not know what is happening with some of the company’s highest-profile products.

But what I didn't see what a smoking gun that they were truly looking for addictive (like, say, Facebook/Meta has been caught engineering) rather than something they could've described as essential if they weren't using amped-up business bro language. So rage-baiting over the word "addictive" seems to be missing better questions.

logicchains• 2 months ago

They haven't been doing a very good job. Maybe they asked "CoPilot, please make our AI products like a drug", but it misunderstood and instead of making them addictive like cocaine, it made them uncomfortable to use like a laxative.

legitster5• 2 months ago

I'm not sure what the smoking gun is here. Usefulness and dependence are mostly interchangeable. I'm "addicted" to computers, indoor plumbing, headphones, entertainment, etc.

The crime here seems to be that they used a wrong word - would it have been better if they used "snackable", "irresistible", "enthusiast", or "binge-worthy"?

Certhas• 2 months ago

This makes no sense. How are dependence and usefulness interchangable? There is some overlap, sure. But are you seriously claiming that there is no meaningful distinction between using headphones and using slot machines?

legitster5• 2 months ago

Yes, there's obviously a difference between addiction and a substance use disorder. But part of a key definition of a substance use disorder is that it has to cause harm.

Something merely being addicting isn't enough for intervention. It's why nobody is bothered when coffee shops advertise the addictive nature of caffeine.

satvikpendem• 2 months ago

There are some good books on how to make products addictive, like Hooked. What's funny is the author, I guess, got backlash or had remorse writing that book so he put out another book called Indistractable but it's plainly obvious that you as a user would not be able to compete against legions of psychiatrists in these companies whose goal, day in and day out, is to addict you.

josefritzishere• 2 months ago

So... that's pretty disgusting. Why are these AI evangelists so gross? It's a useful technology... It's only the Simpsons-Monorail sales pitch that makes it feel icky.

lousken• 2 months ago

Well they just achieved the opposite of that with github copilot, congrats

thewebguyd• 2 months ago

Statement from Nadella: https://www.404media.co/satya-nadella-not-sure-who-said-micr...

yieldcrv• 2 months ago

Microsoft's CEO seems unaware of what's going on at his own company.

damn, he quickly disavowed the statement and got panned anyway

would falling on the sword worked better??

lepus• 2 months ago

Being aware of what the basic strategy is with one of their most high profile products would have worked better.

sumeno• 2 months ago

He's lying or incompetent, your choice

quantified• 2 months ago

Nadella is good at messaging. It is difficult to actually believe he wants to do anything but push it as far and wide as possible, and addiction is fine. It's just spin on the wording.

bschwindHN• 2 months ago

"We're all trying to find the guy who did this"

RajT883• 2 months ago

I have been using it for some weeks now.

It is "addictive" in the sense that it works really well, and has some guardrails so the risk of it doing something insane is minimized. I have done some cool stuff with it!

Sharlin• 2 months ago

What, a Microsoft AI product that isn't branded "Copilot"?!

turzmo• 2 months ago

Clippy would have been perfect for the role!

iainctduncan• 2 months ago

Clippy, that cute little crack dealer from the 90's!

Havoc• 2 months ago

Lately they've also been talking about autopilots.

bobro• 2 months ago

From the article this one links to:

Microsoft has been piloting Scout as an internal tool for employees it was calling “ClawPilot,” since March. ClawPilot—and now Scout—are part of “Project Lobster,” which is a Microsoft plan to bring the popular OpenClaw AI tool to its Microsoft 365 suite of products in a way that nontechnical people can use.

Morromist2• 2 months ago

Scout sounds like an excitable little dog that runs headlong into trees when trying to catch a frisbee.

Given Microsoft's long history of failure with personal assistants I'm looking forward to this one! Clippy, Cortana, Copilot! Wasn't an animated dog called rover one of these way back? The best of all was unquestionably Ms. Dewey for Microsoft Windows Live Search who is almost forgotten.

aaaronic• 2 months ago

I thought his name was Watson (the dog assistant).

Edit: I was wrong. But there is "Power Pup" and apparently Will Shakespeare

throaway197512• 2 months ago

It was Rover

not_a_bot_4sho• 2 months ago

Power pup was the superdog. Rocky was the normal dog.

(I was way too into the building apps with the assistant framework as a kid...)

e9• 2 months ago

Don't forget about Tay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

blauditore• 2 months ago

Shit, that was 10 years ago already? Feels more recent, also in terms of technology.

epcoa• 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

You can go straight to hell for making me feel old.

mathgeek• 2 months ago

As a kid I absolutely loved these interfaces.

kristopolous2• 2 months ago

guess who is reusing that name?

https://bob.ibm.com/

I saw IBMers wearing shirts with it at the moscone center this week at the snowflake event.

mitthrowaway2• 2 months ago

Don't forget Sydney! No, no no, do not forget Sydney. We do not like people who forget Sydney, we do not, do we?

grassfedgeek3• 2 months ago

"Addiction" is a bad word. It implies the user is not in control of themselves.

Anyone who makes products want users of our product to keep coming back as though they are addicted, but not actually addicted.

antiframe4• 2 months ago

Anyone who makes products want users of our product to keep coming back as though they are addicted, but not actually addicted.

Can you explain the distinction? I am not seeing it. If I keep refreshing a product page to get another dopamine hit, am I addicted or not addicted but appearing so to your metrics?

grassfedgeek3• 2 months ago

Are you addicted to your job? You keep going back every single work day. Does that mean you are addicted? Just because you keep repeating an action doesn't mean you're addicted. It just means it is solving a problem for you (such as providing you with a salary to buy food and pay rent) and does it well.

phatskat2• 2 months ago

Everyone likes a beer analogy (almost as much as CS teachers love car analogies!) so I’ll try and do one that applies in the way I _think_ GP intends:

Brewers want people to want beer, and to perhaps puritans, that desire could appear as “addicted”. However, brewers don’t want addicts - liver failure, destitution, death, are all things I doubt a brewer wants to see in their consumer base because you can’t drink if you don’t have a liver, don’t have money, or don’t have life.

Did I, as a child, think my dad was addicted to alcohol because I saw him drink everyday? I did, that’s the appearance it gave. Was he? Not to the clinical point of addiction, technically - he functioned, maintained relationships and a job, and wasn’t more than occasionally emotionally abusive. He fit the type of customer GP seems to talk about - appearing to be addicted but not wholly, truly addicted.

joe_the_user2• 2 months ago

I think the point the gp is making that companies want their users addicted but never should say "addicted" since it has undesirable implications.

sfRattan• 2 months ago

I've met plenty of people who want to make products that solve problems, even if the product's user only has those problems once in a while. Reaching for a well-liked, well-matched tool whenever a problem arises isn't addicted or quasi-addicted or "as though" addicted behavior.

Once you're thinking about how to keep a user coming back, you're in the mutually adversarial design space, whatever language is used to more pleasantly redecorate that reality.

grassfedgeek3• 2 months ago

You can't be a good designer if you aren't thinking about how to get your users to love your product so much that they keep coming back. There are good and bad ways to keep users coming back. The good way is to simply make the product very useful. The bad way is to make the user psychologically dependent on your product in some way.

joe_the_user2• 2 months ago

Indeed,

There's a race and tug-of-war to frame how interaction with apps works. The addiction word has a strong "think of the children" energy and I would expand any company to want to have their app tagged with the term.

Of course, what exactly "addicted" means in the context of interacting with a program really pretty fuzzy but yeah, "users not in control of themselves" is perhaps the biggest implication (and not necessarily false, mind you). Of course, this is a matter of both degree and social context.

If only we had a social dialog about the real meaning of things labeled addictive, perhaps their terrible impact could be mitigated. But hey, I guess we get policing and moral panics instead.

twelvedogs• 2 months ago

why do you think microsoft is that concerned with their user's wellbeing?

there are other industries who's entire business revovles around selling to addicts, why would MS of all companies suddenly balk at that line?

mattvr• 2 months ago

This helps explain the dissonance in Microsoft's recent Humanist Superintelligence article about creating "AI companions for everyone".

https://microsoft.ai/news/towards-humanist-superintelligence...

In an otherwise pleasant, humanist framing, they jarringly conclude Microsoft's primary AI application will be putting people into parasocial AI relationships for profit.

TZubiri• 2 months ago

Feedback to microsoft:

I'm confused and dissapointed that this isn't called Copilot, the users want more things to be called copilot even if they aren't related to each other, consider renaming Scout to Copilot, or at least Scout Copilot, or even better Copilot* (*Copilot Scout)

bdangubic• 2 months ago

Co-Pilot is a perfect name because it, just like actual Co-Pilots, perform their best when they do nothing

kbelder• 2 months ago

I think Teams should be renamed Scout Messaging, and Outlook to Scout Messaging: Legacy.

ajcp• 2 months ago

It's technically called Autopilot* Scout if you can believe it...

tartoran• 2 months ago

Microsoft can't learn a thing from their own history. Perhaps if they made a product that was useful and not deceiving their users they'd have more success. It seems they aren't capable of that anymore.

phyzix5761• 2 months ago

Making a useful product is far more difficult than tapping into our base desires as human beings. Microsoft hasn't been an innovative company in a long time and that's by design.

ajkjk2• 2 months ago

They are also just bad at almost everything they do. I'd really be worried if a competent company was trying to make people addicted.

Although maybe it doesn't take much, given that it sounded at one point like the Microsoft execs were addicted already.

recursive• 2 months ago

I'd really be worried if a competent company was trying to make people addicted. This is absolutely a thing. Social media, mobile games, LLMs, tobacco.

hackyhacky• 2 months ago

They are also just bad at almost everything they do

Huh? Have you forgotten Clippy, the first AI agent?

torben-friis• 2 months ago

They're those guys that spend hundreds of hours in pickup artist courses rather than being a person people would like to be with, yeah.

dyauspitr• 2 months ago

That’s always been Microsoft in a nutshell though. They constantly stumble around never making anything truly great but still doing a good enough job to keep their existing customers.

wseqyrku• 2 months ago

Original builders are all gone so they are just skiing on what they have built. And this the result.

hgoel• 2 months ago

It's kind of sad that they didn't call this Cortana. I guess they made that name too toxic?

skynotblue• 2 months ago

Would be worrisome if they were good at building stuff.

danielrmay• 2 months ago

I'm really worried about what happens when we mix these kind of dependency-oriented business strategies with the sensitivity of a human's personal context. With no "file format" equivalent for personal context, how do I ever switch "assistant" in this provisional future?

Microsoft Wants to 'Make People Addicted' to Its New AI Assistant

Related Stories