Microsoft Exec Asks: Why Aren't More People Impressed With AI?

A Microsoft executive is questioning why more people aren’t impressed with AI, a week after the company touted the evolution of Windows into an “agentic OS,” which immediately triggered backlash.

“Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming,” tweeted Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO for Microsoft’s AI group.

Suleyman added that he grew up playing the old-school 2D Snake game on a Nokia phone. “The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me,” he wrote.

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Microsoft has been promoting new conversational AI chatbot experiences in Windows 11 that can be quite helpful. Last week, Windows boss Pavan Davuluri tried to talk up the AI features, tweeting, “Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere.”

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But instead of arousing genuine interest, Davuluri’s tweet set off some harsh feedback from at least some users put off by AI. “Stop this non-sense. No one wants this,” wrote one programmer. “You live in a Twitter bubble where AI will create tons of wealth and you will perish unless you adopt it now. But your users are not in this bubble. They don’t care about any of this shit.”

After turning off the public replies to his original tweet, Davuluri later responded to the criticism, posting: “I’ve read through the comments and see focus on things like reliability, performance, ease of use and more.” The same tweet also dropped any mention of AI, instead emphasizing Microsoft’s commitment to improve the Windows experience and other pain points, he said.

Still, Suleyman’s tweet seems to signal frustration from Microsoft when the company has made AI a centerpiece to its software strategy. Days earlier, he also dismissed the idea that the AI industry is facing a bubble, adding: “AI is the smartest, most capable technology ever invented. And it keeps improving even faster than we thought possible.”

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Suleyman’s tweet has since received some of its own backlash when it’s clear that generative AI faces problems, including “hallucinating” the wrong information and sparking legal battles about copyright infringement, all the while potentially taking jobs away from humans.

However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk seems to agree with Suleyman’s take. “Good point,” Musk wrote in response. Of course he’s also a billionaire at the helm of his own startup, xAI, which is taking on OpenAI’s ChatGPT and even Microsoft itself.