• Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    66·
    22 days ago

    People did talk about that though. There were so many allusions to Clippy when Copilot was launched, and even before that.

  • kbin_space_program@kbin.run
    44·
    22 days ago

    Based on Google Gemini and the sheer number of restrictions Microsoft had to place on Bing to prevent chaos.

    I think saying that it “works” is a stretch.

    • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
      25·
      22 days ago

      I think AI works well as an assistant for creative problems. But businesses are shoving large language models on everything they can think of. It’s basically a fad.

  • Artyom@lemm.ee
    361·
    22 days ago

    It’s just revealing that we never actually needed a clippy in the first place. An “assistant” in tech isn’t actually as useful as people assumed it would be.

    • Ace! _SL/S@ani.social
      61·
      21 days ago

      That’s what I figured. Everything the assisstant does for you will be done faster with the right know how and experience

      • StitchIsABitch@lemmy.world
        6·
        21 days ago

        Nah, I’d love to be able to ask an assistant to make sense of the dog shit layout in word, instead of having to blindly click at menus for 10 minutes, then finally give up and Google for 10 more minutes, all because Microsoft thought it would be cool and intuitive to split menus into “view”, “review”, “layout” and “design”, because those words don’t basically all mean the same thing.

        • Ace! _SL/S@ani.social
          1·
          21 days ago

          That’s why I said if you have the know how and experience. Asking the assisstant to do something for you will probably take londer than doing it yourself

          What you’re talking about is more like Q&A imo, which is just kind of an inbuild google or manual

  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk
    261·
    22 days ago

    I often worry that the last thing we’ll all read is Clippy on every screen in the world saying “It looks like your planet is running out of oxygen. Bet you’d like some help now, huh bitch!”

  • Tronn4@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    22 days ago

    It loons like you’re trying to make pizza… can I recommend a vintage Elmer’s Glue?

    • perishthethought@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      22 days ago

      I was gonna say… you would first have to tell me what clippy was really meant to help with back in the day besides saying, here’s a link to the help page.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
        13·
        22 days ago

        I mean, the idea wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t executed well.

        It was supposed to provide a non-threatening way to help users access functionality of their device or software that they may have been unaware of that would be relevant to their current task. This would assist users in accomplishing their task more efficiently, and help Microsoft by increasing consumers perception of the value their software provides, which reduces their likelihood to want to use something else in the future.

        A modern, potentially useful clippy would ideally be able to tell…

        • what you were actually doing
        • if you appeared to be struggling or doing something repetitively
        • if it has the ability to help …Before it tries to interact with you.
          Beyond that, it should be able to link to the tool in question in a way that automatically sets it up to do what you’re trying to do so using it doesn’t set you back from where you were, or just offer to do it for you in a way that doesn’t trash your work if you hate the output.

        It’s still probably gonna suck ass and not be helpful, but at least it wouldn’t by vaguely mystifying why it even existed.

        The best “digital assistants” I’ve seen recently are ones that actually acknowledge that these are language tools, not “knowledge” or “reasoning” tools.
        They can legitimately do a good job figuring out a good response to what you ask it, ignoring the accuracy question. So if you set it up to know how to format data and what data you have available, you can get it to respond to questions like “are there trends in the monthly sales statistics for the past three years?” with a graph of those statistics broken down by product, rather than trying to let a language tool try to do reasoning on numerical data.

        Talking good can sound like reasoning because right now things that talk good are usually humans that have basic reasoning skills. It’s why it so confusing when they just happily spout irrational nonsense: we’re used to rationality being a given in things that are confident and articulate.

  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    6·
    21 days ago

    I think it would be cool if you were writing a ransom note on your computer, if the paper clip popped up and said, ‘Looks like you’re writing a ransom note. Need help? You should use more forceful language, you’ll get more money.’

    -Demetri Martin, 2007