Microsoft CEO Laments Criticism Of “AI Slop,” Causing The Whole Internet To Double Down On Criticism Of “Microslop”

from the have-you-considered-no-longer-being-terrible dept

We’ve noted more than a few times how Microsoft’s use of AI in journalism has been an embarrassing mess. Microsoft’s steadily deteriorating MSN websites have been criticized for years for the lazy use of AI slop, resulting in numerous false headlines, fake stories, and low-quality engagement trash. Like Google and others, the pursuit of impossible scale has made quality and usefulness an afterthought.

Microsoft’s also been broadly criticized elsewhere when it comes to its rushed adoption of AI, whether it’s the privacy implications of the company’s Windows 11 “recall” feature, or forcing the install of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant on smart TV owners who never wanted it and can’t uninstall it. Microsoft also adores forcing copilot integration into Windows 11 in ways, again, nobody asked for and often can’t disable.

Copilot may very well be useful to some people; but like most tech companies, Microsoft’s rushed, ham-fisted adoption has been a bit of a tone-deaf mess. And it actively undermines the stuff that LLMs can actually accomplish. This is before you get to the environmental impact of AI, or its quickly-expanding, guardrail-optional use in global military imperialism at the hands of insane autocrats.

This all recently resulted in some fairly significant backlash for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella recently shared a fairly innocuous end-of-year post at LinkedIn.

Most of the short post isn’t really all that interesting or incorrect; he notes that AI is stumbling through a phase where we’re beginning to sort between “spectacle” and “substance,” something that’s likely to result in a big bubble pop this year due the chasm between real-world usefulness and broad tech company misrepresentation of AI (he doesn’t really acknowledge that latter part, of course).

Where Nadella got into trouble was apparently this part, where he fairly innocuously laments the rising criticism of “AI slop.” It was first highlighted by Windows Central:

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella laments, emphasizing hopes that society will become more accepting of AI, or what Nadella describes as “cognitive amplifier tools.” “…and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our “theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.”

Nadella’s problem here is he dismissively puts the onus on the consumer when it comes to “getting beyond” concerns about AI slop. That dodges any responsibility for the very rich people and companies dictating the entire trajectory of AI to start using it more responsibly.

They aren’t so far; most wealthy tech leaders see AI largely as a way to undermine labor and create a giant lazy badly-automated ouroboros of shallow clickbait garbage that shits out ad engagement cash with very low lift. Often these efforts redirect money away from human artists and journalists and creators into the pockets of some very sleazy people operating with clearly zero ethical guardrails.

The press aggregation machine (much of it ironically now badly automated) latched on to Nadella’s demand that people stop calling it AI slop, immediately resulting in people doubling down on AI slop criticism in a way that made “Microslop” trend across the internet.

Automation, broadly, certainly has its uses and is, generally, not going away. The backlash to AI is, in many ways, tethered tightly and unavoidably to a growing disdain for wealth disparity at the hands of the authoritarian-simping extraction class keen on eliminating literally all ethical oversight of industry.

A great way for billionaires like Nadella to diffuse this growing animosity about their rushed, clumsy, non-transparent, integration of language learning models into everything (whether you like it or not) in ways that aren’t ethical or useful is to, you know, stop doing that. Another great step might be to stop kissing the ass of authoritarians who are actively destroying democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law?

It sounds like many people might be willing to get over AI slop once the billionaires in charge of its development, trajectory, and implementation stop doubling down on AI slop, and stop being tone deaf, irresponsible assholes.

Filed Under: ai, ai slop, automation, billionaires, journalism, llms, msn, satya nadella

Companies: microsoft