Leak Reveals Microsoft Wants Its AI to Be 'Addictive' (kotaku.com)
60 points by thm 2 hours ago
saurik an hour 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.
legitster 34 minutes ago
This applies to any business that wants a repeat customer.
techblueberry 9 minutes 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.
RajT88 23 minutes ago
You are right! We should regulate all businesses the same way.
tetris11 an hour ago
"you know it when you see it"
saurik an hour 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.
j16sdiz 41 minutes ago
vitally3643 38 minutes ago
Shockingly, a huge amount of human behavior cannot be strictly defined and is best evaluated with situational, subjective judgement. Crazy.
card_zero 31 minutes ago
dmbche an hour ago
More demonstrating intent
stevenkkim an hour ago
Step 1: make copilot in window actually useful.
noitpmeder an hour ago
Literally every company on the planet would jump at the chance for their product to be addictive.
yoyohello13 41 minutes 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.
noitpmeder 32 minutes ago
Name and praise?
chatmasta an hour 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.
Defletter an hour 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.
whynotmaybe an hour 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 an hour 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.
whynotmaybe 22 minutes ago
onetokeoverthe 39 minutes ago
[dead]
danorama an hour 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.
trumpdong 43 minutes ago
That's because your employer doesn't think they can ever be addictive.
danorama 40 minutes ago
satvikpendem 29 minutes 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.
HlessClaudesman an hour ago
Copilot, I want you to find product market fit, don't return an answer until you have found it.
legitster 35 minutes 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"?
neilv 40 minutes 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.
ChrisArchitect 37 minutes ago
logicchains 37 minutes 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.
righthand an hour ago
That’s probably why they pushed out Phil Spencer and handed over the Xbox division to a very pro-AI employee.
OgsyedIE an hour 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 an hour ago
What fundamentals are those?
dmbche an hour ago
josefritzishere 21 minutes 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.
LetsGetTechnicl an hour ago
So their "humanistic" approach is just marketing, huge surprise /s
341287 an hour ago
[flagged]
vitally3643 37 minutes ago
You should be less racist and xenophobic
antonyt 43 minutes ago
What does his status as a foreigner have to do with ruining Windows? You can't think of any homegrown American CEOs that systematically ruin their products and companies?
baal80spam an hour ago
kotaku? Really?
WolfeReader an hour ago
The source site (404 Media) requires a login to read their article. Kotaku's coverage is plainly readable.
esafak 42 minutes 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.”
fyrn_ 2 minutes 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