Quick One: MSFT Launches from Build
I told you that AI was coming for your To Do list....
I wanted to put together a quick recap of the announcements that I saw coming out of Micosoft’s BUILD conference this past week. If you want an actual, professional journalist’s take, read Ken Yeung’s coverage at Venture Beat. Why cover all the MSFT news? Well, because it’s MSFT. That little software company out of Redmond, WA is as relevant as it has ever been since people were waiting in line for the new Windows release (yes, that used to happen, look it up). If you’re in #learninganddevelopment or #training and you don’t see the power in a tech stack that includes the LinkedIn Learning content library (formerly Lynda.com), the world’s largest skills taxonomy and professionally-oriented social graph, combined with OpenAI on the backend of M365, Teams, Viva, and so on, then I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s see what’s popping right now.
Here’s why everyone is talking about this controversial new Windows AI feature: Some things that make me feel mildly better: you can edit and opt-out of what Recall remembers (to be clear, it can remember everything), it seems to be run entirely on device (I’ll take that with a huge grain of salt for now). The upshot seems to be that if you’re using a company device, you really can’t have an expectation of privacy anyway and if it can help me find things using natural language, then I’m good with it. Where I still have an issue is that if this is on your personal computer, what size is the attack surface for a hacker? Break into this one thing and you’ve got everything.
Microsoft’s new Copilot AI agents act like virtual employees to automate tasks: Just a taste, “Microsoft is previewing this new capability today to a very small group of early access testers ahead of a public preview inside Copilot Studio later this year. Businesses will be able to create a Copilot agent that could handle IT help desk service tasks, employee onboarding, and much more.” Just roll that around for a minute - I’ve said that AI is coming for your To Do list and here it is. Here’s another - Microsoft’s new ‘Team Copilot’ AI assistant runs meetings, manages projects, assigns tasks - the tagline is “a new valuable member of the team.” How does this grab you? “Microsoft will test the limits of artificial intelligence in group collaboration with a new AI assistant that keeps meetings on track, takes collaborative notes, manages large projects, and assigns tasks.” So now we have the ability to automate large sections of onboarding, IT service, and basically a free and infinitely scalable project manager who’ll never get sick or want a promotion. I’m not trying to be a Cassandra here - I don’t see doom and gloom in these announcements - well, not for everyone. What’s the expression - change is inevitable, adaptation is not. This can be an opportunity - time freed up to work on the high value pieces that really drive you. The illusion is if you think it’s not coming to your org. The call is already coming from inside the house! ;-)
Microsoft Edge will translate and dub YouTube videos as you’re watching them: “So far, the feature supports the translation of Spanish into English as well as the translation of English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. In addition to offering a neat way to translate videos into a user’s native tongue, Edge’s new AI feature should also make videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing.” > > Now this sounds cool and it is, do a degree. There is a difference, and not a small one, between translation and localization. AI outputs will have to be watched closely for the accuracy of their work here.
Microsoft announces Copilot Plus PCs with built-in AI hardware: CIOs everywhere are going to start fielding a lot of questions about tech refresh. It’s interesting that this is the first real impact AI has had on end-user infrastructure. One reason why AI has spread so far and so fast is that it hasn’t needed anything on the end user side to access it. I wonder if this will slow the spread of just increase the gap between those orgs that deploy the new hardware quickly vs those that lag.