Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
A Coca-Cola employee offered to sell company secrets to Pepsi for 1.5 million dollars. Pepsi responded by notifying Coca-Cola.
As high-ranking Coca-Cola employees, Joya Williams and her accomplice Ibrahim Dimson had access to many documents about Coca-Cola drinks and future projects. Williams and Dimson so called Pepsi and offered to sell all the executive secrets for $1.5 million.
Unfortunately for Williams and Dimson, Pepsi executives reported them to Coca-Cola and the FBI. The FBI then sent undercover agents posing as Pepsi executives. Those FBI undercover agents lured Williams and Dimson with a portion of the $1.5 million demanded and forced them to hand over the documents and the vial containing the chemical. Williams and Dimson were caught red-handed.
The FBI presented the proof of payment and the secrets to the court as irrefutable evidence. In 2007, Williams was sentenced to eight years in prison and Dimson to five years in prison.
A Pepsi spokesperson said, "We did what any responsible company would do. Competition can be fierce, but it also has to be fair and legal," according to CNN.
Eight years in prison is the sentence given to Joya Williams, the former Coca-Cola employee and five years to his accomplice, Ibrahim Dimson, who had attempted to sell the secret formula of the famous drink to competitor Pepsi without taking into account that, in addition to patents, the law also protects business secrets.
Ahead of schedule, see photo from last night! The first BlueBird is getting ready to operate. At 700 sq ft in area, our BlueBirds are the largest-ever commercial communications arrays in low Earth orbit, specially designed for space-based cellular broadband to everyday smartphones – Size matters! @ATT@Google@Verizon@Vodafone@Bell@Rakuten
🤠🇺🇸🚀📶 #5G
#ASTSpaceMobile #BlueBirdMission #ConnectTheUnconnected #SatelliteToCell #Broadband #5G
In its latest FCC filing, SpaceX is saying $ASTS is a meme-stock and their investors are spreading misinformation ☠️
“Foreign investors and partners in AST’s meme-stock are stopping at nothing to slow progress. AST and its investors continue their scorched-Earth campaign to hamstring competing direct-to-cellular
operations, even if their efforts mean that Americans cannot reliably connect during emergencies and American satellite systems stand at a competitive disadvantage in international markets.
Apparently not content with solely harming competition in America, AST is now taking
its misinformation campaign overseas by recruiting its European investors and partners to parrot its talking points and harm competition there as well.”
https://t.co/l77N5cIDad
Larry Ellison is the craziest CEO alive:
• Hired investigators to spy on Microsoft
• Waged a decade-long war against Google
• Plotted to buy Apple and make Steve Jobs the CEO
At 80, he looks younger than most 50-year-olds.
How he managed to do this is insane 🧵
😂A hot fire a day keeps the critics away,
Of course we are rotating engines in and out as we put them through their paces, find limits and make tweaks. SN2 is on the stand now and SN1 and SN3 will be going back out to the site as soon as next week as we play with things. It’s all part of a normal engine development and qualification program. Sorry, no explosions so far but we are working on it. That’s normal too.