toshihoo

metamediamaker, political junkie, future-curious, and director of the Emerging Media Lab at Institute for the Future

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

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.

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

As troubled waters churn and seem to rise, with no clear bridge in sight, sometimes music is all we have to keep us strong and ready to find our passage through the chaos.

https://t.co/UMutRki3rY

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

How couples met

between 1930-2024

[Paul Trillo @paultrillo]

Getting my hands dirty with 30 Gaussian splats scanned in my garden. Is this the most splats ever in a single shot?

Made with the support of @Lenovo @Snapdragon and the new Gaussian Splatting plugin by @irrealix

[Nik Marda @nrmarda]

You think AI just fell out of a coconut tree? It exists in the context of all the laws in which we live and the regulations that came before it

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸ZARA AND APPLE TEAM UP FOR AR SHOPPING

Is this the future of e-commerce?

https://t.co/rbqrJ3w83k

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@Rainmaker1973 ChatGPT fails…

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

Around the campfire with the #AppleVisionPro (and friends)

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

Archery in the #AppleVisionPro

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

Ping Pong in the #AppleVisionPro

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@dr_cintas

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@cixliv I heard if you look up you can find the Control Center and there’s a screen record option

[Charly Wargnier @DataChaz]

Google under @sundarpichai, in the own words of an 18-years Googler 😬👇

"Google's culture eroded. Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision. Transparency? I don't know anyone at Google who could explain what Google's vision is.

Morale is at an all-time low. If you talk to therapists in the Bay Area, they will tell you all their Google clients are unhappy with Google. The lack of trust in management is reflected by management no longer showing trust in the employees either.

Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept middle management."

"[] the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google's culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organisation without a moral compass."

Link to the article: https://t.co/FHp4CpuexI

(via @Thomasbcn)

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

Calling it now: The $86B OpenAI tender will someday be seen as the WeWork moment of AI.

👉GPT-5 will either be significantly delayed or not meet expectations.
👉Companies will struggle to put GPT-4 and 5 into production (see below)
👉Competition will increase, margins will be thin
👉The profits won’t justify the valuation, esp after MSFT’s hefty cut is taken out.

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

Introducing:

Roadrunner, a compact VTOL drone powered by twin thrust-vectored turbojet engines with extraordinary speed, range, and payload capacity.

&

Roadrunner-M, a radical new low-cost weapon that allows for unprecedented tactics against powerful threats.

[DENJIN @DenjinK]

🔗 https://t.co/Q10XAz6n3m

[Matthew Berman @MatthewBerman]

I let ChatGPT take FULL CONTROL of my computer.

Super scary!

It used the mouse and keyboard just like a human user.

Here's a preview of what happened. Full video coming soon!

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@SHL0MS they apparently tuned that out...

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@RepRaskin Thank you for your leadership on this important issue.

[toshihoo @toshihoo]

@LinusEkenstam @TreyRatcliff Link not working for me