Pavan Davuluri, the president of Windows and devices at Microsoft, recently took to X to share their feelings on the future of the OS (as spotted by Tom’s Hardware). “Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere.”
If that phrase reads to you like someone has thrown a dart at a board filled with LinkedIn buzzwords, you’re not alone. Effectively, an agentic AI is one that can run autonomously, without the need to check back in on each step of the process.
If you ask a standard non-agentic AI to make you a poem, it can. If you ask that same AI to set up supply chains, adjusting stock and employees in real-time, based on information fed to it, it can’t do it .
So, in this sense, Windows as an agentic AI is one that is designed to run automations daily to lighten the productivity load. However, I can’t help but wonder who wants that out of their OS?
Look, pretty much all of computing is built on convenience. The OS itself was bullshit and inconvenient until GUI came along and standardised ease of use through simple point and click.
Never have I ever said to myself “Wow AI makes this so convenient” except perhaps for translating languages, which is an application where it is particularly good. It’s a Large Language Model, go figure.
Anyway I just realised that I feel the same way about this shit as I did about the Metaverse, remember that short-lived hype bubble? Where’d that go? Fucking nowhere that’s what. This is the same shit. A hyped up load of crap that’s out of touch with reality. It solves no problems. It doesn’t consider how people want to interact with anything. It’s a scifi tech bro’s wet dream but it’s not grounded in reality, it’s scifi dreams. They think they can build it and even force it upon people and that way people will have to deal with it but they will just piss literally everyone off, bit by bit, because of how inconvenient most of it will be.
Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Metaverse, AI AI AI AI AI MORE AI, it’s the same fucking people pushing this shit every single time.
There probably is an implementation of this that can be useful but it won’t be idealists that design it. Someone with a more human and materialist approach will figure something out in a way people actually use.
Like pretty much everyone removed Cortana from their menu bar because nobody wanted to use that shit. And then pretty much everyone did the same to the copilot rebranding. And now they want to base the entire fucking operating system on the thing nobody fucking wants. It’s insane. It’s not driven by users it’s driven by the AI bubble and generating more growth for AI as this infinitely inflating bubble consuming the entire US economy that you can’t stop pursuing growth of as it will be a massive disaster when it pops.
/rant
Yes but what if they made it so you can’t removr Cortana would you use it then
NO RAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I disagree that computers were “bullshit” prior to GUIs.
TUIs existed for a long time (and did point-and-click prior to GUIs) and many tasks (especially bulk and repetitive ones) are still much better accomplished using CLIs. There’s a lot of terrible GUIs out there too - TUIs tend to have much more consistent and keyboard-friendly experiences. I agree with the rest of your comment.
I am speaking in terms of accessibility and use for the average person. Tech nerds and people who were paid to learn how to use them could do it sure, but they weren’t friendly or convenient other than by comparison to not having them at all.
plenty of nontechnical people learned to use them. also, terminal interfaces are probably the most accessible things we have now. gui is definitely shit for people with disabilities.
I don’t necessarily need accessibility tools, but… my sensory issues don’t like mice, they just suck less than laptop touchpads. I do very much like UIs that can be operated entirely by a keyboard, in a logical and sensible manner. I can use a mouse, but not needing it is nice.
I have used a lot of terrible GUIs in my day, for sure. A lot of nonsense that makes me really want some of those nicer TUIs, for sure. My issue is with the programs that don’t tell you what the options are and you just have to know the right commands and switches, not the nice interfaces that do the best they can with the technology and give you a list of options and a relatively simple way to select one. Unfortunately, that first type is the vast majority of stuff that you have to use a terminal for in the first place. And if similar programs with a nicer terminal interface exist, finding them is the exact same discoverability problem as figuring out the commands to use, because generally you have either a popular but not great GUI for it, findable via searching online and seeing people recommend it on a tech forum and then having to find it, or people who go on and on that it doesn’t need a better interface, just look up the commands whenever you need to use it (and the oddball CLI junkies who think memorizing all the commands you often need is a mark of competency in computer usage, and easier interfaces were a mistake that lets idiots use computers). And I find even a terrible GUI less annoying than having to do that every time and flip between the terminal window and a web browser.
when you run into this experience, remember that the terminal is the kitchen and the gui is the dining room. Your implements, equipment and tools are in the directories in your $PATH, which will print them out if you type it. Each one has its instructions accessible with either the info, man, -h or help commands.