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autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It's an open secret that Microsoft is gearing up to supercharge Windows 11 this summer with next-gen AI capabilities that will enable the OS to be context aware across any apps and interfaces, as well as remember everything you do on your PC to enhance user productivity and search.

These new capabilities are set to ship as part of a new app internally called "AI Explorer," which I'm told will be unveiled during Microsoft's special Windows event on May 20.

The feature is also said to be exclusive to devices powered by Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X series chips, at least at first, as Intel and AMD play catchup in the NPU race.

AI Explorer is able to do more than just remember the things you do on your computer, it's also able to analyze what's currently on-screen and provide contextual suggestions and tasks based on what it can see.

This capability is called Screen Understanding, and I'm told one of the big selling points of AI Explorer is that it's supposed to work across any app, with no developer input required.

The existence of Rewind.ai proves that this is a concept that can be done, and Microsoft is essentially building its own version into Windows 11 that offloads the resources required for such a feature onto NPUs to keep the load away from the CPU.

The original article contains 1,076 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

thatirishguyyy OP ,
@thatirishguyyy@lemmy.today avatar

Good bot

Moorshou ,
@Moorshou@lemmy.zip avatar

Yep, the AI will be watching, including porn. (not confirmed since not out)

cammoblammo ,

‘It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like a tentacle with that?’

Ragdoll_X ,
@Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world avatar

Honestly I'm already not a big fan of Windows 10 so if Microsoft tries to force me to download Windows 11 with all these nonsense AI features that spy on you I'm just gonna switch to Linux

Grenfur ,

I switched in November. I have no regrets. I rarely run into issues, and having the control to make decisions over my own computer is superb.

Zacryon ,

having the control to make decisions over my own computer is superb

I find it really sad that it has come so far that feelings like these exist. That should be a matter of course. Instead, it has become a special feature.

TipRing ,

I switched last week. It was pretty easy with only a few small issues.

doctortofu ,
@doctortofu@reddthat.com avatar

Same! It was actually a pretty big surprise that Mint worked flawlessly out of the box on my crappy pre-built PC. Everything's working great including the printer! I'm seriously impressed.

cosmic_cowboy ,
@cosmic_cowboy@reddthat.com avatar

Horrifying privacy implications aside, AI has really become the new cryptocurrency.

Don't get me wrong, both technologies are interesting, but it's tiring to see both be forced into applications that functioned just fine without them.

xep , (edited )

both technologies are interesting

AI has uses that aren't about covering your tracks or evading law enforcement.
Edit: bring on the downvotes, cryptobros.

LainTrain ,

Yes, but evading LEOs is good and buying drugs online in a free and open marketplace is my sacred, moral and god-given right than no glowie should infringe upon

captainlezbian ,

I fully agree. I just also think crypto is terrible for that use case. If you’d be caught for using Venmo for drugs they can catch you using crypto. It might be harder, but that whole public immutable ledger means all they have to do is tie accounts to names. Which coincidentally you need to do to cash out or cash in.

bassomitron ,

Which coincidentally you need to do to cash out or cash in.

Yes, and no. You do need to cash in at some point, but you don't have to do it thru a public exchange. People do sell physical wallets for hard cash. And even if you do use an exchange, when I last looked into crypto the common currency for drugs (monero) was obtainable on exchanges that didn't have KYC rules. Outside of exchanges, you can also transmit currency directly to other parties, and once you use tumblers and other anonymous platforms, tracking becomes extremely difficult. It's not impossible, but it becomes troublesome enough that unless you're a big fish/crime lord/whatever, the FBI/interpol/whoever isn't going to be bothered wasting resources.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Using Venmo anonymously is much harder than XMR or even BTC, and probably illegal too.

captainlezbian ,

Wait are you telling me that the company that ties a debit card to my name and is owned by the founder of a surveillance company and funder of fascists isn’t secure? /s But yeah, Venmo is the opposite of secure, but it’s filled a specific use case that cash is great for and that crypto often likes to act like it’s good for.

So what would it take for me to trust a cryptocurrency? Stability, wide use, actual security, and low transfer costs and risks. It’s competing with cash and Venmo for use case so it needs to actually compete with them.

I think crypto has more or less shit the bed here. BTC is created by a gold fetishist and is deflationary. The whole of normal people’s perception of crypto is that it’s an investment. There’s also the resource intensity of everything. There’s just so many problems here that cash just resolves.

EngineerGaming , (edited )
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Yea, crypto is not without its problems. But it is the closest we have to cash for online world. What would you really do when you can't go somewhere physically? Send cash by mail? This is indeed an option in some places, but in other the cash has a high chance of not getting through at all.

LainTrain ,

Public immutable ledger as a means of tracing is not an issue XMR has because it's all anonymous.

But even if LEOs wanted to tie all that to names then they'd have to use either bank records (easily avoided - don't buy anything from a bank or licensed exchange and not P2P with bank cards or anything else tied to them i.e. use PayPal under a fake name if you were grandfathered in before all the KYC shit) or they'd have to tie it to shipment addresses for stuff off DNMs which they could, if they bust a vendor, but it doesn't mean jack shit in a court of law - Who ordered a kg of amph to my household? Lord only knows.

cosmic_cowboy ,
@cosmic_cowboy@reddthat.com avatar

I definitely understand your view on crypto, and I hate to be an apologist, but here's a view you may not have considered:

I think mainstream society has gotten far too comfortable with the lack of privacy in our everyday lives, and this extends to finance. A company has no business tracking the data about my purchases, let alone selling it. The government doesn't need to know everything I spend money on either.

As with most topics relating to privacy, it's not that I worry about what I have to hide. I worry about your intention with that information. As one example, if I were needing to buy Plan B for an emergency contraceptive, there is a not insignificant portion of our government and the general population that frowns on that, and could paint me as a target in the future if it was known.

xep ,

I am in full agreement with your view on privacy, but I don't think that cryptocurrency is a solution. People far more eloquent than I have already fully described why elsewhere, so I'd just like to thank you for your civil response.

captainlezbian ,

I fully agree, I just think the solution is cash. Use cash for normal payments. Buy a house with 20s even. Ok maybe not that, but for groceries or when you would use Venmo yeah do it

PassingThrough , (edited )

I agree cash is the right idea, for now, but can you say for sure cash payment will be possible forever, or even the next 50 years? Wouldn’t it be better to blunder around with new ideas while cash is still a good fallback? Not saying I like crypto, and the cost on resources and the environment sucks bad, but I can at least appreciate them trying something. Now we just need to come up with sustainable options…

I get that cash seems a pretty durable idea, and it’s lasted for hundreds of years, but it did so before the massive societal turn towards technology we’ve made in the last 30 years.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Crypto is cash for digital world. The only existing analog I can think of is sending cash by mail, which is obviously slow and not guaranteed to.npt be stolen or confiscated on its way.

Crozekiel ,

The problem is that crypto is not untraceable like it's fans want to push. There have been multiple instances of it being tracked back and traced, by private individuals and law enforcement. It's just debit card processing with extra steps and massive drain on resources.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Monero exists and is constantly being improved in that regard. And even traceability aside, you're forgetting one massive usecase: unlike debit cards, its usage cannot be denied or restricted.

Crozekiel ,

its usage cannot be denied or restricted

lol wat? I don't know of a single local establishment that accepts Monero (or any other crypto) as payment (not saying it doesn't exist, but it if so they are exceedingly rare). Seems pretty restricted to me. They also don't seem to accept caps, eddies, gold, or spetims oddly enough.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

Local establishments can use cash, so this is not a problem. Problems begin when you try to pay, say, for a domain, or a server.

Zacryon ,

our government

Not mine. Classic Murica problem, I suppose?

T156 ,

It's arguably worse, since it seems to be more pervasive than crypto and NFTs were at their peak.

Crypto never really hit the mainstream, and even NFTs were still fringe. Whereas AI and AI accelerators are packed into basically every new phone and (Intel) processor.

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

Regulatory hurdles kept crypto out of most mainstream products. There are no such barriers for AI, and any that are put up may come too late.

There are also more possible mainstream use cases for AI - if the technology works as promised. That’s the biggest for AI currently, and some products like the Humane Pin are already tripping over it.

Sconrad122 ,

Why call out Intel? Pretty sure AMD and Nvidia are both putting dedicated AI hardware in all of their new and upcoming product lines. From what I understand they are even generally doing it better than Intel. Hell, Qualcomm is advertising their AI performance on their new chips and so is Apple. I don't think there is anyone in the chip world that isn't hopping on the AI train

AProfessional ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

    •
    Sconrad122 ,

    You're not wrong that GPU and AI silicon design are tightly coupled, but my point was that both of the GPU manufacturers are dedicating hardware to AI/ML in their consumer products. Nvidia has the tensor cores in its GPUs that it justifies to consumers with DLSS and RT but we're clearly designed for AI/ML use cases when they presented them with Turing. AMD has the XDNA AI Engine that it is putting its APUs separate from its RDNA GPUs

    T156 ,

    Because I was only aware of Intel (and Apple) doing it on computers, whereas most major flagship mobile devices have those accelerators now.

    GPUs were excluded, since they're not as universal as processors are. A dedicated video card is still by and large considered an enthusiast part.

    Sconrad122 ,

    Fair enough. Was just asking because the choice of company surprised me. AMD is putting "AI Engines in their new CPUs (separate silicon design from their GPUs) and while Nvidia largely only sells GPUs that are less universal, they've had dedicated AI hardware (tensor cores) in their offerings for the past three generations. If anything, Intel is barely keeping up with its competition in this area (for the record, I see vanishingly little value in the focus on AI as a consumer, so this isn't really a ding on Intel in my books, more so making the observation from a market forces perspective)

    Grimy ,

    There are way more uses cases to the average person than crypto so that's only natural. There's also a trust issue with crypto that doesn't exist with AI, as well as losing your money when things go wrong.

    That being said, I don't approve of this nor adding it randomly to products where it clearly has little use. If people want generative software, they can just choose to install it.

    aphlamingphoenix ,

    There's a trust issue here as well since AI only works if you train it and we are training it with our activity, reported to private companies who can do whatever they please with it. I don't trust anything Microsoft does.

    Grimy ,

    I meant more a trust issue in the sense that it's hard for people to feel safe putting their money into crypto. A lot of the coins are scammy and even some of the exchanges don't really look legit.

    In terms of privacy and collecting data which is what I feel like you are referring too, the general population sadly just doesn't give a shit. Most really don't care about what's being done with their data.

    accideath ,

    But what about my Web 3.0 AI cryptocurrency in the metaverse?

    foggy ,

    "An app that lets you make nfts from images created by a camera in the metaverse"

    accideath ,

    Isn’t that already a thing? That surely has to be a thing already.

    ours ,

    Probably already got rugpulled.

    MonkderDritte ,

    AI what?

    RobotToaster ,
    @RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

    Written in rust.

    Raptor_007 ,

    No fuckin thanks…

    far_university1990 ,

    Everything you need to know

    Is to delete windows 11

    sentient_loom ,
    @sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Useless bloatware.
    And then they added AI.

    Whirling_Cloudburst ,

    So, how will this work and comply with laws regarding its use in a medical institution?

    What about its use in a company that has extremely valuable trade secrets that need to be kept that way?

    What about the military?

    Wouldn't this make for an excellent target to harvest data for hackers?

    I wonder if Win 11 LTSC will leave it out.

    thatirishguyyy OP ,
    @thatirishguyyy@lemmy.today avatar

    Very good questions!

    SGG ,

    Microsoft will release a GPO or MEM setting that works 20 percent of the time to turn off the constant AI data mining, only available to enterprise SKUs.

    T156 ,

    Military would be fine, because they don't tend to update very frequently, if at all. If it works, that's the way it will stay, and the recent controversy wouldn't exactly encourage them to do so.

    What about its use in a company that has extremely valuable trade secrets that need to be kept that way?

    Same way the LLM debacle has currently gone, where people will just throw sensitive information into it with abandon. At least one major tech company has penalised workers for doing that with ChatGPT.

    If there's a group policy to turn it off, maybe, but Microsoft might just not have one, or it'll need to be disabled every update.

    captainlezbian ,

    Honestly it’s still strange to me that the us dod doesn’t have their own in house operating system

    TachyonTele ,

    The hard part in doing that is making it compatible with everything. It's not useful if it can't run everything.

    rottingleaf ,

    Other than them having some setting only for enterprise users, there's another question - what has more weight, Microsoft or the law?

    MonkderDritte ,

    what has more weight, Microsoft or the law?

    If law forces them, Big IT will challenge it only to get a few years to mine data and get a few billions. Or outright violate it, because the penalty will be less worth.

    captainlezbian ,

    In America who knows. In Europe, it’s probably the law

    ThePrivacyPolicy ,

    Most importantly - is it watching my porn with me too and learning about that?

    dumpsterlid ,

    Honestly I think windows is so fucked in terms of market share and it seems like they are kind of just pre-emptively ceding the battle to linux intentionally or not.

    Yeah people have been waiting for years for linux to eat windows for lunch and it hasn’t happened yet but I am convinced that linux becoming massively more practical and easy to use for gaming (Steam deck being a good catalyst) in the last couple of years has pushed things past a tipping point. Gaming might not make up the outsized chunk of desktop usage, but gaming is where people experiment, try new things, learn software inside and out and it is where people are most inspired to contribute and build and polish out the annoying little details of complex systems.

    Yeah Microsoft will have its walled moats around entire sectors of business indefinitely into the future, and that probably is where most of the consistent money is, but I think Microsoft shitting the bed with Windows 11 so hard is creating the rosiest forecast for the future of Linux desktops I have ever seen in my life.

    These twin factors converging has got me bullish af on Linux in the near to mid term.

    Let’s fuckinnn gooooooo

    thatirishguyyy OP ,
    @thatirishguyyy@lemmy.today avatar

    The day Linux says all video games are compatible with their OS is the day I finally switch from Windows for good.

    Until then I'm using a pirated version of Win11Pro and wondering how this AI will work with pirated copies.

    dumpsterlid , (edited )

    The day Linux says all video games are compatible with their OS is the day I finally switch from Windows for good.

    I mean Wine and steamOS’s Proton are that though? Sure compatibility isn’t perfect but the vast majority of games I have tried worked all the way from current AAA games to games like Steel Panthers WinspWW2, a DOS game from the 90s that barely functions on a modern windows computer but yet runs perfect on my Deck. Because the deck is using a virtual environment to emulate a windows OS it actually arguably creates a more stable platform to run windows software than windows itself running the program normally.

    Pretty much the only obstacle left is stupid super invasive anticheat/spyware software that doesn’t bother to cover Linux in competitive multiplayer games.

    Jesus_666 ,

    Kernel-level anticheat and DRM are killer features, like it or not. People don't care how invasive they are, they want to play League of Duty. If Linux can't do that then it's not good enough yet as far as they are concerned.

    Meanwhile the only thing keeping me from switching to Garuda on my desktop is that the GPU is wonky and misbehaves even worse under Linux than it does under Windows. Screw competitive online games.

    rottingleaf ,

    Then Linux may win over Windows for gaming, but games might lose to tinkering for me. Cause no way in hell I'm installing a kernel-mode trojan consciously.

    dumpsterlid ,

    If Linux can’t do that then it’s not good enough yet as far as they are concerned.

    Linux can do that, see The Finals, Halo Infinite, Apex Legends or any number of other games. It’s just the anticheat companies are sketchy and often uninterested in doing even a little bit of work to add Linux support.

    Jesus_666 ,

    True, but getting someone to switch to Linux is a hard sell already. Any compatibility issues are seen as the OS's fault, not as the game company being lazy.

    dumpsterlid ,

    Getting someone to switch anything major in the workflow/toolset of their lives is nearly impossible most of the time, it is process highly likely to cause headaches and only provide counterbalancing benefits down the road once the painful learning curve of acclimation is overcome.

    However, in the same token there are plenty of Linux distributions that have perfectly understandable desktop UIs that many Mac or Windows users wouldn’t event notice wasn’t windows. Especially with Windows changing shit every 5 seconds and stuffing useless crap into menus everywhere, I think it isn’t a stretch to say the UI of many Linux distributions is more user friendly than Windows and in many cases Mac.

    The real problem is the moment someone has to fuck around with headaches with drivers for basic computer functionality like Bluetooth or other hardware. If that stuff is generally covered pretty well then most people aren’t going to give a shit.

    At this point Linux is like making coffee with a French press, people who aren’t coffee nerds think using a French press is way more complicated than using some stupid keurig machine with completely unclear buttons and a camera inside just to check you are using brand name keurig cups that you have to fool by slipping in an old k-cup lid from keurig over the top of the off-brand one….

    …peoplenwho do know coffee well on the other hand shake their heads confused when people jump through 1000 hoops to use other coffee brewing methods when a French press conceptually and mechanically is only one step away from just literally dumping your coffee grounds in hot water and then drinking it.

    Zacryon ,

    Lol, not even Windoof is compatible with all video games.

    illi , (edited )

    If I'm reading this correctly this runs locally and will requirean NPU, so would not be present or working without AI dedicated hardware?

    It honestly sounds useful and I would be a little excited to use it, but I imagine Microsoft will collect the data in some way which would be bad as it pretty much records your screen all the time (I somehow doubt all the info the AI collects will be actually stored locally)?

    Hopefuly one day there will be a point when a similar software will be developed that runs 100% locally, storing the data locally and have no internet connectivity and just be a useful tool.

    Good news is that unless you have Qualcomm CPU (or one with integrated NPU in the long run) you are safe from it for now

    LiveLM ,

    Yeah you just about summed up my thoughts about the feature.
    It sounds like it could be genuinely useful, but I could never trust Microsoft to do it right, no matter how much they insist it's local only.

    furzegulo ,

    yeah, no thanks so fucking very much

    workerONE ,

    Bring back Clippy

    dukethorion ,
    @dukethorion@lemmy.world avatar

    They renamed it Creepy.

    lamabop ,

    For the average user, with maybe a little bit of IT knowledge but doesn't work in IT, what can we do for ourselves and our families other than go to win 11 eventually?

    legofreak ,

    Unironically, switch to Linux. Mainstream distros like Mint, PopOS or Ubuntu are very friendly for casual users, have GUIs for everything and if something does go wrong, the error messages actually have proper meaning and you'll find tons of resources online as well as people willing to help.

    Most stuff nowadays runs in a browser anyway, so here there's no compatibility issues, office is available in Linux through libre office and gaming has come far with steam and proton.

    Grass ,

    I trust Ubuntu about as much as windows

    darkmogool ,

    why?

    Soundhole ,

    Canonical have a long history of making decisions for corporate reasons, then using their popularity to try to strongarm the larger Linux community into adopting their way of doing things.

    Currently, they're pushing their closed source Snap packs, which are frankly inferior to the open source Flat packs, but it's just the latest example of their shenanigans.

    darkmogool ,

    Well… That's shitty behaviour.
    I'm luckily not on Ubuntu.
    Thanks for clarification.

    legofreak ,

    I don't like Canonical either, hence my recommendations for Mint or Pop being listed first. But let's be real, if someone wants to just get away from windows and wants something that works without having to learn much new, this is good enough.

    admin ,
    @admin@lemmy.my-box.dev avatar

    On the bright side: If you're tech-savy enough to form that opinion, you're probably not the intended audience for this advice.

    LainTrain ,

    Thanks, but I'm still sticking with Windows 7.

    https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/04aece2e-6288-4452-97c8-8d63afd4555d.png

    the_crotch ,

    The botnets thank you for your service

    LainTrain ,

    Desktop computers don't have to worry about that unless the user doesn't know how to use the internet safely and you know I'm right.

    the_crotch ,

    If they're running an up to date OS/browser, sure.

    LainTrain ,

    Nah you can run Windows 7 just fine, the attack surface of the OS itself is limited significantly by what's exposed on the network (don't open ports lol) and what's run on the machine (don't run malware lol).

    Up to date browser is something pretty independent of the OS.

    I work in cybersec and believe this unironically btw.

    The reason updates are shilled to businesses is compliance theatre and consultancies/B2B software solutions for patch management, and the reason it's shilled to consumers is so they don't take ownership of their software and simply consume the latest product that big data determined generates the most engagement for advertising or is of value to market researchers ala Win10 ads in start menu and preloaded adware and telemetry.

    MonkderDritte ,

    So they disable this in EU, right?

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