The Unnecessary Application of Copilot

This one feels so obvious that I shouldn’t even have to write it.

I actually asked AI to write this column and that literally proved my point.

There are a few funny things going on with AI right now.

1. There is the AI platform battle – not really that interesting to me – but it is kind of funny watching big money and big egos collide

2. There is AI is great and gonna be greater

3. There is the AI is going to kill us all if we let it

I was in group 2 for a while, but now I am moving into group 3 and not for the reasons that you think.

If you thought that “death by PowerPoint” was bad and inhumane. You have not seen nothing yet.

“Death by Copilot” is going to lead to the brain numbing extinction of us all. I don’t even think I am exaggerating.

Thorough and exacting summaries of meetings that probably didn’t have to happen at all

Composing emails that didn’t need to be written let alone sent

In the big picture, I am not sure that creating more content with AI generated information is a net positive for anyone.

Using Copilot to automate existing tasks is akin to paving the cow paths rather than using it in a creative way.

Now is the time to rethink business processes are done. Rather than tacking on a Copilot icon onto every app or screen and force feeding the user weak suggestions that just interrupt flow, it would be far more valuable to have AI automate and eliminate redundant and tedious tasks.

AI could help organize and sort large volumes of information like sorting through a year’s worth of invoices to figure what your Microsoft licenses really cost you., or maybe analyzing all of the Net Promoter survey scores that you have received and look for any trends.

Using AI sensibly for what it is good at (pattern recognition across large datasets) makes sense, but using it to automate small administrative tasks of questionable value makes no sense.