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Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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This is not enshittification. Here's where the term came from:
In what way is adding an AI assistant to Notepad either "abusing their users" or "abusing their business customers?" It seems like it's just a useful new feature to me, that's still in the "be good to your users" phase.
They're sacrificing the utility of the tool to make it part of their new AI-driven operating system as a service platform. The only thing notepad had going for it was its complete simplicity, reliability, and speed. Nobody wants notepad to try to rope you into this ecosystem, certainly not at the expense of those qualities.
Even with the recent updates, I'm over it. Notepad has crashed on me at least twice. Notepad. Crashed. There is no longer any reason to use it.
You don't know that. You have no idea how this "cowriter" will be integrated. It could be just a little button off on the side, maybe with a setting in the configuration to hide it entirely, and you can ignore it completely.
Any additional functionality added to an already feature-complete program is bloat, no two ways about it. If notepad+AI was a separate program, this would be a different discussion. Even if you can hide it completely, the fact that it’s there at all will affect performance. And even if it’s just a tiny blip in relative performance, it’s still the first step on the road to enshittification.
I think you may be overestimating how much code is required for a program to simply use an AI, as in just calling an AI's API with a string of text and getting some text back in return. I've written code that does this and it's just a few lines.
The code for whatever UI Notepad wraps around it might be a few hundred more lines, that depends very much on the UI framework and what they want it to look like. But the AI part is trivial. The hard work of actually executing the AI's code is done on a remote server. Your home computer won't have to do any of that work.
You’re free to believe that this will not bog down the program at all, and also that this isn’t just the first bad decision they’re making with notepad. I really would like to impress upon you that that is wishful thinking, and not at all the most likely outcome here.
And I think that 90% of the concern people have is arising out of some kind of weird anti-AI hysteria.
Look, even if Microsoft does "ruin" Notepad somehow, it's a really simple program. Github has a bunch of projects tagged "notepad-clone", I'm sure there are plenty of free alternatives out there that duplicate the old Notepad as precisely as you may desire. Adding AI is extremely simple on the client side but it's not so easy to provide the LLM back-end so those replicas probably won't be able to do what Microsoft is about to do, so I want to see Microsoft try it. I think it'll be good.
I couldn’t care less that the addition in question is AI related, it’s unnecessary bloat that no one asked for! I hate bloat, that’s my thing. I didn’t like when the start menu was ruined, I didn’t like when user accounts were eschewed for microsoft accounts, and I don’t like this.
I’m completely off windows now anyways, so I don’t even have skin in the game. It just boggles my mind that anyone would defend this whacky decision. Streamlined bloat is still bloat.
Why not just clone notepad and then start adding garbage? They already announced the intention to remove word pad, just replace that with whatever this ends up being!
I wish people would stop putting words in my mouth. I would be quite happy to try this feature out, and I think it could be quite handy indeed. I literally said "I want to see Microsoft try it" in the comment you're responding to.
So what's your problem? Don't insist that everyone has to share your values and run their computers the way you would want to run them.
I just linked to a whole pile of notepad clone projects. I'm sure some of them will satisfy whatever preferences any particular person has. "Why not just clone notepad" applies just as much to the people complaining about this features, and it's already been done. If you want to stick with the unchanging bare minimum text editor, there they are.
You’re acting like I’m crazy for taking issue with this, I’m just explaining my perspective. You’re free to enjoy whatever gizmos and gadgets microsoft bundles into the next windows release, just as much as I’m free to say it’s a piss-poor decision on their part to do so.
It shouldn’t be the user’s responsibility to seek out replacement programs for shit that has been baked into the OS since 1983. I genuinely haven’t seen a single person ANYWHERE EVER say “boy howdy I sure do wish notepad had more features, maybe an AI cowriter!”. If that’s something you really actually wanted before you heard about this, then I’m sorry for putting words in your mouth.
As it stands though, you’re just dying on a stupid hill for semantics.
No, I'm annoyed that you're assuming that your view of this matter is the only one, and are insisting that Notepad should exclude any features that you don't want even though it likely wouldn't harm you if they were included.
I'm perfectly fine with people not using AI. I'm not perfectly fine with people jumping in and telling me "and you don't get to use it either!"
The fact that Notepad is really old shouldn't be an argument that it should never change.
I'm saying it right now. I've said it repeatedly in the course of this thread, in comments that you are posting direct responses to. I explicitly said in the previous comment, and the comment before it, that I wanted this. How are you not understanding this?
Ah, I see where you're trying to weasel out a technical "I was right all along" - you're going to say that because I hadn't specifically said "in Notepad" about this before seeing that Windows was planning on adding this to Notepad, my interest in this new feature is somehow invalid and my previous comments are lies or something. Not "genuine." You'll imagine that I hadn't thought about how nice it would be to have an AI cowriter in some kind of text editor before now, and that even now I'm... I don't know, why do you think I'm arguing that this would be beneficial if I don't actually want to use it? I can't think of why you might imagine I'm arguing this, maybe I'm some kind of shill for Big AI?
And then you accuse me of "dying on a stupid hill for semantics."
“asking for something” and “seeing something and deciding you like it” are two different things, but go on and type another 3 paragraphs about how I’m weaseling.
Heh. More semantics.
I saw it, and I said "yes please I'd like that." That's asking.
OK.
God, I should’ve seen you take this out and followed suit. Instead I engaged, and now unbeknownst to me I’m afraid of AI and putting words in people’s mouths, gotta love internet discourse
But… MUH BUZZWORDS!
(I really hate the Reddit-style overuse of that word.)
Ah, the enshittification of enshittification.
Perfection.
That one and "FAFO" in its various incarnations can take a break for a bit, IMO
Shockingly, I don’t know that one! I thought I read FIFO before rereading that.
“Fuck around and find out” for everyone else who didn’t know.
Ahhhh THAT overused phrase. Of course we’d have to acronym/initiaism it.
At least we don’t (yet) have PSGWSP. Ugh it felt gross typing that.
I do too, considering it never needed a new term to begin with. This isn't a new concept, and we already have a name for it: rent seeking
I like Cory Doctorow. I think his theory of enshittification is useful, but I find his definition flawed.
I still give credit to Cory for being an acute observer and coming up with a useful theory.
There is no need to coin a new term, when "rent seeking" has done just fine for hundreds of years now.
This is not a new concept.
I completely forgot about that term. That may be more accurate. In fact, it describes what has Windows has become.
Adding an AI seems OK but per the article it will do it similar to Paint Co-creator. I can already see those types of "features" will get promoted more and more in updates and take more part of the screen.
Microsoft will want revenue trickling in from Notepad of all places...
AI assistants usually need to upload the data to process it. So it's potential enshitification via adding data upload/harvesting features to a trusted offline text editor. Usually companies have ways to generate revenue streams based on the data from these "free and useful features". Adverts based on what text files you open might be the long term end goal.
If you're concerned then don't use the feature. It's really simple.
That would be fine, but a lot of these features are added in an update, with complicated setups or mods to turn them off. Start bar local app search now gets sent to bing search by default, thats almost never what people want. Most people wont know how to disable it or care. But I guess thats fine as long as Microsoft gets to increase its bing usage stats and collect more user data.
To be clear, my problem is with these features getting pushed as default enabled.
Leaks of company secrets will increase.
What about privacy and bloat? Do you really need an integrated big-brother Clippy again? There's a reason they got rid of that annoying little bugger 20-ish years ago. Even killed Cortana. How many failed experiments more do we need?
If you need AI writing, you have it in Edge or on the ChatGPT site. Will they add AI to settings to help you turn on all the bloat and tracking for you?
Like just give me my damn control panel which has a working search feature (unlike, say, Settings)
You're making some pretty big assumptions about what this feature will be like.