Dear Big Tech, Stop Shoving AI into Operating Systems | Hacker News Reader

Dear Big Tech, Stop Shoving AI into Operating Systems

howtogeek.com

38 pointsgnabgib21 comments

I'm drawn to things I'm curious about and repulsed by things that are relentlessly pushed at me.

Copilot and Gemini are the latter. MS and Google opted to package their consumer AI as foistware and my initial experience is entirely about trying to get it out of my face. It's Creepy Uncle marketing; trying to place a product by wearing down consumer defenses.

If MS/Goog AI can stop being something I need to elude, I might stop instinctively rejecting it. In time.

In the meantime, here are some efforts to remove Gemini elements from Gmail ref:https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1id118g/hide_...

Outside of Gmail and photos and signing in, I've completely stopped using Google as a result of their AI and advertising practices. My network blocks all Google advertising by default.

I already run a home server that backs up photos, Immich, but it isn't quite stable enough yet. When it is I'll ditch gphotos too.

I could just forward my Gmail and use my own domain, but that doesn't make much difference.

But Google and Microsoft are just annoying to deal with. All so my information can be their payday. Not worth it.

Gmail's spam filtering is the best in reach. That is 90% of why Google has any presence at my clients.

Chrome sync is 85% of the reason for Chrome browser installs. But that is nearly undone by the poor profile experience when number of Chrome users exceeds 1.

The other 15% is Gmail committing seppuku when it detects Firefox.

I'm using "foistware" from now on

I suspect this is less about creating utility for users and more about leveraging existing user bases to train AI.

e.g. Most users don't want Copilot, but it's being installed by default. Unless you dig into privacy preferences and flip a lot of check-boxes, you're going to be providing data to help MS train AI by default. MS doesn't care if you find Copilot useful or even use it. Your data is still useful to their efforts to train their AI.

While doing nothing to fix the fundamental flaws in these OSs – they easily become unresponsive on IO/network failures.

The problem is that it's being done top-down. AI has its uses — I use it daily. But let the ecosystem come into being and, from the bottom up, it will be clear where it makes sense and where it does not.

Corporate Software isn't going to wait for that. Oh well. Things will shake out in a few years. It always does.

I disabled Copilot day one. It slowed down my workflow and felt invasive. Instead, I use ChatGPT or Claude in the browser when needed, fast, focused, and under my control. AI in the OS just adds bloat. The OS should be stable, fast, and predictable, not an experiment.

No one ever liked popup assistants, we are repeating the lesson of Clippy from MS Word in the 90s.

“It looks like you’re writing a letter!”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ifleu0VVAc0

They don't have a true choice. Investors demand AI.

I want AI help in the OS, but I want it to be local. I don’t want to have to open a browser to ask “how do I use create a bootable partition on a USB drive”. I know the information is buried in man pages, but where to start? A conversational man could be useful IMHO.

Oh I completely agree it can be very useful. And a man page summary or collating many man pages together into a summary/answer is a great use case.

This reasoning should make us all sick. Consumers are asking to not have it but apparently the products aren't for the people who buy them. The markets have broken the core tenets of capitalism and led to dissatisfied consumers with no control over choice. Competition in these areas is highly competitive and due to high investment and low anti-trust enforcement too easy to destroy.

I've decided to not buy these computers and and either make due with an older computer or buy one without the chip. If the message of lower sales gets through to the shareholders maybe things will change. Hasn't worked for vegetarianism, won't work here, but at least I can sleep at night. I doubt others will settle for hardware downplayed in marketing material or years out-of-date so the sales will stay up as a self-fullfilling prophecy and the shareholders will pay each other on the shoulders.

> This reasoning should make us all sick.

I agree.

That's the thing, they don't have to give it to them.

And the stock will pay the price.

I think a large portion of HN commenters are unaware of the consumer demand for these features.

I remember that AI voice assistants (Amazon echo, etc) had some of the fastest adoption rates among older individuals. That’s unusual for tech, which is often adopted first by younger people. The speculation was that older people were less comfortable with existing interfaces and therefore welcomed the new mode of working.

The same situation plays out with AI and software people: I see a lot of people sneering at every AI tool as something that nobody wants, but really it’s just that they don’t personally want it and therefore think nobody else should either.

> I think a large portion of HN commenters are unaware of the consumer demand for these features.

I am skeptical. I mean, my day job is listening to end users and facilitating their needs. I haven't yet fielded a need that could be filled by Copilot or Gemini or the dozen AI elements that rearranged their app and forced them to form new muscle memory.

Mostly, these things land as the bazillionth bit of clutter to be worked around. Because they were not asked for, their presence is counterproductive.

> I think a large portion of HN commenters are unaware of the consumer demand for these features.

For me it's just that "ordinary" users don't complain about them being added, which in practice means silent agreement.

Capitalism fully explained in one terse comment.

Just substitute AI for X ~ profit fad du jour.

Seconded.

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