OOn May 20, Yusuf Mehdi, a captive who enjoys the cool title of Microsoft’s executive vice president, chief consumer marketing officer, launched his Copilot+ PCs, a “new category” of Windows machines that are “designed for AI “. They are, needless to say, “the fastest, smartest Windows computers ever built,” and they’ll let you do things you can’t do on any other computer.
What kind of things? Well, how about AI image generation and refinement in near real time right on the computer? Overcoming language barriers by translating audio from over 40 languages into English? Or enabling you to “easily find and remember what you’ve seen on your computer.”
Eh? This extraordinary memory prosthesis is called Recall. It takes continuous screenshots in the background while you go about your daily computing business. Microsoft’s Copilot+ machine learning technology then scans (and “reads”) each of these screenshots to create a searchable database of every action performed on your computer, and then stores it it on the drive’s disk. So not only will you be able to search for a website you’ve visited before, but you can also search for a very specific thing you’ve read or seen on that page. That jacket you saw in a tab a few weeks ago but just can’t remember who was selling it. However, HE knows about the jackets and can find it. But of course, this ability to remember extends to other applications on your computer: for example, those full-text passwords you used to log into your bank or log into a paywall site. “The commemoration is like giving away a photographic memory to anyone who buys a Copilot+ computer,” said Mehdi. “Everything you’ve ever seen or done, you’ll now more or less be able to find.” What don’t you like?
A lot, it turns out. The moment Recall appeared in preview mode, people remembered Your Whole Story from the first season of Black mirror. It was about a hyper-modern, sci-fi society where everyone wears an implant that records everything they do, see and hear. (It doesn’t end well.) Security experts were immediately more suspicious — especially when it was realized that Recall was on by default and it took a dive into the Windows settings to turn it off. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office said it was “having discussions with Microsoft” about the recall.
And Charlie Stross, the science fiction author and technology critic, called it a “bad show” of privacy for any organization that handles medical records or has a duty of legal confidentiality; indeed, for any business that needs to be GDPR compliant [general data protection regulation]”. He also said, “Suddenly, ANY The PC becomes a target for discovery during legal proceedings. Lawyers can call up your Recall database and search it, no longer limited to email, but being able to search for terms that came up in Teams, Slack or Signal messages, and potentially verbally via Zoom or Skype if word-for-word text is included in Recall Data.”
In the face of this delay, Microsoft stuck to its guns for 17 days, but finally, on June 7, it relented, announcing that Recall would be made opt-in rather than enabled by default, and also introducing additional security precautions—by only producing results from Recall after user authentication, for example, and never decrypting data stored by the tool until after a search query.
The only good news for Microsoft here is that it seems to belatedly admit that Recall has been a fiasco. The more interesting question, however, is what it reveals about the internal culture of the organization. For decades, Microsoft has been a dull but reliable giant, safe in the knowledge that while it first embraced the possibilities of the web—and, later, the smartphone—it nevertheless maintained a de facto monopoly on enterprise computing. After all, almost every business and government organization in the world runs Windows software. The company was a latecomer to the cloud computing business, and its general counsel, Brad Smith, took on the role of lone adult in the tech fraternity’s house, issuing serious musings about ethics, corporate responsibility and other topics of valid.
And then came AI and ChatGPT, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s stunning pre-emptive strike by investing $13 billion in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, to get a head start on other tech companies – notably Google – on to the next big thing. What was most striking, however, was how Nadella described what he was really about: trying to make Google “jump” is how he put it. Contrast with ancien rwe hear of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer could not be more remarkable: they always sought to eliminate the opposition; Nadella just wants to tease him. The subliminal message: Microsoft is past its midlife crisis. She is no longer paranoid and is enjoying playing with her latest toy: AI. The message of the Recall fiasco, however, is that it is not a toy. And it can blow up in your face.
What I have read
Irish eyes
James Joyce Was a Complicated Man is a thoughtful essay by Henry Oliver on the author’s conflicted relationship with his native land.
Executive disorder
A detailed plan for what Donald Trump will do if elected can be found in Inside Project 2025 by James Goodwin. The cold.
A running man
Dan Gardner’s fascinating essay The Biden Team and the Bay of Pigs examines the malevolent power of groupthink.