Own Your Own Tools - 2023 Preface (Re: Microsoft Copilot) to a 2008 Post
/Preface
Realities are barging in on my euphoria about Microsoft 365 Copilot. After a day of sharing shorter and longer versions of the Microsoft announcement, I’m starting to track my questions and those I hear from others.
Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts—to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads.
I have no doubt (and even have placed bets) that our work will transform in the months and years after its release. (Still months away if you’re not in their preview group of 20 companies). Already I’m dealing with frustrations as I can’t bring myself to work on a Powerpoint deck without the flashy support of Copilot.
Deeper Considerations
My colleague, Prof. Mila Lazarova, wondered if this would be another case of the rich getting richer. I waved off her concerns by saying Copilot was part of 365. Another colleague, Prof. Matt Beane had just tweeted that 345 million people use Microsoft 365. That’s a broad base. However, a text from author Phil Simon about premium features sent me back to the announcement document.
Pricing reared its ugly head.
DALL-E via Tome
I hope that Copilot won’t be an upcharge beyond the basic 365 pricing. Given all the enterprise language in the announcement document, I also hope that personal and family accounts get the magic too. For years, I’ve asked for my personal “graph” to be leveraged to improve my work (albeit generally in the context of Google).
My Copilot euphoria is based on the AI ability to leverage the work we’ve already done (our graph) to support the work we need to do.
The power I’m seeing in the Microsoft demos would put knowledge workers without Copilot capabilities at a severe disadvantage. Mila would be right. Already I’m frustrated that only 20 organizations have access. I also expect my organization won’t be first in line for the next wave.
Another fear is that the work history that powers these benefits will be locked within organizational walls. Remember when you couldn’t share collaborative documents or discussions outside your organization’s domain? Yes, security and provisioning will be of huge import - but perhaps a virtuous circle of AI will make it easier to build the walls and bridges we need.
We need to own our own tools.
My biggest fear is about my personal work. Will it be locked inside my organization’s account?
The better our “graph,” the better our work. Own your own tools.
Learn more here: Microsoft 365 Copilot Site
2008
[Appologies for broken links. No copilot to track them down....] Three times in the last week I’ve heard/read about employees owning their own computers – rather than having the company provide them. This harkens back to a world where the identity of a craftsperson was partially determined by his/her tools.
First time was a friend who was switching jobs and going through the start-up costs of a new computer. Decision was finally just to turn in the company-provided laptop and use a personal one. My friend is a world-traveling consultant who needs his personal applications on the road. (Even when companies will allow you to put personal applications on a company machine, problems are created when tech support re-images the drive to do updates and fixes. You then get to spend hours reinstalling your personal applications.) Carrying two laptops isn’t an option. Agreement is that the company will support its applications, owner will support his own.
Second time was on the TWIT podcast (about 54 minutes in) where the panel noted that it’s common for people to have preferences about their tools – e.g., Windows versus Mac, and/or particular applications. John C. Dvorak noted that when he was a kid working in factories, the master mechanics owned their own tools. The benefit the TWIT panel ascribed to the firm is that the employer doesn’t have to take on the burden of computer “refreshes” etc., and the employee gets the benefit of controlling their own applications and methods of work. The conversation then hit on the main reason big enterprise isn’t excited about this: security. Quick transition to the variety of technology approaches available for solving the security problem. It can be solved. Issue is creating safe “virtual machines” that connect to the company network.
Third time was an email summary of the week’s tech/work news from a professional group I belong to. They linked to Rasha Madkour’s article “B.Y.O.C. (computer) to work - wave of future?” Citrix (the company highlighted in the article) even provides a $2100 stipend to help employees buy a laptop and support package. Key to note is that Citrix sells one of the tools that handles the virtualization issues (VMware also provides a desktop virtualization product).
Is the third time the charm? Have we circled back to an age where we will again own the means of our production?
Other organizations that seem to be getting on the bandwagon:
- Microsoft & British Petrolium (see Ina Fied’s Beyond Binary CNET blog)
- Arizona State University (see article by Jennifer Mears of Network World)
How does this change our relationship with our employers? Do we then become more valuable the better our technology? Do we become more effective given greater control over our tools? Tool ownership might tip the balance for some regarding employee versus contractor status. (See some checklists here and here.) Note that the desktop isn’t the only tool in the box. Access to organizational resources stored either on company servers or on company portions of the “cloud” may be where the real work gets done.
