After Redmond’s tremendous financial results, The Register offers a caution about letting Microsoft manage the future progress of AI:

Microsoft’s document is called “New Future of Work” and emerged last month with the suggestion we should not be asking how AI will impact work, but how we want it to. However, the report reads more like an attempt to sell the value of Microsoft’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI rather than an actual consideration of how AI will change the workplace.

Yes, the document admits, AI has problems. While it can speed up some work (writing tasks were claimed to be 37 percent faster with the technology, for example), it can make other work less accurate. Research cited the report found a 19 percent decrease in accuracy by mavens from Boston Consulting Group who used large language models – not great for one of the biggest consulting firms in the world.

Right now it’s Microsoft’s game. But how long it stays that way…is anyone’s guess.

Read the column here.