So, Microsoft has now made the “focused inbox” the standard in Outlook. It lets AI decide for you which e-mails are relevant and shown directly, and which aren’t, and hidden behind a button (which is too complicated for the employees at my org to find).
Apparently, e-mails sent from the CEO to the entire org aren’t relevant.
I google how to deactivate it.
The entire first page shows AI-written blogs.
On top of the Google page, of course, is an AI summary, which I don’t trust.
So I click through to the source it uses.
It takes me to the Microsoft support forum where someone asked that exact question.
And find out that Microsoft now lets AI answer the questions there.
So when I’m looking for how to deactivate an AI, I get a reply by AI that sources another reply by AI.
If I then say “fuck Google” and wade through the official documentation, Microsoft redirects me to a page that AI-translates it to my language. Replacing the “de-de” string in the url with “en-us” I arrive at the original documentation. Which is of course also written by AI.
I’m sick of it.
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Lmao, if the emails of the CEO are being marked as irrelevant, then maybe it shows that it is actually working? Given what a blubber of nothing those messages usually are.
The focused inbox is bad enough without all of the AI shit
Just remember that LLMs are good at one thing: summarizing large volumes of text with reasonable confidence.
AI isn’t a product for you. AI is a wet dream for the companies that built profiles on you.
The giant datacenters that steal away all the drinking water are there in order to “read your mind”. They know what you are and what you want before you do.
And this is so beyond advertising. Imagine having the power to understand the collective minds of most of humanity at once. Imagine being able to influence it.
They are even talking about building hives and becoming the queen bees. (Look up “network cities” or “Freedom cities”)
Everything is in the cloud now, including your personal and business documents. All software is a service. You can’t afford your own computer anymore, you don’t even have one of those old-fashioned things. You just have a tablet, and a phone. “I’m not a nerd, it’s all I need. That other stuff is too much work, I like how simple this is.”
Microsoft is trying to find out how little they have to deliver before customers start evaluating alternatives, just like a good monopolist should. With their Office suite that can be very, very little, the lock-in is ironclad.
Focused Inbox been the default for at least a few years now.
I find it interesting that my Google search engine results seem to differ substantially from yours
Query: “Outlook Focused Inbox Disable”
First result: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-disable-focused-inbox-82a4b339-dca3-45a3-bb6d-c4d1ce1b7c26
Second Result: https://www.reddit.com/r/UNC/comments/q1k18r/psa_you_can_disable_focused_inbox_in_your_outlook/
Third Result: https://helpdesk.tcsedsystem.edu/hc/en-us/articles/21715995066775-How-do-I-turn-off-Outlook-Focused-Inbox
Fourth result: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/focused-inbox-for-outlook-f445ad7f-02f4-4294-a82e-71d8964e3978
None of these stand out as being Generative AI to me, but maybe I’m missing something.
Focused Inbox been the default for at least a few years now.
Not with Outlook 2019 and an OnPrem Exchange server, which we had used before we migrated to M365 and my pain started.
And Google doesn’t show everyone the same results, especially when you’re in a different country.
Did you already ‘upgrade’ your teams? 😁
And while we’re at it, rate your last call!
“Did you know you can do some useless shit? Set it up now.”
And here’s the unskippable full screen intro!
I tried deactivating the rating questions in the Teams settings, but it didn’t change anything.
Saas will always be abused. Yet, here we are.
Imagine suggesting alternative operating system and mailing service provider, collaborating with IT to get further specifics that could work for you and your office and presenting that to the big man up stairs showing the improved user usage and lower costs (and even probably way more secure too) and suggest to do a trial run with a few people even offering yourself towards the trial run before a full company deal over just to give proof along side well documented research. Windows may be a standard but it’s only because we think of it as one. Can easily suggest other companies to do the same and reach out to build partnerships and maybe even build a new standard with the testing and research you find.
Anywho that’s what we would suggest
I tried that, but it’s impossible at the moment.
We need a LOT of specialized enterprise software that isn’t available for alternative operating systems, and depends on Office.
The alternative we had used instead of Teams was discontinued by the supplier.
I’m sure if the enshittification continues, and especially if the licenses get more expensive, the C-suite will be open for alternatives.
But that would be a multi-year migration project, and we just signed all the contracts for the next 5 years.Hh that’s pain. We never worked that closely in a huge company only middle sized or small ones (and they ran on either older versions of Windows that stayed offline or Apple)
It’s not that it’s huge, it’s just non-standard.
I work for a newspaper, and our IT needs to interface with the printing press, plate setters, press-specific typesetting and layouting systems, data transmitters from the press agency, the national archive, etc.
If Microsoft fucks up your data you won’t be blamed. If you try to switch to Linux and something goes terribly wrong you will absolutely be nailed to the wall. This is how C-suite people think and this is why we’ll be stuck with Microslop for a long time.
Ughhh we hate fucking dumb ass corpo suits =m=;;
They had something similar some years ago (I checked, it was about 10 years, I’m old). I think it was named Clutter. Iirc it moved mails from recipients you tend to delete right away into a separate folder that was very subtle in letting you know that it has new connect.
It was a huge hilarious mess because it moved all notifications people painstakingly set up for themselves to the Clutter folder since people mostly read the notification, acted and deleted it and the “logic” concluded that these mails must be irrelevant then.
For me, it sent the email introducing the existence of the clutter feature to the clutter folder.
There’s really no coming back from that.
So turn it of and/or block it, it’s not that hard. And maybe don’t try asking AI how to turn of AI …
So the issue was less the sorting but specifically that the boss had his mails, probably correctly so, end up in the irrelevant bin?
