Microsoft and Amazon Commit Billions to New AI Implementation Units for Businesses (cnbc.com) 17
Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion in a new group "assisting clients with AI implementations," reports CNBC:
[Microsoft] said Thursday that 6,000 employees will be embedded with clients, in a practice that's become known as forward deployed engineering [or FDE]... The announcement comes two days after cloud rival Amazon said it was putting $1 billion behind an FDE initiative to support fast-paced AI engagements. Leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI both established FDE groups in May, partnering with private equity firms, banks and consulting firms.
Alongside its technology peers, Microsoft has sunk tens of billions of dollars into building data centers that run generative AI models. Microsoft has also released a variety of AI services, with mixed results. The Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant has yet to gain anything approaching ubiquity in the business world, and the GitHub Copilot coding agent has ceded market share to newer players. Microsoft's stock has slumped 21% this year, by far the worst performance among the mega-cap tech companies. One concern on Wall Street is that AI models that quickly compose code might threaten mature software companies...
Microsoft has for years provided support and implementation services to customers. The company generated about $2.1 billion in revenue from enterprise and partner services in the March quarter, up 2.5% from a year earlier.
Alongside its technology peers, Microsoft has sunk tens of billions of dollars into building data centers that run generative AI models. Microsoft has also released a variety of AI services, with mixed results. The Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant has yet to gain anything approaching ubiquity in the business world, and the GitHub Copilot coding agent has ceded market share to newer players. Microsoft's stock has slumped 21% this year, by far the worst performance among the mega-cap tech companies. One concern on Wall Street is that AI models that quickly compose code might threaten mature software companies...
Microsoft has for years provided support and implementation services to customers. The company generated about $2.1 billion in revenue from enterprise and partner services in the March quarter, up 2.5% from a year earlier.
"6,000 employees will be embedded" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. This is "We will steal all your secrets, train our AI on it and then sell them back to you....and sell them to others as well". This is an attack, not "assistance".
It's product placement and amortization making (Score:2)
It is about getting more long-term paying customers for AI services. Microsoft, Google, Amazon putting their own technical staff on -site with customers is just the same old consulting practices.
The repetition of negative responses to AI in the news pushes the cloud companies to get more AI success stories.
Right now, there is a lot of starry sky speeches with emotional appeal "AI will help cure cancer" or similar statements without any timeline for the breakthrough, cost ballpark or percent chance estimat
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This whole AI thing is getting as deranged as politics ....
Re: "6,000 employees will be embedded" (Score:2)
Hey it worked for palantir
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these employees will choose the tools in their approved tool box
Of course they will.
Clients need to do their research, choose the tool they want, and then choose the consultant to help them implement it.
That's the way it works. Microsoft isn't the right partner to help you implement a solution based on Google Gemini. Duh.
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THE Microsoft Way.
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I thought AI sold itself? (Score:2)
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You promised AI would be getting rid of these worthless, filthy, loathsome "employees", and now you're sending more of them!
Yup.
"You're not burning through tokens fast enough to make any of this profitable for us so we're sending someone to show you how to waste resources faster."
Remember folks... every time you ask ChatGPT what Ford's web site is or ask Claude to paste in a buggle version of someone's broken code for you to debug, or ask Grok for pictures of some naked totally-adults, you're driving the price of RAM and storage up.
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They promised anything that would get their product sold. They continue to do so, although the customers have gotten a bit less ignorant about what LLMs can actually do now. So they adjusted the scam. It is still Microslop all the way down, just with some glitter on top now.
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No doubt, he will comment.
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Sorry, cannot help you there. The transformation from actual insight to "idiotic" you have to do all by yourself. So far you have managed well.
Lots of Kilo Watts for "AI" (Score:1)
But none for our AC
Sorry, we'll have to ration the water as well.
Microsoft wants eyes into your business. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same game Google played with search: results ranked by how many links pointed to a site. Now with AI, the answers you get are mostly remixed from other people's conversations and data, creating a convincing illusion of intelligence on the other end.
Forward-deployed engineering? More like forward-deployed surveillance with a consulting invoice attached.
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Exactly. This could be called the "DOGE attack model". Whoever accepts this "help" is screwed.