Microsoft Should Watch The Expanse

My favorite piece of technology in science fiction isn't lightsabers, flying spaceships, or even robots. It's AI. But not just any AI. My favorite is the one in the TV show The Expanse.

If you watch The Expanse, the most advanced technology is, of course, the Epstein drive (an unfortunate name in this day and age). In their universe, humanity can travel to distant planets, the Belt, and Mars. Mars has the most high-tech military, which is incredibly cool. But the AI is still what impresses me most. If you watched the show, you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about right now. Because there is no mention of AI ever. The AI is barely visible. In fact, it's not visible at all. Most of the time, there aren't even voices. Instead, their computer interfaces respond directly to voice and gesture commands without returning any sass.

In Season 1, Miller (the detective) is trying to solve a crime. Out of the blue, he just says, "Plot the course the Scopuli took over the past months." The course is plotted right there in his living room. No fuss, no interruptions, no "OK Google." And when he finally figures it out, no one says "You are absolutely right!"

He then interacts with the holographic display in real time, asking for additional information and manipulating the data with gestures. At no point does he anthropomorphize the AI. It's always there, always available, always listening, but it never interrupts.

This type of interaction is present throughout the series. In the Rocinante, James Holden will give commands like "seal bulkhead," "plot intercept course," or "scan for life signs," and the ship's computer simply executes. There are no loading screens, no chatbot personality trying to be helpful. The computer doesn't explain what it's doing or ask for confirmation on routine tasks. It just works.

When Holden needs tactical information during a firefight, he doesn't open an app or navigate menus. He shouts questions, and relevant data appears on his helmet display. When Naomi needs to calculate a complex orbital maneuver, she doesn't fight with an interface. She thinks out loud, and the system provides the calculations she needs.

This is the complete opposite of Microsoft's Copilot... Yes, this is about Copilot.

In Microsoft's vision, they think they're designing an AI assistant, an AI copilot that's always there to help. You have Copilot in Excel, in Edge, in the taskbar. It's everywhere, yet it's as useless as you can imagine.

What is Copilot? Is it ChatGPT or a wrapper around it? Is it a code assistant? Is it a search engine? Or wait, is it all of Microsoft Office now? It's attached to every application, yet it hasn't been particularly helpful.

We now use Teams at work, and I see Copilot popping up every time to offer to help me, just like Clippy. OK, fine, I asked for the meaning of a term I hear often in this company. Copilot doesn't know. Well, it doesn't say it doesn't know. Instead, it gives me the definition of what it thinks the term means in general.

Imagine for a second you're a manager and you hear developers talking about issues with Apache delaying a project. You don't know what Apache is, so you ask Copilot. It tells you that the Apache are a group of Native American tribes known for their resilience in the Southwest. If you don't know any better, you might take that definition at face value, never knowing that Copilot has does not have access to any of the company data. Now in the project retro, you'll blame a native American tribe for delaying the project.

Copilot is everywhere, yet it is nowhere. Nobody deliberately opens it to solve a problem. Instead, it's like Google Plus from back in the day. If you randomly clicked seven times on the web, you would somehow end up with a Google Plus account and, for some reason, two YouTube accounts.

Copilot is visible when it should be invisible, and verbose when it should be silent. It interrupts your workflow to offer help you didn't ask for, then fails to provide useful answers when you actually need them. It's the opposite of the AI in The Expanse. It doesn't fade in the background. It is constantly reminding you that you need to use it here and now.

In The Expanse, the AI doesn't have a personality because it doesn't need one. It's not trying to be your friend or impress you with its conversational abilities. It's a tool, refined to perfection. It is not trying to replace your job, it is there to support you. Copilot only exists to impress you, and it fails at it every single time.

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Satya should binge-watch The Expanse. I'm not advocating for AI everything, but I am all for creating useful tools. And Copilot, as it currently exists, is one of the least useful implementations of AI I've encountered.

The best technology is invisible. It doesn't announce itself, doesn't demand attention, and doesn't try to be clever. It simply works when you need it and disappears when you don't. I know Microsoft won't read this or learn from it. Instead, I expect Windows 12 to be renamed Microsoft Copilot OS.

In The Expanse, the AI turn people into heroes. In our world, Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, all want to be the heroes. And they will differentiate themselves by trying to be the loudest.

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