Microsoft's head of AI doesn't understand why people don't like AI, and I don't understand why he doesn't understand because it's pretty obvious

A collage of Noto Color thinky face emojis. — (Image credit: Google Noto Color Emoji/Future)

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it's "mindblowing" that people aren't more impressed with generative AI tools.

"Jeez there so many cynics!" wrote Suleyman on X this week. "It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming. I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone! The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me."

For instance, The Verge recently attempted to recreate a moment in one of Microsoft's commercials in which Copilot correctly identified the location of a cave from a photo. In The Verge's test, the Windows chatbot repeatedly told them the location of the image in the Windows file system rather than its location on the planet (it'd be a good gag if chatbots could have a sense of humor), and when it did provide a geographical answer, it was wrong. The reporter also found that they could get Copilot to claim that the cave is in New Jersey simply by adding "new-jersey" to the file name. (It's in Mexico.)

Jeez there so many cynics! It cracks me up when I hear people call AI underwhelming. I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone! The fact that people are unimpressed that we can have a fluent conversation with a super smart AI that can generate any image/video is mindblowing to me.November 19, 2025

And I haven't even mentioned the scraping of copyrighted material that makes these bots possible in the first place, the ugly AI-generated art showing up in videogames and other media, the dangers LLMs pose to vulnerable people, the techno-soothsayers claiming that these busted chatbots can do all of our jobs, and the enormous resource investment going toward AI data centers—all to rapidly commercialize poorly understood technology that doesn't actually do the things we're told it does.

Is it really so hard for the tech industry to understand why not everyone is bowing before their new gods?

AI and machine learning may in fact transform the world, but there's no reason to assume that the transformation will be a good thing unless we actively try to make it a good thing. So far, tech companies have given no indication that they care about anything besides the pursuit of profit. I don't think that we're the cynical ones here.

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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.

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