More on the new eDiscovery Interface

Also, is AI a viable economic product?

First, where I live today is a holiday, so Happy Mardi Gras!

Photo by Mike McBride

Second, I know layoffs and mass firings have been all over the news lately. If you’ve been impacted and want to learn more about eDiscovery and M365, please subscribe for free and email me (mike@mikemcbrideonline.com). I’ll happily give you free access to a paid subscription for the next three months as my small effort to help.

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This issue is a little different because I want to share my thoughts about two things that have come to my attention in the last couple of weeks.

The first was an interview with Satya Nadella:

Microsoft's Satya Nadella Pumps the Brakes on AI Hype

This was quite a shock, given what Satya said in November about AI replacing software and being built into everything Microsoft does. I also think he’s right about the hype.

Here’s how I like to think about what he said:

Let’s say you’re a company that sells widgets. You sold 1,000 widgets last year, which is the size of the market demand in the current environment. Your sales team is using AI to get contracts signed more efficiently. The shipping folks are using AI to make that process less time-consuming, accounting is seeing great results in filing tax reports, etc. AI is helping a bunch of people spend less time on manual tasks.

That’s great, but where's the growth when you sell the same 1,000 widgets next year? What’s the ROI? The extra time available didn’t change the demand for your product.

Right now, there is a lot of talk about AI freeing workers to do more strategic work. However, there is minimal discussion of where that extra strategic work comes from. In my scenario above, AI apologists would say that creating more time would create opportunities for more production and sales. Still, it doesn’t answer the question about where the extra customers come from. Satya seems to be saying that AI like Copilot is doing a great job saving time, but that time hasn’t created the kind of economic growth that matches the hype of AI being world-changing.

It might, and I’m sure Satya believes it will, but it hasn’t yet. Thus, everything about AI changing the world is hype right now.

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I also want to share this new podcast from Microsoft’s Heather Eckman and Ryan John Murphy: MS eDiscovery In Focus.

Let me be the first to say that it’s awesome to see someone at Microsoft creating content around eDiscovery. I have long felt that the legal space is sometimes overlooked in some of Microsoft’s marketing, and the efforts to help customers with the eDiscovery tools are often lacking. (For example, tell me which Microsoft certification covers the eDiscovery tools in-depth, let alone offers certification for an eDiscovery professional.)

Anyway, it’s good to see Heather, whom I’ve worked with and known for a few years, and Ryan take this on, and I look forward to more from them.

In this first episode, they started showing off the new interface, which is important, given what I mentioned a few weeks back. Beginning August 1, this will be the only interface available.

I wanted to discuss some things from this episode that got my attention.