Microsoft AI PR and PC Gamer: Really?1
January 5, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I was poking around in online gaming magazines. I was looking for some information about a “former gamer” named Logan Ryan Golema. He allegedly jumped from the lucrative world of eGames to chief technical officer of an company building AI data centers for distributed AI gaming. I did not find the interesting Mr. Golema, who has moved around with locations in the US, the Cayman Islands, and Portugal.
No Mr. Golema, but I did spot a write up with the interesting “gamer” title “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says It’s Time to Stop Talking about AI Slop and Start Talking about a Theory of the Mind That Accounts for Humans Being Equipped with These New Cognitive Amplifier Tools.”
Wow, from AI slop to “new cognitive amplifier tools.” Remarkable. I have concluded that the Microsoft AI PR push for Copilot has achieved the public relations equivalent of climbing the Jirishanca mountain in Peru. Well done!
Thanks, Qwen. Good enough for AI output.
And what did the PC Gamer write up report as compelling AI news requiring a 34 word headline?
I noted this passage:
Nadella listed three key points the AI industry needs to focus on going forward, the first of which is developing a “new concept” of AI that builds upon the “bicycles for the mind” theory put forth by Steve Jobs in the early days of personal computing. “What matters is not the power of any given model, but how people choose to apply it to achieve their goals,” Nadella wrote. “We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs. sophistication and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our ‘theory of the mind’ that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other. This is the product design question we need to debate and answer.”
“Bicycles of the mind” is not the fingerprint of Copilot, a dearly loved and revered AI system. “Bicycles of the mind” is the product of small meetings of great minds. The brilliance of the metaphor exceeds the cost of the educations of the participants in these meetings. Are the attendees bicycle riders? Yes. Do they depend on AI? Yes, yes, of course. Do they believe that regular people can “get beyond” slop versus sophistication?
Probably not. But these folks get paid, and they can demonstrate interest, enthusiasm, and corporatized creativity. Energized by Teams’ meetings. Invigorated with Word plus Copilot and magnetized by wonder of hallucinating data in Excel — these people believe in AI.
PC Gamer points out:
There’s a lot of jargon and bafflegab in Nadella’s post, as you might expect from a CEO who really needs to sell this stuff to someone, but what I find more interesting is the sense that he’s hedging a bit. Microsoft has sunk tens of billions of dollars into its pursuit of an AI panacea and expressed outright bafflement that people don’t get how awesome it all is (even though, y’know, it’s pretty obvious), and the chief result of that effort is hot garbage and angry Windows users.
Yep, bafflegab. I think this is the equivalent of cow output, but I am not sure. I am sure about that 34 word headline. I would have titled the essay “Softie Spews Bafflegab.” But I am a dinobaby. What do I know? How about AI output is not slop?
Stephen E Arnold, January 5, 2026
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
