Microsoft exec suggests AI agents will need to buy software licenses, just like employees https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-executive-suggests-ai-agents-buy-software-licenses-seats-2026-4

[itnomad@ruhr.social]

@cwebber All Children of God must obey the law!!
https://www.heise.de/en/news/AI-a-Child-of-God-Anthropic-meeting-with-several-church-leaders-11253800.html

[mxk@hachyderm.io]

@cwebber isn't that obvious?
If AI has the chance to lead to fewer humans having to use Microsoft products, there needs to be some compensation, right?

[grahamdowns@mastodon.africa]

@cwebber I can't read the article without creating an account, and I'm not in the mood right now.

But tell me... Was that article published on 1 April, by any chance?

[sl1200@nixnet.social]

@cwebber fuck Microsoft

[tseitr@mastodon.sdf.org]

@cwebber they don't need the license if it is for training purpose.

[ichderfisch@ruhr.social]

@cwebber let him cook. They are going to figure out how to properly identify an AI agent, and then we use that same method to make AI agents pay taxes.

If they take all our jobs, let's at least make them pay for it.

[expertenkommision_cyberunfall@mastodon.social]

@canleaf @cwebber

And vote?

[canleaf@mastodon.social]

@expertenkommision_cyberunfall @cwebber naw. companiesshould pay taxes on their AI usage fo fund UBI.

[carquint@wien.rocks]

@cwebber - if AI agents can buy software licenses they should pay taxes as well.

[moah@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@cwebber the agents trained on stolen code?

[janantos@f.cz]

@Brokar @cwebber anyway, majority of software in terms of micro services is running in Linux using open source tools, even copilot cli is written in node-js. So this is just smoking mirrors. Agents will run in docker or whatever container (tbh they should be there anyway) and no seats needed. In fact agents work with text files, they don’t give a shit about IDE. So if he implying they shall play for seats for paid SDKs that will not hold at court I believe, or companies will shift to opensource alternatives and pay for enterprise support where needed, and that’s usually seatless. Et the end who will be beaten, are the big software houses, who sells such proprietary SDKs

[erebus_amauro@ohai.social]

@EdCates @wordshaper @cwebber They probably have already worse ones.

[mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org]

@cwebber @AG7GM "Make no mistakes. Don't hallucinate."

[janantos@f.cz]

@AG7GM @cwebber as AI strategist I have a solution, so let’s have agentic AI, let’s say theirs suggestion 20 of them, they do the “monkey work” and when needed some seated pricing interactions, they delegate to single dedicated agent that does what’s needed. The agentic orchestration on top of it shall be fairly trivial. It is really easy to use it against them. I believe AI can be helping tool to humans and I mean helping tool not replacement. Just another fancy tool in someone’s toolset.

[janantos@f.cz]

@syllopsium @blogdiva @cwebber I think at least MS fixed this as there is some licence complicated calculation based on cores not sockets. This happened already in I think SQL Server 2016 I believe Oracle does have the same

[thebluewizard@masto.hackers.town]

@cwebber I would imagine those AI agents would manage to find and use company credit cards and splurge on everything, and the employees get blamed for that! Oh that would be so wonderful! *infinitely heavy sarcasm*

[rainerku@mastodontech.de]

@cwebber 7years ago I purchased a used pc and installed Linux Mint, which works still fine....

[shelldozer@oldbytes.space]

@wordshaper @cwebber They don't need to. Their age-old "how much revenue did you make last year? That will do nicely" ploy will still work in the agentic era.

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@cwebber and of course the licenses come with Copilot, which will need its own license, and so on. Self-licking ice cream cone.

[gerex@mastodon.social]

@cwebber I can see where this is going:
1. Make Copilot a mandatory part of every MS product.
2. Declare Copilot as an agent.
3. Since it contains an agent, your license now needs its own additional license.
4. Copilot is a mandatory part of the additional license.
5. Go to step 3.

Infinite profit!