... is an AI-PC? What defines it? A certain number of theoretically achievable TOPs? A certain architecture?

It is a PC that guesses what it is you meant to do, and then gets it almost right.

Rather like the Nutrimatic drinks machine, which analyses your physiology, dietary requirements and current hydration level to determine exactly what drink you require, and then produces a cup of something almost, but not quite, completely unlike tea (you are a masochist on diet, right?).

I think a certain author would have described them as just the latest dull innovation from the ape-descended bipeds of Planet Earth, a civilisation so backward it still thinks the Apple Watch is a good idea.

Possibly my favourite comment this week!

Your text reminded me of an advert on Capital radio in the mid 1980's.

Woman in the fish and chip shop starts ordering, and it is everything under the sun.

She then orders a 2 litre bottle of coke.

A second later, she says "Better make it a diet coke"

I remember that ad well, given that I was a lad living in West London at the time.

Your post got me nostalgic for two reasons though; One being youthful memories of my educational years, but the other was for actually listening to ads on the radio. What a blast from the past!

I never do that these days as I almost exclusively listen to [1] Radio Paradise . The music is far better than what is played on commercial radio these days (IMHO)

[1] https://radioparadise.com

To me that just means Coffee.No AI needed there

It is one with a Neural Processing Unit.

Just like a "Multimedia PC" was a computer with a sound card, and an "Internet PC" was one with a modem.

Most computers these days have sound cards, though if it doesn't, it can be easily handled with a £9 USB adapter.

Modems are obsolete now, but many computers have network cards, and if it doesn't, it can easily be handled with a £10 USB adapter.

It's deliberately so vague as to allow whatever bullshit metrics someone can come up with on the fly to define what an AI-PC is at the time they're asked!

"the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built,"

It is like having the fastest hamster running in a wheel. The wheel may have frictionless bearings, be made of the highest quality unobtanium and be designed specifically for the hamster, but it is still going nowhere.

A recent 'Start the Week' on BBC Radio 4 covered AI and one of the presenters claimed that getting a general AI or LLM to perform tasks where there was a dedicated app, used 30 times the energy. One of her friends used ChatGPT as a calculator, which it can emulate, but why? Yes, I know that Alan Turing wanted a 'Universal Computing Machine' where the whole thing would be coded into software and it could do 'anything'. but bespoke hardware and optimised software for specific, well understood tasks are so much more efficient and quicker IRL.

I cannot think of anything I do on a computer that I would prefer to be done by an AI, that I would have to review and check. I even dislike auto-correct, heck, if I'm gong to publish typos I would like them to be my types*, not some AI generated guess typo.

*Edit - an actual auto-correct typographical error. The prosecution rests.

To clarify, the BBC Radio 4 programme was "The Artificial Human" and the episode's title was "How green is my AI?"

It was thought provoking as I drove to a meeting and had me thinking that people are going to get lazy and try and do everything with AI when it shouldn't be, just because it's the latest fashion.

The example of asking ChatGPT as a calculator is shocking as it:

- takes longer than just using a calculator on the device you're already using

- is so wasteful by a factor of 30 according to the programme

My personal view is that a high proportion generative AI is at best wasteful currently - "create me an image of a vulture, eating a burger whilst reading The Register".....

I just asked for that to prove the point - and it was quite an amusing image!

The example of asking ChatGPT as a calculator is shocking as it:

- takes longer than just using a calculator on the device you're already using

- is so wasteful by a factor of 30 according to the programme

You forgot:

- actually gives wrong answers (you can easily persuade a LLM than 2+2=5, for instance)

You don't need to persude it to get it wrong it gets it wrong by defaul. 2+2 does not need a statistical model to determine the probability of the likely answer. But that's what it seems to do.

From my experience (of doing a GPT4o for work) there is no actual intelligence in AI.

Intelligence would be to see the "question what is 2+2?", and to determine that is needs a basic numerical operation to carry out that task, and that any answer other than 4 is junk. Or if it's asked to produce a picture of a cat and that picture shows and animal with 67 legs it knows that it is junk. But it doesn't it knows nothing

"The example of asking ChatGPT as a calculator is shocking as"

- unless it has learned your specific calculation in its training data, there is a very good chance it is going to give you the wrong answer.

"The prosecution rests."

No need to even turn up in court ... the guilty party is proving itself more guilty as the clock ticks.

AI needs to apply some RI[Real Intelligence] to itself and realise that the con is begining to fall apart ... slowly BUT surely !!!

:)

I cannot think of anything I do on a computer that I would prefer to be done by an AI, that I would have to review and check.

Searching and summarizing large amounts of data are the examples I see the most. Internet searching, log scanning, summarizing business data.

Whether the results you get are reliable, that could be the question. And how much sensitive data will get leaked to 3rd party AI tools....

The whole point of a data search is that you need to be able to rely on the accuracy of the result. If AI cannot give you a >98% reliability it is worthless (OK, yes I did pick the number at random and it probably should be higher). This was an argument I had repeatedly with people that believed data quality was an optional extra as you could fix any errors in the final results, carefully ignoring the fact that you had no idea if the final result bore any relevance to the real world.

I was considered very 'old skool' because I would do random checks on the input data and then run searches a couple of different ways and then do random checks on 'hits' to ensure they should be hits. Took me longer but I could repeat my results

> One of her friends used ChatGPT as a calculator

Reminds me of a stat I heard somewhere recently that 90+% of Alexa's are now just being used as radio alarm clocks. Amazon are still trying to come up with innovations on them which most users just don't care about any more

90+% of Alexa's are now just being used as radio alarm clocks

Yep, that's what I bought mine for (it was cheaper than a decent DAB radio alarm). It also lets me turn the bedside light on and off on voice command - saves stumbling from door to bed in the dark.

They're hardly critical use cases.

Copilot+ PCs are laptops, I wouldn't expect them to be anything other than shit for gaming even if they had x86 chips in them.

Laptops are thermally compromised by design, the 'gaming laptop' is an expensive oxymoron sold to morons.

"Laptops are thermally compromised by design, the 'gaming laptop' is an expensive oxymoron sold to morons."

If you want a screen larger than 16", and an ethernet connection, then for a Dell, you have to pay more than £1k, and it is a gaming laptop (being the cheapest).

I use the laptop as my general computing device, including the odd programming, and they perform as needed, even when 10 years old.

My MSI laptops would disagree with you. They are spec'd as gaming laptops and have performed reasonably well. Although I wouldn't want to use one actually in my lap while gaming. The latest one I purchased to use in Unreal Engine for development.

Sure, I could build better in a desktop, but for my personal use the laptop had benefits. The biggest limitation is their lack of ability to upgrade components limits their lifespan.

The nicest thing about a laptop for this 'moron', I swapped out the memory, added a second SSD, plugged it in and turned it on and haven't had to fuck with it since. I've been building PCs for 35 years, sometimes it's nice to go the fast food route.

If your definition of 'shit' is a relative one, then yes, laptops are shit since they can never compete with with equivalently priced desktops.

In absolute terms however, laptops with enough grunt to play fun games at acceptable frame rates do exist. This is not a 'shit' experience, it's a known trade-off between convenience and computing power, likely made by an individual who isn't a moron. Oh, and they can be quite handy as Mobile Workstations too (provided you dodge two common real problems with gaming laptops, low res screens and teenage boy aesthetics)

The moron is the one who can't enjoy a good game because he's too busy thinking of how much better it would look on a bigger machine.

Seems we have a new platform for Crysis to suck on...

And unironically so, because it's famously single threaded, so unless there's something clever going on in the emulation layer, it's probably going to struggle.

.. if they'd settled on something that actually works before throwing themselves at it

And throw away the first responder advantage ? Madness.

Be first, then make it work.

Only in software . . .

AI wants to win the PEBCAK award.

How can it do that, when it's between the keyboard and the motherboard?

Meanwhile I have a Twitch stream on in the background while I work and it's bombarding me with Snapdragon adverts. If I wasn't going to avoid them before, I am now.

Does anyone remember when all you could buy were 3D TVs?

Still got a 42" Samsung Smart 3D TV - Tron, Avatar, Spiderman, Lawnmower Man, and Moana are excellent as long as you watch them in a really darkened room. The glasses do make your eyes tired however.

Now you will stuggle to buy a non "smart" TV. Alas, the 2 I have had in the past a no longer smart. One is so out of date that it would be a risk to use, the other, seems the manufacturer used such a shit processor that many of the app developers started to pull their apps from it.

Resolution = £30 4K roku stick - other brands are available

Sort of same here.

I have noticed that my TV after 2 years is not getting updates. The video processing was shocking at the start - movement of people across vertical bars was terrible. It is only slightly worse than what it should be, but the TV now is probably not secure.

You don’t have to give it internet access.

Had to replace my TV a few months ago. The new 'Smart TV' was never connected to the network and will never be. It stills bugs me with a 'complete your setup' banner for a few seconds every time I turn it on, but I hardly notice it now.

Remember when OLED TVs were all curved.

I wrote to LG to ask when the flat screen OLEDs would be coming out, and it was in the future (at the time).

For some reason, marketing and the bandwagon go off the rails all the time when something new comes out.

Beat me to it.

Not interested MS - won't buy an AI-PC

You already do have AI bits and bobs on your phone. Google had a tensor flow chip a while back.

Looking beyond the hyperbolic 20th century-style marketing, having dedicated hardware helps a lot for local models.

Look beyond MS. A Linux-of LLM was tried and fell flat on its arse. Not going to be possible. With neural engines token rates increase a lot. And, guess what, there is a huge area of AI/SI that has nothing to do with LLM. You lot think AI equals LLM

It is pitiful to see such uniformed tabloid-red-top posts citing 3d tv or such as if that gives you sad never-beens a little respite from the fact that the IT world is dead and AI/SI rule.

At the very least understand that there are a thousand more interesting projects going on than anything the whores OpenAI and Google (not Denis) have sh1tted out on humanity.

I’m tempted to buy the reg and ip ban 90pc of the commenturds

My advice would be for people to pick up a cheap pre-owned PC or laptop and put Linux Mint on it.

Debating that. I like mint, I can get a couple of routines to give me OneDrive, but no sky sports.

ChomeOS (many videos on how to get ChromeOS and not FLEX installed so you get play), works and so does Sky. Then you get a limitation on Android OneDrive - again another app can resolve.

ChromeOS fle management is a bit naff.

I could do a mix. Mint on most with the basic apps, and ChromeOS where needed, but having a standard interface on all machines is appealing when SWMBO is using them.

I will test the water with a test laptop over the next little while and wait until W10 is dead.

I did exactly that about 18 months ago. I bought a refurbished Dell Latitude laptop from a seller with good ratings on Amazon. It's a decently spec'ed business class machine (16 GB RAM), that set me back around $200. I replaced the tired battery and installed a faster NVMe for another $50 or so.

It's running Linux Mint like a champ, and still gets periodic BIOS updates. I've got Steam installed with a few older titles like Serious Sam and Half Life, which run more than acceptably. (I'm not a big gamer, so I haven't tried anything more resource intensive.)

Once these tulips have withered and died, and AI PCs are offloaded to the recyclers these embarrassments might be good value for the likes of computer algebra, theorem proving, signal processing, image analysis, or photorealistic animation etc etc.

Of course removing Windows and any other Microsoft contamination from the hardware might pose an insurmountable obstacle.

The problem is that most Windows software ever built is for x86 series processors, so running them through emulation cannot ever be anywhere near as fast as running them on bare metal. Especially when you're using RISC chips to emulate CISC chips - not a very intelligent or efficient architecture.

Mind you, that's an academic point when the emulation can't even run all programs correctly. There is a big chance that these things could be a total flop in the market, as they'll still be competing against native x86 machines.

Surely Microsoft are trying sell stuff that 99.99% of the population don't need. They are trying to find a market for AI that just doesn't exist.

I think we need to rebrand AI as Artificial Ignorance, that will stop this AI nonsense. Every other company CEO is trying to get on the AI band wagon.

A "new" version of an operating system noone really wants.

Supplied with an internet browser noone really wants.

Which will only run on PCs with a new spec that none really wants,

"featuring" AI capability that noone really wants.

Now exposed with game (not) playing capability noone really wants.

And quality tested in a way noone really wants.

Does anyone want it?

Microsoft persuaded hardware manufacturers (and customers) that Windows Vista would work just fine on machines with 512MB RAM. They lied.

This is the same sort of thing. Microsoft telling us that Windows on AI-ready platforms is the fastest ever is an outright lie. Yeah, it'll be fast for Microsoft products, and AI stuff, and their marketing machine will probably try and persuade us that the reason apps don't work well (it won't be just games) is that they're not using Microsoft software. I'm just wondering how well printer drivers will work actually. How slow will they be?

I'm not denigrating AI, that's not the point of what I'm writing. I'm simply saying that once again, they haven't thought it through from the point of view of the end user. I'm sure the AI stuff will be useful, but - as is common with Microsoft - not in the way we actually want. It'll be in the way that they expect everyone to work.

In a way it's sort of necessary. We need to shake off this reliance on the backward-looking processor architecture that is X86. Apple managed to do it. It's just going to be much harder with the sheer amount of software available for Windows.

> Microsoft's Copilot+ machines suck at one of computing's oldest use cases

Thats not a problem, we will simply call that use-case "legacy", "old", "obsolete", "un-modern" and all the other sleazewords we all use when trying to push a new product in a competitive landscape.

Earlier this year, Forrester Research said the platform still lacks a "killer app" that would make any AI PC an essential business tool.

And that's a problem. Until you can persuade the beancounters that the extra money is worth it, they're not going to pony out for a shiny Copilot+ PC when they've already got a long term lease deal supplying Dells, HPs or Lenovos that probably has an early cancellation penalty.

Windows Recall was a disaster, and apart from a built-in chatbot that might do some work for you – poorly – what is there that vanilla PCs don't already have?

And what's to stop someone installing a chatbot that's not from Microsoft on a PC that doesn't have Copilot? Oh wait, did we just sail into antitrust waters or am I just hallucinating like a generative AI?