Technology

Stolen from BSKY

What people don't want is blackbox AI agents installed system-wide that use the carrot of "integration and efficiency" to justify bulk data collection, that the end user implicitly agrees to by logging into the OS.

God forbid people want the compute they are paying for to actually do what they want, and not work at cross purposes for the company and its various data sales clients.

I'd much rather have a more powerful generic CPU than a less powerful generic CPU with an added NPU.

There are very few people who would benefit from an added NPU, ok I hear you say what about local AI?

Ok, what about it?

Would you trust a commercial local AI tool to not be sharing data?

Would your grandmother be able to install an open source AI tool?

What about having enough RAM for the AI tool to run?

Look at the average computer user, if you are on lemmy, chances are very high that you are far more advanced than the average computer user.

I am talking about those users who don't run Adblocker, don't notice the YT ad skip button and who in the past would have installed a minimum of of five toolbars in IE, yet wouldn't have noticed the reduced view of the actual page.

These people are closer to the average users than any of us.

Why do they need local AI?

Not the position Dell is taking, but I've been skeptical that building AI hardware directly into specifically laptops is a great idea unless people have a very concrete goal, like text-to-speech, and existing models to run on it, probably specialized ones. This is not to diminish AI compute elsewhere.

Several reasons.

• Models for many useful things have been getting larger, and you have a bounded amount of memory in those laptops, which, at the moment, generally can't be upgraded (though maybe CAMM2 will improve the situation, move back away from soldered memory). Historically, most users did not upgrade memory in their laptop, even if they could. Just throwing the compute hardware there in the expectation that models will come is a bet on the size of the models that people might want to use not getting a whole lot larger. This is especially true for the next year or two, since we expect high memory prices, and people probably being priced out of sticking very large amounts of memory in laptops.

• Heat and power. The laptop form factor exists to be portable. They are not great at dissipating heat, and unless they're plugged into wall power, they have sharp constraints on how much power they can usefully use.

• The parallel compute field is rapidly evolving. People are probably not going to throw out and replace their laptops on a regular basis to keep up with AI stuff (much as laptop vendors might be enthusiastic about this).

I think that a more-likely outcome, if people want local, generalized AI stuff on laptops, is that someone sells an eGPU-like box that plugs into power and into a USB port or via some wireless protocol to the laptop, and the laptop uses it as an AI accelerator. That box can be replaced or upgraded independently of the laptop itself.

When I do generative AI stuff on my laptop, for the applications I use, the bandwidth that I need to the compute box is very low, and latency requirements are very relaxed. I presently remotely use a Framework Desktop as a compute box, and can happily generate images or text or whatever over the cell network without problems. If I really wanted disconnected operation, I'd haul the box along with me.

EDIT: I'd also add that all of this is also true for smartphones, which have the same constraints, and harder limitations on heat, power, and space. You can hook one up to an AI accelerator box via wired or wireless link if you want local compute, but it's going to be much more difficult to deal with the limitations inherent to the phone form factor and do a lot of compute on the phone itself.

EDIT2: If you use a high-bandwidth link to such a local, external box, bonus: you also potentially get substantially-increased and upgradeable graphical capabilities on the laptop or smartphone if you can use such a box as an eGPU, something where having low-latency compute available is actually quite useful.

Dell is the first Windows OEM to openly admit that the AI PC push has failed. Customers seem uninterested in buying a laptop because of its AI capabilities, likely prioritizing other aspects such as battery life, performance, and display above AI.

Silicon Valley always had the annoying habit of pushing technology-first products without even much consideration of how they would solve real world problems. It always had it, but it's becoming increasingly bad. When Zuck unveiled the Metaverse it was already starting to be ludicrous, but with the AI laptop wave it turned into Onion territory.

Doesn't confuse me, just pisses me off trying to do things I don't need or want done. Creates problems to find solutions to

It doesn't confuse us... it annoys us with the blatant wrong information. e.g. glue is a pizza ingredient.

For me at least, AI reminds me too much of that thrice cursed MS Word paperclip. I did not want it then and I do not want it now.

Also, adding ‘personality’ to pieces of software is cringy at best and downright creepy at worst.

Holy crap that Recall app that "works by taking screenshots" sounds like such a waste of resources. How often would you even need that?

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/the-verdict-is-in-windows-recall-is-great-actually

Virtually everything described in this article already exists in some way...

I actually do care about AI PCs. I care in the sense that it is something I want to actively avoid.

Why not just leave it alone inside a browser tab? If I want AI, and I use it quite a lot, I will go into their website. Don't force it system wide, just sucks

"Recall was met with serious backlash". Meanwhile I'm looking for a simple setting regarding the power button on my wife's phone and stumble upon a setting that is enabled by default that has Gemini scanning the screen and using it for whatever it is that it does, but my wife doesn't use any AI features on her device. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this basically the same as Recall? Google was just smart enough to silently roll this out.

What a trash click bait headline. That's not how the statement "saying the quiet part out loud" works. This isn't a secret and it's not unspoken and it certainly doesn't not reveal some underlying motive.

As time goes by I’m finding a place for AI.

1. I use it for information searches, but only in cases where I know the information exists and there is an actual answer. Like history questions or asking for nuanced definitions of words and concepts.

2. I use it to manipulate documents. I have a personal pet peeve about the format of most recipes for example. Recipes always list the ingredient amounts in a table at the top, but then down in the steps they just say “add the salt” or “mix in the flour.” Then I have to look up at the chart and find the amount of salt/flour, and then I lose my place in the steps and have to find it again. I just have AI throw out the chart and integrate the amounts into the steps: “mix in 2 cups of flour”. I can have it shorten the instructions too and break them into easier to read bullet points. I also ask it to make ingredient substitutions and other modifications. The other day I gave it a bread recipe and asked it to introduce a cold-proofing step and reformat everything the way I like. It did great.

3. Learning interactively. When I need to absorb a new skill or topic I sometimes do it conversationally with AI. Yes I can find articles and videos but then I am stuck with the information they lay out and the pace and order in which they do it. With AI you can stop and ask clarifying questions, or have it skip over the parts you already know. I find this is way faster than laborious googling. However only trust it for very straightforward topics. Like “explain the different kinds of welding and what they are for.” I wouldn’t trust it for more nuanced topics where perspective and opinion come into it. And I’ve leaned that it isn’t great at topics where there isn’t enough information out there. Like very niche questions about the meta of a certain video game that’s only been out a month.

4. Speech to text and summarization. AI records all my Zoom meetings for work and gives summaries of what was discussed and next steps. This is always better than nothing. I’m also impressed with how it seems to understand how to discard idle chit chat and only record actual work content. At most it says “the meeting began with coworkers exchanging details from their respective weekends.”

This kind of hard-and-fast summarization and manipulation of factual text is much easier with AI. Doing my job for me? No. Hovering over my entire computer? No. Writing my emails for me? Fuck off.

The takeaway is that specific tools I can go to when I need them, for point-specific needs, is all I want. I don’t need or what a hovering AI around all the time, and I don’t want whatever tripe Dell can come up with when I can get the best latest models direct from the leading players.

We should have been given a choice whether we want to use it or not, them trying to force it on us is why they are getting so much pushback, let those that want to use it use it and those that don't want it to be given the option to turn it off, it's not rocket science, but they are constantly going:

Tech CEOs - this is our AI you have to use it! Consumers - but i don't want to! Tech CEOs - FUCKING USE IT!!!

and then they are whining "WAAAHHHHH PEOPLE ARE MEANIES THAT DON'T LIKE OUR AI THAT DOES NOTHING TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES AND WILL MAKE US MORE MONEY BY LETTING US PUT TARGETED ADS INTO THEIR EYEBALLS WWWWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

I want to run LLMs locally, or things like TTS or STT locally so it’s nice but there’s no real support rn

Most people won’t care nor use it

LLMs are best used when it’s a user choice, not a platform obligation

You spelled "pisses them off" wrong

The 'quiet part out loud' isn't being used how it should be

Microsoft appears to genuinely believe that AI features are what customers want even if they don't directly ask for it, nobody asked for Google's AI feature but it's hugely popular, people freakin love it (except here on Lemmy of course where it's the devil), Google see that users are staying on their site longer and not clicking through to sites as much which is a win for them and a win for users

A real quiet part out loud would be 'Microsoft knows its users don't like its AI features but don't care because Windows isn't a money maker for them compared to Microsoft Copilot 365'

Yeah, I'm not sure what the point of a cheap NPU is.

If you don't like AI, you don't want it.

If you do like AI, you want a big GPU or to run it on somebody else's much bigger hardware via the internet.

It is going to take at least five years before local AI is user-friendly enough and with performant hardware circulating, that ordinary folks would consider buying an AI machine.

I have a top-end DDR4 gaming rig. It takes a long time for 100b sized AI to give some roleplaying output, at least forty minutes for my settings via KoboldCPP with a GGUF. I don't think a typical person would want to wait more than 2 minutes for a good response. So we will need at least DDR6 era devices before it is practical for everyday people.

Confuses them?