We all know about, and perhaps are tired of, artificial intelligent computing at this point. AI tools to make you productive, AI subscription services in the workplace, AI operating systems.
AI buses, AI factories, and so on. We all think we know this is the future, but even I don’t know what that future looks like, and it’s my job.
Despite this, polling druids Gartner‘s latest hunch suggests that AI PCs will make up 22% of all personal computers by 2024, even though I didn’t even know AI PCs existed until I read about them five minutes ago.
Gartner predicts our AI future
Looking to the carnival fortune teller for answers, it’s clear that there is a definition for AI hardware: ‘AI PCs (are) PCs equipped with special AI accelerators or cores, neural processing units (NPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs) ) or tensor processing units (TPUs), designed to optimize on-device AI tasks (…) without relying on external servers or cloud services,” it said in the press release.
These tasks, it says, and I strongly believe, will be the bane of all our miserable lives: generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). This is something I understand: generating text and images based on human cues, which we’ve seen a lot with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard AI chatbots, which let you probably shouldn’t get involved.
Gartner thinks that technology is already fully engaged in this Galaxy AI on Samsung smartphones (other poisoned chalices are available), which will make AI phones 22% of all ‘basic and premium’ phones smartphone shipments in 2024.
What exactly are AI PCs the future of?
If you too feel deep shame and embarrassment at not being able to keep up with the new hip doohickey that the kids are loving, fear not: even the men in black suits and ties don’t know it either.
While Lenovo may be developing an AI operating system now, The register reported in October 2023 that Multinational Devices Group president Luca Rossi ‘couldn’t’ (couldn’t?) specific examples of tasks that a company-produced AI PC could perform faster than regular computer hardware.
What they do know is that AI is just the chasing of a trend, something that has gone beyond an arms race and become a very small pond, and other tortured metaphors. Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst Ranjit Atwal opts for the diplomatic “ubiquity,” saying it will “challenge suppliers to differentiate themselves from competitors, making it more difficult to create unique selling points and generate higher revenues.”
Most of this is corporate speak, but if we’re looking for a scapegoat for AI PCs, or AI in general, the “higher revenues” pretty much works, as the PC sector returned to ( even small) growth after eight solid years of decline. You, a buzzword-craving consumer, you.