IDC: AI is a Solution for a PC Industry With a Sales Problem (theregister.com) 34
Business interest in AI PCs is fizzing, at least according to IDC, even though the analyst admits "use cases have yet to be fully articulated." From a report: Such is the hype around generative AI since ChatGPT was made publicly available that big software and hardware brands are looking to shoe horn the tech into every nook and cranny. Just last week HP boss Enrique Lores and Lenovo exec Luca Rossi joined in by confirming both companies are working on a range of AI PCs for general availability between July next year and early 2025. Neither went into fine technical detail on what those machines will have inside because they aren't close to release.
IDC research veep for Devices & Displays, Linn Huang, didn't pour any cold water on the hype this week when he said: "Generative AI could be a watershed moment for the PC industry. While uses cases have yet to be fully articulated, interest in the category is already strong. AI PCs promise organizations the ability to personalize the user experience at a deeper level all while being able to preserve data privacy and sovereignty." That's quite a billing. HP and Lenovo certainly seem to think there's margin potential. Huang agreed. "As more of these devices launch next year, we expect a significant boost to overall selling prices."
IDC research veep for Devices & Displays, Linn Huang, didn't pour any cold water on the hype this week when he said: "Generative AI could be a watershed moment for the PC industry. While uses cases have yet to be fully articulated, interest in the category is already strong. AI PCs promise organizations the ability to personalize the user experience at a deeper level all while being able to preserve data privacy and sovereignty." That's quite a billing. HP and Lenovo certainly seem to think there's margin potential. Huang agreed. "As more of these devices launch next year, we expect a significant boost to overall selling prices."
haha no (Score:3, Informative)
Most people will not run the models on their own machines, they are used to cloudy solutions and most of them can't afford the grade of GPU that makes the software run rapidly. So while this certainly won't hurt as it will spur a small number of sales of expensive computers and GPUs, it's not going to create a lot of sales.
Re:haha no (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, and it's NVidia's fault [fosstodon.org] - they're going backwards on consumer cards' suitability for AI.
With the 30xx generation, NVidia made the big leap up to 24GB, double what they had offered previously, with the 3090 and 3090Ti. And you could chain two of them together with NVLink. And the talk was that the next year, NVidia was going to come out with the Titan RTX ADA which was going to have 48GB.
What did we get instead? The 40xx generation didn't up the max memory by a single gigabyte - they focused purely on speed improvement. And as an added insult, they removed NVLink. It's a step backwards for memory-intensive AI tasks. And apparently they have no plans to reverse course - either you're a lowly consumer and you're expected to only care about GPUs optimized for gaming (aka, speed, not VRAM), or you better plan to pony up five figures.
I was thinking about upgrading my 3090 and 3060 to new cards this winter, but instead due to the lack of suitable AI offerings, I think I'll just replace the 3060 with a used 3090 (~$500) and connect them with NVLink. If I were to go 4090s, I wouldn't be able to link them and they'd be heavily network bottlenecked. The other alternative is old server cards like RTX 8000s to get 48GB, but even used they're over $2k each, and they're half the performance of a single 3090, so it's hard to justify that over just adding a NVlinked 3090.
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To be fair, 24GB will do pretty well for most StableDiffusion-related tasks.
God forbid you try to train a LLM of any meaningful size, though.
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Re: haha no (Score:2)
No, I mean running them.
Stable diffusion will just barely run worth a damn on my potato, 1600AF and 1070 OC with 32GB RAM. With 16GB I was running out of RAM almost immediately.
how about (Score:3)
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Perhaps spying is the point here.
Hype might be useful for PC sales, but if mainstream GenAI is to remain cloud based, consumers don't need anything special.
New computers could come with pre-installed AI themed spyware, to more readily funnel personal information to the cloud for training... but that doesn't help us any.
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New computers could come with pre-installed AI themed spyware, to more readily funnel personal information to the cloud for training... but that doesn't help us any.
This is PRECISELY what I'm expecting when I hear manufacturers talking breathlessly of AI enabled PCs. They'll likely have even more spyware hooks in the software, and it's highly likely they'll build some extra spyware hooks into the motherboards so that the user can't disable the data-suck via software and smart users will be stuck running a port scanner on their network to block whatever bullshit it is they're using to spew all our data to their backend. The hype surrounding AI is mostly generated by the
IT as usual (Score:3)
Generative AI and various other ML techniques applied on top of it is useful. However just like most IT innovations its not the 'game changer' the evangelists want it to be.
AI is going to take your order and do basic customer service stuff, you know all those things you could have figured out how to do with web forms yourself. It will probably make it better more efficent experience. It will allow automation to go into places where non-texual forms of human communications are needed, voice, gestures, etc.
Its not going to develop complex software for you, or even write the exiting NEW business plan that will make you rich. It will generate the generate the images of the diverse looking middle management team with shit-eating-grins across their faces because they are so excited to be using the latest point release of your ERP package..
It might flesh out the filler dialog around the plot points you laid out in the novel or play your writing, and remind you of the appropriate sugar to egg-white ratio for the frosting you are making. Again in a more convenient way than the search engine that came before did but not fundamentally life altering.
Hello there DarkOx! (Score:1)
Greetings pathetic human!
This is truly a good post but as a troll I have to ask how long before your karma is good enough to go on another nonsensical tirade about making abortion illegal or moving out of Ukraine to let Russia just get it over with?
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why wait.
Abortion is a crime against the most basic human rights. If you advocate for it you are evil or ignorant.
Russia will destroy Ukraine if we continue the path we are on. We either need to step up and kick them out, or step back and let chips fall as they may. Those are the only moral choices there. Your position is just "i want to prolong human misery", got a job in the military industrial complex I'd bet.
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Abortion is a crime against the most basic human rights.
Including a mother's right not to die of complications from an unaborted ectopic pregnancy? I'd like to see someone use AI to figure out a method to treat implantation in the Fallopian tube that is safe for the mother and child.
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*almost* nobody considers treating ectopic implantation abortion. Funny how pro-choicers nearly always have to jump to lying about pro-life positions as step zero.
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Excellent.
Now tell us about Ukraine.
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Silly me I missed it. You totally came through on Ukraine.
Do you have any neat thoughts about welfare or socialized healthcare?
Gold coins?
Bitcoin?
Covid masks?
Vaccines?
Get it all out. Let’s hear it!
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all those things you could have figured out how to do with web forms yourself
I think you are greatly overestimating the capabilities of the average person to fill out web forms themselves, and for that matter, the ability of web forms designers to build a screen flow that actually makes sense. Have you ever tried to use an in-car GPS navigation system to find a location? If it wasn't made by Apple or Google, good luck. The UI experience sucks, to the point that it's difficult for even a technical person to navigate.
So even if you're right, that this will be the extent of what LLMs c
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PC's still king of biz, it's consumers leaving (Score:1)
PC's are still the primary business platform and I don't see that changing. On-the-road service techs and sales people may use tablets, but they are a fraction of total biz workers, and not showing any significant growth.
Mice-based interfaces are simply more productive. Using full screen real-estate (not needing finger error margins), the accuracy of mouse pointing, hover notes and context menus etc. make PC's more productive.
The biz market may be a flat market, but not everything needs to grow forever.
The cloud is not driving consumer sales (Score:2, Informative)
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You might want to tell that to my GPU, which is currently doing a LLM generation from a 40B parameter model every 15 seconds or so.
LLaMA 2, Falcon, Mistral...
StableDiffusion / AUTOMATIC1111, DeepFloyd...
Indeed, the ones that you run yourself give you far more power over what you can do with oversimplified online tools with minimal features, limited generations, annoying filters / "safeties" an
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Use cases yet to be fully articulated (Score:3)
I've seen this before. It was the dot-com bubble in the late nineties, "we've got this thing, and we'll put stuff on it, and work insane, inhumane hours to do it, and go through VC like a starving pig... and figure out how to monetize it later".
So, crypto capital is going to AI, and AI will collapse, resulting in a recession. See, that's the use case.
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> crypto capital is going to AI, and AI will collapse, resulting in a recession.
Unless a new fad comes along to "rescue" the tech investment industry again. Rinse, repeat...
Let's guess next fad for the hell of it: computer-to-brain direct implants, flying bot cars, robotic booze delivery, VR that doesn't suck, Segway Shoes, bra's & booty-padding that use AI to grow or shrink based on the presence of pervs or "your type"...
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The problem is (Score:2)
All that AI power in new machines will be put to use to spy on people and steal more of their private date - officially to detect pedo material of course... Think of the children.
Bullshit. (Score:3)
I have zero use for an artificial moron in my PC. I already have enough natural morons to deal with.
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LOL, good one
wonder who's gonna be the moron 10 years later
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Same as 30 years ago: The machine and most of its users. AI has not made any "great" strides here. All they really achieved is natural language communication. The rest of this tech is really old.
There is more hope on peripherals (Score:2)
Why don't you put AI in those?! I bet you didn't think about that! Ha!!
Great! (Score:1)
No it's not (Score:2)