we already saw this in Windows 8 or something.

Labelling this as ageist sounds like blatant woke-ism to me.
It's hardly ageist to understand that the years of experience necessary to do such a job well is critical.

How much of these "desktops" are actually SteamDecks?

Only true in USA.
Everywhere else in the world, restaurants pay their workers a living wage and customers are NOT expected to tip.
When they do, it's actually merit-based and not nearly as much as the "expected" 20%+ (now more like 25%) in the USA.

..or do you also find this creepy as fuck and would actively avoid any places that you knew were doing this?

>> AI research is good,

I for one welcome our new Skynet overlords.

"I am very interested in how people are using their laptops these days and what they're getting done"

OK:I just install Linux on it instead then get everything done quicker/easier/better.

Use of that word to describe what software engineers actually do is beyond ignorant.
God I hate that word. It sounds like all you do is to brainlessly transcribe someone else's idea into computer language.
It massively demeans everything that a good software engineer actually does.

I just see this move as meaning more jobs/demand and less competition for the remaining few of us that actually can write device drivers and stuff..

Totally agree. I also only keep a windows partition around for gaming now, but Steam proton has gotten so good I'm very much at the point of reconsidering that.
That decision is even easier when Microsoft unavoidably installs intrusive AI on my PC.

In the rest of the world, the number of phishing emails just dropped by 20%

That Microsoft are intentionally using misleading product naming to smokescreen their AI sending all your personal data back to their servers.