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> Lack of familiarity with AI PCs leads to what the study describes as "misconceptions," which include the following: 44 percent of respondents believe AI PCs a

> Lack of familiarity with AI PCs leads to what the study describes as "misconceptions," which include the following: 44 percent of respondents believe AI PCs are a gimmick or futuristic; 53 percent believe AI PCs are only for creative or technical professionals; 86 percent are concerned about the privacy and security of their data when using an AI PC; and 17 percent believe AI PCs are not secure or regulated. Is being concerned about your privacy really a misconception here?

kardos 2y ago
Do the AI PCs do the work locally or transmit everything remotely for processing like chatgpt?
- Borborygymus 2y ago
  There's not really a standard definition of an AI PC, but if there's anything beyond marketing, it would take the form of a neural processing unit, which supposedly makes some AI-related task fast by providing hardware acceleration. Cited examples include voice recognition and "training models", although I'm pretty sceptical about the later being at any significant scale. I suspect what it will actually boil down to in many cases is having recall enabled by default and an always-listening voice assistant.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
It's propaganda, as the article points out: "The chipmaker, which is quite keen to see people buy the AI PCs sold by its hardware partners,"
Dalewyn 2y ago
It's also not a misconception that "AI" PCs are for creative/technical professionals when the vast majority of the marketing is about shitting out creative(?) or technical(?) works(?) to reduce and ultimately democratize that workforce.
- dr_kiszonka 2y ago
  "Democratize" used to have positive connotations, as in "democratize access to information". I didn't anticipate that it would have negative ones.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    When everyone is special noone is, as the old saying goes. There's nothing herently good or bad about everyone getting access to or becoming capable of something.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    It shouldn't, one of my friends is a professional copywriter and she's very pro-AI because it raises the writing bar for the devs she works with. "I can write better than AI, but AI can write better than you, use AI" is her go-to line with her coworkers.
    - boomlinde 2y ago
      So does AI democratize copywriting? It seems it makes it enables users not to write which is already an option to everyone. It doesn't enable users to write in anyway; instead it writes for you. Deferring to an oracle that writes for you is the exact opposite of democratization.
  - boomlinde 2y ago
    I just think that "democratize" is the wrong word. AI tools that spit out prompt-based songs are enabling people not to create music, which is already available as an option to exactly everyone. Instead, centralized AI tools will be creating more of our music for us, which is the exact opposite of democratization.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      >AI tools that spit out prompt-based songs are enabling people not to create music, What level of mental gymnastics is this? This is like saying that cars enable people to not travel. Music is in the ears of the beholder, it doesn't matter how it was produced. If a tool lets more people compose music, which "AI" does, then it's democratizing composing music. Likewise: Crossbows and then guns democratized violence. Cars democratized personal transport. Currency democratized procurement. The printing press democratized writing. The internet democratized information. Democratizing is about making something more accessible to the commons. Whether that will be good or bad is not the concern of democracy.
zeta0134 2y ago
What would be the point of an "AI PC" if not to run models locally? I'm very much uncomfortable with sending my keystrokes (or my codebase) off to some remote server. If I can run the model locally, the privacy problems in theory vanish and I'm much more likely to use the tech. If folks don't understand that, then yes I'd say it's a pretty big misconception and needs to be better marketed as a key feature. And if the AI PC is just a regular PC with a cloud bot integrated, then ... what even is the point? You can already do the remote chatbot thing with a regular PC, privacy nightmares included!
- defnotai 2y ago
  Access to the latest foundation models, which can’t be run locally. AI feels like it’s in this really weird place where the latest Claude model sets expectations that can’t be matched by an on-device model. Even Apple Intelligence is getting a lot of negative feedback by the review crowd due to its limitations like being unable to summarize a very large document (which is pretty much the point of such a feature). The problem is that AI has few well-defined use cases and a mountain of expectations, and this really shows in the execution by these companies. It’s hard to build good products when the requirements are “we don’t really know”
  - Philadelphia 2y ago
    Looking at the logs for Apple Intelligence on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, almost everything is actually run remotely
    - DrillShopper 2y ago
      What is not run locally?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- a2128 2y ago
  > if the AI PC is just a regular PC with a cloud bot integrated, then ... what even is the point? To trick people into buying new hardware, lest they get left behind in the AI race

kardos 2y ago

Do the AI PCs do the work locally or transmit everything remotely for processing like chatgpt?

Borborygymus 2y ago
There's not really a standard definition of an AI PC, but if there's anything beyond marketing, it would take the form of a neural processing unit, which supposedly makes some AI-related task fast by providing hardware acceleration. Cited examples include voice recognition and "training models", although I'm pretty sceptical about the later being at any significant scale. I suspect what it will actually boil down to in many cases is having recall enabled by default and an always-listening voice assistant.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

It's propaganda, as the article points out: "The chipmaker, which is quite keen to see people buy the AI PCs sold by its hardware partners,"

Dalewyn 2y ago

It's also not a misconception that "AI" PCs are for creative/technical professionals when the vast majority of the marketing is about shitting out creative(?) or technical(?) works(?) to reduce and ultimately democratize that workforce.

dr_kiszonka 2y ago
"Democratize" used to have positive connotations, as in "democratize access to information". I didn't anticipate that it would have negative ones.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  When everyone is special noone is, as the old saying goes. There's nothing herently good or bad about everyone getting access to or becoming capable of something.
- Spivak 2y ago
  It shouldn't, one of my friends is a professional copywriter and she's very pro-AI because it raises the writing bar for the devs she works with. "I can write better than AI, but AI can write better than you, use AI" is her go-to line with her coworkers.
  - boomlinde 2y ago
    So does AI democratize copywriting? It seems it makes it enables users not to write which is already an option to everyone. It doesn't enable users to write in anyway; instead it writes for you. Deferring to an oracle that writes for you is the exact opposite of democratization.
- boomlinde 2y ago
  I just think that "democratize" is the wrong word. AI tools that spit out prompt-based songs are enabling people not to create music, which is already available as an option to exactly everyone. Instead, centralized AI tools will be creating more of our music for us, which is the exact opposite of democratization.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >AI tools that spit out prompt-based songs are enabling people not to create music, What level of mental gymnastics is this? This is like saying that cars enable people to not travel. Music is in the ears of the beholder, it doesn't matter how it was produced. If a tool lets more people compose music, which "AI" does, then it's democratizing composing music. Likewise: Crossbows and then guns democratized violence. Cars democratized personal transport. Currency democratized procurement. The printing press democratized writing. The internet democratized information. Democratizing is about making something more accessible to the commons. Whether that will be good or bad is not the concern of democracy.

zeta0134 2y ago

What would be the point of an "AI PC" if not to run models locally? I'm very much uncomfortable with sending my keystrokes (or my codebase) off to some remote server. If I can run the model locally, the privacy problems in theory vanish and I'm much more likely to use the tech. If folks don't understand that, then yes I'd say it's a pretty big misconception and needs to be better marketed as a key feature. And if the AI PC is just a regular PC with a cloud bot integrated, then ... what even is the point? You can already do the remote chatbot thing with a regular PC, privacy nightmares included!

defnotai 2y ago
Access to the latest foundation models, which can’t be run locally. AI feels like it’s in this really weird place where the latest Claude model sets expectations that can’t be matched by an on-device model. Even Apple Intelligence is getting a lot of negative feedback by the review crowd due to its limitations like being unable to summarize a very large document (which is pretty much the point of such a feature). The problem is that AI has few well-defined use cases and a mountain of expectations, and this really shows in the execution by these companies. It’s hard to build good products when the requirements are “we don’t really know”
- Philadelphia 2y ago
  Looking at the logs for Apple Intelligence on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, almost everything is actually run remotely
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    What is not run locally?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
a2128 2y ago
> if the AI PC is just a regular PC with a cloud bot integrated, then ... what even is the point? To trick people into buying new hardware, lest they get left behind in the AI race