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Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

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Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#21

Post by CamperBob2 »

neilsimp1 wrote: post #5
weird_trousers wrote: post #3

Finally companies understand that consumers do not want AI products, but just better, stronger, and cheaper products. Unfortunately investors are not ready to hear that yet...

I agree with you, and I don't want anything related to the current AI craze in my life, at all. But when I come on HN and see people posting about AI IDEs and vibe coding and everything, I'm led to believe that there are developers that like this sort of thing. I cannot explain this.

I cannot explain this.

That usually means you're missing something, not that everyone else is.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#22

Post by thesh4d0w »

whalesalad wrote: post #8

I'm kind of excited about the revival of XPS. The new hardware sounds pretty compelling. I have been longing for a macbook-quality device that I can run Linux on... so eagerly awaiting this.

I owned a couple XPS 13 laptops in a row and liked them a lot, until I got one with a touch bar. I returned it after a couple weeks and swapped over the to X1 Carbon.

The return back to physical buttons makes the XPS look pretty appealing again.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#23

Post by tjr »

voidfunc wrote: post #16
notatoad wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they will eventually. It’s always been a very incoherent sales pitch that your expensive PCs are packed full of expensive hardware that’s supposed to do AI things, but your cheap PCs that have none of that are still capable of doing 100% of the AI tasks that customers actually care about: accessing chatGPT.

Also, what kind of AI tasks is the average person doing? The people thinking about this stuff are detached from reality. For most people a computer is a gateway to talking to friends and family, sharing pictures, browsing social media, and looking up recipes and how-to guides. Maybe they do some tracking of things as well in something like Excel or Google Sheets. Consumer AI has never really made any sense. It's goin…

Just off the top of my head of some "consumer" areas that I personally encounter...

I don't want AI involved in my laundry machines. The only possible exception I could see would be some sort of emergency-off system, but I don't think that even needs to be "AI". But I don't want AI determining when my laundry is adequately washed or dried; I know what I'm doing, and I neither need nor want help from AI.

I don't want AI involved in my cooking. Admittedly, I have asked ChatGPT for some cooking information (sometimes easier than finding it on slop-and-ad-ridden Google), but I don't want AI in the oven or in the refrigerator or in the stove.

I don't want AI controlling my thermostat. I don't want AI controlling my water heater. I don't want AI controlling my garage door. I don't want AI balancing my checkbook.

I am totally fine with involving computers and technology in these things, but I don't want it to be "AI". I have way less trust in nondeterministic neural network systems than I do in basic well-tested sensors, microcontrollers, and tiny low-level C programs.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#24

Post by walterbell »

ryandrake wrote: post #19
voidfunc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what kind of AI tasks is the average person doing? The people thinking about this stuff are detached from reality. For most people a computer is a gateway to talking to friends and family, sharing pictures, browsing social media, and looking up recipes and how-to guides. Maybe they do some tracking of things as well in something like Excel or Google Sheets. Consumer AI has never really made any sense. It's goin…

I don't remember any other time in the tech industry's history when "what companies and CEOs want to push" was less connected to "what customers want." Nobody transformed their business around 3D TVs like current companies are transforming themselves to deliver "AI-everything".

If memory shortages make existing products non-viable (e.g. 50% price increases on mini PCs, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46514794), will consumers flock to new/AI products like OpenAI "pen" or reject those outright?

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#25

Post by ericmcer »

FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though.

For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed important but it would readily discard short or nonsensical input. That is really difficult to do in traditional software but is something an LLM could do with low effort. The end result is I only have to deal with that annoying popup when I really am glad it is there.

That is a trivial example but you can imagine how a locally run LLM that was just part of the SDK/API developers could leverage would lead to better UI/UX. For now everyone is making the LLM the product, but once we start building products with an LLM as a background tool it will be great.

It is actually a really weird time, my whole career we wanted to obfuscate implementation and present a clean UI to end users, we want them peaking behind the curtain as little as possible. Now everything is like "This is built with AI! This uses AI!".

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#26

Post by thwarted »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

YouTube could use AI to not recommend videos I've already watched, which is apparently a really hard problem.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#27

Post by yalogin »

They nailed it. Consumers don't care about AI, they care about functionality they can use, and care less if it uses AI or not. It's on the OS and apps to figure out the AI part. This is why even though people think Apple is far behind in AI, they are doing it at their own pace. The immediate hardware sales for them did not get impacted by lack of flashy AI announcements. They will slowly get there but they have time. The current froth is all about AI infrastructure not consumer devices.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#28

Post by beloch »

"We're very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device—in fact everything that we're announcing has an NPU in it—but what we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on AI," Terwilliger says bluntly. "In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome."

--------------

What we're seeing here is that "AI" lacks appeal as a marketing buzzword. This probably shouldn't be surprising. It's a term that's been in the public consciousness for a very long time thanks to fiction, but more frequently with negative connotations. To most, AI is Skynet, not the thing that helps you write a cover letter.

If a buzzword carries no weight, then drop it. People don't care if a computer has a NPU for AI any more than they care if a microwave has a low-loss waveguide. They just care that it will do the things they want it to do. For typical users, AI is just another algorithm under the hood and out of mind.

What Dell is doing is focusing on what their computers can do for people rather than the latest "under the hood" thing that lets them do it. This is probably going to work out well for them.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#29

Post by the_snooze »

tjr wrote: post #23
voidfunc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what kind of AI tasks is the average person doing? The people thinking about this stuff are detached from reality. For most people a computer is a gateway to talking to friends and family, sharing pictures, browsing social media, and looking up recipes and how-to guides. Maybe they do some tracking of things as well in something like Excel or Google Sheets. Consumer AI has never really made any sense. It's goin…

Just off the top of my head of some "consumer" areas that I personally encounter... I don't want AI involved in my laundry machines. The only possible exception I could see would be some sort of emergency-off system, but I don't think that even needs to be "AI". But I don't want AI determining when my laundry is adequately washed or dried; I know what I'm doing, and I neither need nor want help from AI. I don't want…

A lot of consumer tech needs have been met for decades. The problem is that companies aren't able to extract rent from all that value.

Re: Dell admits consumers don't care about AI PCs

#30

Post by everdrive »

ericmcer wrote: post #25
FfejL wrote: post #10

> It's not that Dell doesn't care about AI or AI PCs anymore, it's just that over the past year or so it's come to realise that the consumer doesn't. I wish every consumer product leader would figure this out.

People will want what LLMs can do they just don't want "AI". I think having it pervade products in a much more subtle way is the future though. For example, if you close a youtube browser tab with a comment half written it will pop up an `alert("You will lose your comment if you close this window")`. It does this if the comment is a 2 page essay or "asdfasdf". Ideally the alert would only happen if the comment seemed…

Using such an expensive technology to prevent someone from making a stupid mistake on a meaningless endeavor seems like a complete waste of time. Users should just be allowed to fail.
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