Poll shows 84% of PC users unwilling to pay extra for AI-enhanced hardware

I’d pay extra for no AI in any of my shit.

The dedicated TPM chip is already being used for side-channel attacks. A new processor running arbitrary code would be a black hat's wet dream.

I would pay for AI-enhanced hardware...but I haven't yet seen anything that AI is enhancing, just an emerging product being tacked on to everything they can for an added premium.

I'm generally opposed to anything that involves buying new hardware. This isn't the 1980s. Computers are powerful as fuck. Stop making software that barely runs on them. If they can't make ai more efficient then fuck it. If they can't make game graphics good without a minimum of a $1000 gpu that produces as much heat as a space heater, maybe we need to go back to 2000s era 3d. There is absolutely no point in making graphics more photorealistic than maybe Skyrim. The route they're going is not sustainable.

Only 7% say they would pay more, which to my mind is the percentage of respondents who have no idea what "AI" in its current bullshit context even is

I am generally unwilling to pay extra for features I don't need and didn't ask for.

We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

I was recently looking for a new laptop and I actively avoided laptops with AI features.

The biggest surprise here is that as many as 16% are willing to pay more...

Let me put it in lamens terms..... FUCK AI.... Thanks, have a great day

What does AI enhanced hardware mean? Because I bought an Nvidia RTX card pretty much just for the AI enhanced DLSS, and I’d do it again.

Who in the heck are the 16%

Okay, but here me out. What if the OS got way worse, and then I told you that paying me for the AI feature would restore it to a near-baseline level of original performance? What then, eh?

I don't think the poll question was well made... "would you like part away from your money for..." vaguely shakes hand in air "...ai?"

People is already paying for "ai" even before chatGPT came out to popularize things: DLSS

I would pay extra to be able to run open LLM's locally on Linux. I wouldn't pay for Microsoft's Copilot stuff that's shoehorned into every interface imaginable while also causing privacy and security issues. The context matters.

Pay more for a shitty chargpt clone in your operating system that can get exploited to hack your device. I see no flaw in this at all.

I'm willing to pay extra for software that isn't

My old ass GTX 1060 runs some of the open source language models. I imagine the more recent cards would handle them easily.

What’s the “AI” hardware supposed to do that any gamer with recent hardware can’t?

And when traditional AI programs can be run on much lower end hardware with the same speed and quality, those chips will have no use. (Spoiler alert, it's happening right now.)

Corporations, for some reason, can't fathom why people wouldn't want to pay hundreds of dollars more just for a chip that can run AI models they won't need most of the time.

If I want to use an AI model, I will, but if you keep developing shitty features that nobody wants using it, just because "AI = new & innovative," then I have no incentive to use it. LLMs are useful to me sometimes, but an LLM that tries to summarize the activity on my computer isn't that useful to me, so I'm not going to pay extra for a chip that I won't even use for that purpose.

Fuck, they won't upgrade to TPM for windows 11

Show the actual use case in a convincing way and people will line up around the block. Generating some funny pictures or making generic suggestions about your calendar won't cut it.

I can't tell how good any of this stuff is because none of the language they're using to describe performance makes sense in comparison with running AI models on a GPU. How big a model can this stuff run, how does it compare to the graphics cards people use for AI now?

A big letdown for me is, except with some rare cases, those extra AI features useless outside of AI. Some NPUs are straight out DSPs, they could easily run OpenCL code, others are either designed to not be able to handle any normal floating point numbers but only ones designed for machine learning, or CPU extensions that are just even bigger vector multipliers for select datatypes (AMX).

Even DLSS only works great for some types of games.

Although there have been some clever uses of it, lots of games could gain a lot from proper efficiency of the game engine.

War Thunder runs like total crap on even the highest end hardware, yet World of Warships has much more detailed ships and textures running fine off an HDD and older than GTX 7XX graphics.

Meanwhile on Linux, Compiz still runs crazy window effects and 3D cube desktop much better and faster than KDE. It's so good I even recommend it for old devices with any kid of gpu because the hardware acceleration will make your desktop fast and responsive compared to even the lightest windows managers like openbox.

TF2 went from 32 bit to 64 bit and had immediate gains in performance upwards of 50% and almost entirely removing stuttering issues from the game.

Batman Arkham Knight ran on a heavily modified version of Unreal 3 which was insane for the time.

Most modern games and applications really don't need the latest and greatest hardware, they just need to be efficiently programmed which is sometimes almost an art itself. Slapping on "AI" to reduce the work is sort of a lazy solution that will have side effects because you're effectively predicting the output.

The other 26% were bots answering.

When a decent gpu is ~$1k alone, then someone wants you to pay more $ for a feature that offers no tangible benefit, why the hell would they want it? I haven’t bought a PC for over 25 years, I build my own and for family and friends. I’m building another next week for family, and AI isn’t even on the radar. If anything, this one is going to be anti-AI and get a Linux dual-boot as well as sticking with Win10, no way am I subjecting family to that Win11 adware.

I'm fine with NPUs / TPUs (AI-enhancing hardware) being included with systems because it's useful for more than just OS shenanigans and commercial generative AI. Do I want Microsoft CoPilot Recall running on that hardware? No.

However I've bought TPUs for things like Frigate servers and various ML projects. For gamers there's some really cool use cases out there for using local LLMs to generate NPC responses in RPGs. For "Smart Home" enthusiasts things like Home Assistant will be rolling out support for local LLMs later this year to make voice commands more context aware.

So do I want that hardware in there so I can use it MYSELF for other things? Yes, yes I do. You probably will eventually too.

The other 16% do not know what AI is or try to sell it. A combination of both is possible. And likely.

Bro, just add it to the pile of rubbish over there next to the 3D movies and curved TVs

As with any proprietary hardware on a GPU it all comes down to third party software support and classically if the market isn't there then it's not supported.

Unless you're doing music or graphics design there's no usecase. And if you do, you probably have high end GPU anyway

Not even on my phone

Just need the right name for it. Soundblasters are still being produced aren't they? There's always a market.

Tbh this is probably for things like DLSS, captions, etc. Not necessarily for chatbots or generative art.

And the other 16% would also pay you $230 to hit them in the face with a shovel

AI-en{hanced,shittified}

Predictable outcome, common tech company L.

The only reason I have any enthusiasm about CoPilot+ PCs (AI PCs or whatever new name they get in 6 months) is because of ARM and battery life.

Heck, I'll trade them all the AI features for no ads.

Poll shows 84% of PC users are suckers.