Dell seems to be the first to realise we don't actually care about AI PCs

9 months ago by codeinabox to c/tech

"What we've learned over the course of this year, from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on AI."

rumschlumpel 85 points 9 months ago

I buy based on AI. If it comes bundled/hardcoded with AI, I'm not buying it.

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webghost0101 34 points 9 months ago

I like single player rpgs.

I very much care, i would love good npc ai.

Havent we been making jokes about dumb ai in games for literal decades before llms came along?

The thing is i want my npcs to be a curated combination of things: environmental awareness, be aware of the dragon in the room, still have scripted interactions but triggered by detecting more complex environmental changes.

More dynamic dialogue options like tone of voice changing depending on wether earlier dialogue made them angry.

Reacting to the player fighting in a sensible way.

Still all coded and developed with human passion but to appropriately incorporate ai into more complex detecting/reacting/interacting mechanics.

Instead what nvidia (who dictates the game industry now) cares about is a “chatbot module” that they can sell to game engines (like unreal) so lazy developers can turn digital objects into a character ai persona.

Somehow the moment llms became able to impress we stopped caring about all the other 99% that is ai that isn’t a conversation simulator.

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mycodesucks 13 points 9 months ago

This is wrought with danger. If a chatbot goes off the rails, breaks the fourth wall, and becomes belligerent, it's annoying. If a game NPC does it, you've taken people RIGHT out of the game. And that's before they start giving you clues and advice for things that aren't in the game, or inventing lore that isn't real.

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LordMayor 10 points 9 months ago

I think their point is that we want real AI in games. LLMs are not AI in the traditional sense. They are really advanced predictive text. They might someday be a part of an AI but they are not remotely intelligent. They just have the superficial appearance of intelligence because they guess at words in away that mimics human language.

We don’t want LLM NPCs, we want NPCs that simulate human intelligence.

All of this focus and money on LLMs is probably hurting research into actually useful AI.

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Multiplexer 14 points 9 months ago

Surprised Pikachu Face

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Eternal192 11 points 9 months ago

Not caring about AI is the best thing to do, "oh it has great AI features" pass! "the AI in this product will make your life easier" nah! "with AI you can achieve more" i'm fine with less!

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snooggums 14 points 9 months ago

It's like all the 'smart' technology that is mostly just annoying shit that makes everything more complicated than it needs to be.

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Eternal192 4 points 9 months ago

Problem that too few people see with this "smart tech" is it's designed to make you dumber, the smoother the brain the easier it is to manipulate, "you don't have to think and worry let our AI take over that burden", so on and so forth till we reach Idiocracy.

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joyjoy 2 points 9 months ago

Just to be clear, I don't think the hardware will be any different. It still has the AI chips included, but they're no longer including that in the marketing.

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Eternal192 2 points 9 months ago

They have to sell this junk somehow, they are soooo desperate to make this AI bullshit work and they can always sneak it in later in an update.

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joyjoy 8 points 9 months ago

This is just marketing. Nothing engineering-wise has changed.

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catch22 4 points 9 months ago

I remember thinking the same thing when the Steam Box and other Steam devices were revealed in 2025 and saying to myself wow, this is even more of a reason to love what Valve is doing.

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HubertManne 3 points 9 months ago

I actually saw a tech segment that had an item I would consider a gadget. no smartphone or smartphone accessory or smartphone integration and no ai garbage. It was a sonic knife. I have felt for years gadget segments have just been about smartphones and more recently ai (and web enabled before that).

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Ephera 3 points 9 months ago

Yeah, these companies are advertising AI like it's a purpose unto itself. You can get my dad excited, if you make it so all English texts are translated into German. And you can get my dad excited, if he can talk to his phone rather than having to operate the stupid touchscreen. But you cannot get my dad excited, if you tell him he can do AI. Why would he want to do AI?

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