{"id":114611,"date":"2025-02-22T05:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=114611"},"modified":"2025-02-23T09:28:47","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T14:28:47","slug":"ai-pcs","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/consumer-tech\/ai-pcs","title":{"rendered":"All PCs will be AI PCs “pretty soon,” says Intel exec\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article is an installment of Future Explored<\/a>, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Saturday morning by subscribing above.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s 2026. You just bought a new laptop, and unlike your last one, this device is an \u201cAI PC.\u201d The distinction means you can now run all the latest AI applications directly on your device without draining your battery, keeping your data private and secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI PCs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you stopped by a Sears circa 1960 to buy a television, the sales clerk\u2019s first question for you would\u2019ve been, \u201cColor or black and white?\u201d Only after hearing the answer could they help you find the television that was right for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s computer buyers are facing their own fork in the consumer tech road as manufacturers begin rolling out \u201cAI PCs\u201d alongside their traditional models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAI PCs are laptops or desktop computers equipped with specific hardware that make them suitable for on-device AI tasks or features,\u201d AI educator Paul Couvert<\/a> tells Freethink. \u201cGenerally, they are more expensive than regular PCs when it comes to laptops, but they are becoming more and more affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To better understand this new category of computers, this week\u2019s Future Explored is digging into the evolutions of PCs, what sets AI models apart from the rest, and why you may or may not want to buy one the next time you\u2019re in the market for a new computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where we\u2019ve been<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"1971<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Where we\u2019re going (maybe)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

AI isn\u2019t brand new\u2014research into machines that can \u201cthink\u201d has been going on since the 1940s\u2014but the tech surged to the top of the public consciousness following OpenAI\u2019s November 2022 release of ChatGPT<\/a>, an AI capable of engaging in human-like conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within two months, more than 100 million people were using ChatGPT, and almost as quickly, seemingly every company, whether it was selling toys<\/a> or TVs<\/a>, was boasting about its products\u2019 AI features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AI hype grew so quickly that by February 2023, the Federal Trade Commission was warning companies that they had better not be overpromising what their AI products could do or exaggerating their benefits over existing goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[AI is] a marketing term,\u201d Michael Atleson, an attorney in the FTC\u2019s Division of Advertising Practices, wrote in a blog post<\/a>. \u201cRight now it\u2019s a hot one, and at the FTC, one thing we know about hot marketing terms is that some advertisers won\u2019t be able to stop themselves from overusing and abusing them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking all of this into consideration, it\u2019s hard not to be a little skeptical of \u201cAI PCs.\u201d Are they really a significant advance in computing? Or just another example of the AI label being slapped onto a product to encourage sales?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is an AI PC?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

To start to answer that question, we need to take a look at how the AI applications now making their way into our workplaces and homes operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot<\/a>, and Apple Intelligence<\/a> require a lot of processing power. If you access these AIs online, this processing takes place at a data center with enough servers to parse your request and respond within seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there are benefits to having an AI do its processing locally<\/em>, right on your computer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key one is that it keeps your data private and secure\u2014no need to worry about a third-party seeing what you\u2019re doing or being hacked. If you were paying a monthly subscription for an AI that runs in the cloud, running locally can save you money, and because your data doesn\u2019t have to travel anywhere for processing, the approach can reduce latency and lead to faster results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To take advantage of these benefits, though, you need a PC with enough processing power onboard to run the AI without slowing your system to a crawl. This is what tech companies say AI PCs can deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a PC that can run AI on either an NPU, GPU, or CPU,\u201d Josh Newman, general manager and vice president of product marketing and management at Intel\u2019s Client Computing Group, tells Freethink. \u201cThat’s integrated into the PC so that all of the new software that is using AI models\u2026will run smoothly and can deliver new experiences to customers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stacked
Intel<\/figcaption>
Intel’s Ultra Core processors include a CPU, GPU, and NPU. \n<\/div><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s break that down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re at all familiar with the inner workings of PCs, you\u2019ve likely heard about CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs (graphics processing units) before. The former acts like a computer\u2019s \u201cbrain\u201d\u2014it interprets commands and carries out instructions. The latter was initially designed to process graphics for PCs, freeing up the CPU to work on other tasks and helping the whole system run more smoothly, but they\u2019ve since proven useful for other applications, too, like mining cryptocurrency<\/a> and training and running AIs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might, however, be your first time hearing about NPUs (neural processing units). These processing devices are specifically designed to handle AI tasks, which is why they\u2019re sometimes called \u201cAI chips<\/a>\u201d or \u201cAI accelerators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“You want that to be really high fidelity… You want it to be seamless. That’s where the NPU comes in.”<\/p>\nJosh Newman<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While GPUs have been a standard component of PCs for more than a decade (and CPUs have always<\/em> been a part of them), NPUs are a newer feature, and while there isn\u2019t a universally accepted definition of an \u201cAI PC,\u201d having an NPU is often considered a requirement and concretely sets these systems apart from regular ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNPUs are specifically tuned for AI workloads to run them fast and at lowest possible power, so they\u2019re great for AI applications that will always be running in the background,\u201d says Newman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou think about video green screening, the background removal that’s constantly running for the hours you’re on Teams or Zoom calls,\u201d he continues. \u201cYou want that to be really high fidelity, but you also want it to not take too much power or make the fans go up while you’re working. You want it to be seamless. That’s where the NPU comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what it looks like to have a CPU, GPU, and now 45+ TOPS NPU working together on a Copilot+ PC (Surface Laptop) to deliver unrivaled performance. Here is a demo from my colleague Vivek. pic.twitter.com\/daLiYIPOlc<\/a><\/p>— Yusuf Mehdi (@yusuf_i_mehdi) May 22, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>