Archive: ghostarchive.org/archive/p1mI7
When Amazon.com Inc. executives took the stage last month in New York to announce an artificially intelligent Alexa, there was a conspicuous absence: no flashy new gadget to accompany the souped-up voice assistant.
Amazon isn’t unusual in this regard. After a years-long explosion of high-end laptops, foldable smart phones and voice-activated everything, big tech companies have entered the artificial intelligence age with little new hardware.
If the gadget development scene isn’t entirely dead, “it’s napping,” said Liam Pingree, an engineer with a doctorate in materials science who led teams at Amazon, Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co.
Pingree and other hardware veterans decry a lack of risk-taking in hardware as tech companies pour billions of dollars into massive bets on artificial intelligence software. The industry is banking on a future where AI tools create novel sources of revenue, and, if history is any guide, new products can fuel customer adoption. Smartphones created an app ecosystem, and the personal computer helped popularize the internet.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
This article feels like peak consumerism. Lamenting the lack of a new thing, just for lack of it. AI is being integrated into already owned and available technology, and we have seen things like the AI pin, but people have just not had a need. Maybe this comment will age like milk, like people who said the internet was a fad, but people aren’t looking for more things, they’re looking for more functionality out of things they already have. That should be perceived as a positive.
misk@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
People that lived through 60s-2000s have seen technology explode and change their lives significantly for the better every couple of years. By comparison last 10 years have been especially rough except for solar panels and batteries maybe but it’s China that benefits from this mostly. The article suggests it’s the AI that drains industry from resources but I’d say the problem is deeper. Yes, we’re wasting resources at a fad but there’s also a point where things can’t be commoditised unless people get more wealthy and that has been going pretty bad as well. I don’t want the next iPhone. I want the next microwave or a car that I can afford.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
I’m not one to disagree with blaming capitalism lol. I was watching something recently about how millennials grew up with techno optimism, and I feel like we’re seeing the results of that. Millennials wanting tech to solve everything and grew up being into gadgets as a concept rather than a product, and the new generation so subsumed by tech that it really ceases to be tech. Like the way indoor plumbing or even electricity isn’t really seen as tech anymore, even though it really revolutionized our lifestyles. I think there’s some warranted backlash to tech (cottagecore/trad living) and the way it has atomized everyone, and I’m not sure people are as excited about it anymore. Price is definitely an issue, but I really think that tech is failing to fulfill us, and people are seeing that on some level (all this is also somewhat attributable to capitalism).
megopie@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
The problem is that the AI branded software doesn’t run easily on old devices, unless you just stream it from one of their server farms. But they’re losing money every time they run one of these services for you, and the vast majority of people aren’t going to pay them for it.
They’re trying to justify selling new devices with software now, not giving out software that can run on old devices. You gotta replace your 2017 laptop to run windows 11. Gotta get a new computer with an NPU to run AI models locally. But it’s happening again, users are not embracing these new AI features, let alone buying new devices just so they can use them.
Much like wearables and VR headsets, the interest for these things is largely limited to enthusiasts spaces and isn’t translating to mass adoption. The average person doesn’t care about having their computer writing their email in to a limerick, they just want their email client to not freeze up and crash because they got an email with a weirdly formatted gif.
MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Yea, I agree 100%. My comment was definitely ambiguous, but I’m not expecting my old phone to get updated with AI tools (though it actually was), more just that I don’t want an AI specific gadget and I don’t think anyone but an enthusiast would. Definitely see these as the new VR, as you mentioned. It seems the article was lamenting product development as though it in itself is an end goal. UX and efficiency should be the end goal. Not just making things for the sake of saying you made something. I obviously support people expressing themselves and experimenting, but the framing in the article is so strange and reads like they’re lamenting the fact that capitalism has reached its latter stages more than anything else.