This could be the year that artificial intelligence forever changes personal computers — at least so says HP CEO Enrique Lores (HPQ).
Speaking to Yahoo Finance at the World Economic Forum, Lores said that a new category of PCs that incorporate specialized AI chips onboard would arrive in the hands of consumers this year.
"It's probably one of the biggest changes in the PC industry since the PC was invented more than 20 years ago," Lores said.
Powering AI is notoriously intensive for microprocessors, and most of today's software runs remotely on the cloud.
The new PCs, however, will let users cut out that cloud component, allowing them to run AI locally — without sending the data far away.
"From a cost, security, and speed perspective, it brings a lot of advantages," Lores said.
For AI-based gaming that involves the cloud, the CEO said, continuously sending data hundreds of miles away and back can result in frustrating latency issues that make it impossible to compete.
In another hypothetical, Lores cited the example of a small company that wants to use its own data to run a large language model, or LLM, which powers generative AI.
A small company likely wouldn’t be able to train its own model because of the high cost of doing so, but Lores said an AI PC would put that technology within reach, removing the need to upload, guard, and manage data.
Lores's bullishness, of course, is expected, coming from the head of a computer company dipping its toes in AI, but not everyone is buying the paradigm shift in the personal computer space.
Hal Daumé III, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, has cautioned Americans to be wary of the AI hype.
"I am not totally convinced that the integration of specialized AI hardware on platforms is going to be such a huge shift," Daumé said. "I don't think it's going to change what we can do, but I think it might change who can do it because the hardware will be more commodified."
This, for the market, may hit on the key question regarding AI and its applications. Will the tech be about breaking new technological ground? Or, as cheap phones, computers, internet access, and app stores have shown, might the real innovation simply be in the accessibility of tech to the masses, who will, in turn, find innovation in new uses?
Either way, the hype is likely only beginning.
Read the latest from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:
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Generative AI is miracle technology for profit-hungry CEOs: PwC survey
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Dylan Croll is a Yahoo Finance reporter.
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