The top brands aren’t doing AI like Google
Google hosted its yearly Chromebook event, which tends to fall around the same time as one of the biggest tech events of the year – Computex. This year was no exception, with the tech giant revealing its plans for AI integration into its line of Chromebook Plus laptops just as Microsoft and other popular manufacturers announced a deluge of their AI-powered laptops, most of them arriving during Computex 2024.
While this is certainly an interesting time, as we’re about to see just how far AI-powered components and tools will take us, it also feels like we’ll be getting more of the same, unless you include Chromebooks in the mix. Then you truly have something worth talking about.What’s wrong with AI PCs?
While the prospect of new technologies is always exciting, they can have some downsides. The AI hardware itself, especially when running out of large data centers needed to power both generative AI and the cloud storage it often relies on, has already been eating through massive amounts of water and other resources, and the environmental impact will only continue to worsen as tech giants like Nvidia, Intel, Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, and more create more powerful AI-based CPUs and especially GPUs.
Then there’s Microsoft, whose push for AI tools in Windows 11 may result in one of the biggest ecological disasters, as millions of users are forced to abandon millions of Windows 10 laptops that aren’t compatible with the new OS and its features. This is supported by a UN report stating that e-waste is being created faster than we can recycle, and even Microsoft itself acknowledges that the push for AI PCs and tools is causing an increase in carbon emissions.
The last issue is with both pricing and accessibility, which nearly every manufacturer and tech company is complicit in. AI PCs are always above $1,000; effectively pricing out a sizable portion of buyers looking for an affordable laptop.
