AI: Microsoft AI 'Copilot PCs' now to make Apple Dance. RTZ #363

...'Small AI' now personal on computers at the Edge

Microsoft after making Google ‘dance’ with AI for over a year now, is going on to making Apple ‘dance’, with AI on fundamentally re-designed ‘AI personal computers’. Replete with local AI GPU computing called 'NPUs’, for Neural Processing Units, with private and locally stored AI ‘Recall’. Running trillion plus operations per second in ‘AI matrix math’. It’s being dubbed ‘‘Copilot + PCs’ with generative AI capabilities baked in” Engadget et al.

From the chips to the applications on Windows re-designed ground-up for AI. Less than two years after it’s partner OpenAI, who is also making Google ‘dance’ in Search, kicked off the LLM AI Tech Wave with its ‘ChatGPT moment November 2022. CEO Satya Nadella even has ambitions to take Microsoft’s Copilot across local devices to even ‘Smart Glasses’ by Meta and others.

As the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern summarizes it, “I Tried Microsoft’s New AI-Focused PCs. Windows Is Exciting Again”.

“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told our columnist new efficient, powerful chips equip Windows Copilot+ laptops to compete with Apple’s MacBooks”.

“AI-puter (noun): A computer designed to execute AI tasks better than older, non-AI computers. Example sentence: “I’ll be at the coffee shop, working on my AI-puter.”

“OK, fine, nobody’s really going to use my new term, but plenty of big names will try to sell you one. And Microsoft is leading the charge—with a new Windows platform optimized for artificial intelligence announced on Monday.”

“I tried these new Copilot+ PCs. They’ve got improved performance, battery life and enhanced AI features. Finally! Microsoft is promising some real competition to Apple’s M-powered MacBooks.”

“Apple’s done a fantastic job of really innovating on the Mac,” Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella told me in an exclusive video interview. “We’re going to outperform them. We finally feel we have a very competitive product.” (You can watch my video explaining the new PCs here. You can see my full interview with Nadella here.)”

The whole piece is worth reading, including even watching some of the videos. The actual lineup and plan for Microsoft branded and re-designed ‘Surface’ series of laptops can be found here, with more by Microsoft OEM partners like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer and many others in the months to come.

And they’re all made ossible by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips designed on ARM designs, just like Apple’s long-leading Apple Silicon for the last few years. All now finally promising fifteen plus hours of battery life with Windows and its many applications rebuilt to run on these power-sipping chips. With new AI features like Recall, that allow the user to ask for any interactions on their PCs via AI digesting ongoing screenshots of user activity within the trust confines of their local machine.

No cloud AI computing here. And no power-hungry multi-billion dollar AI data centers. At least for this part. As I’ve said for a while now, the ‘mainframe era’ of LLM AI is rapidly converging with the PC AI era, in less than two years. Not decades as in prior tech cycles. Starting with Microsoft ‘Copilot at your fingertips’ on every new AI PC.

Big AI with Small AI, running combinations of LLM AI (large language models), and SLM AI (small language models). Complete with secure personal memory and user ‘Statefulness’, at every type of AI application and service. Most barely invented.

This move by Microsoft and partners with Copilot + PCs running local AI at the edge, kicks off the next gusher of local AI for mainstream users. Tomorrow kicks off their ‘Build’ conference, which will have additional AI related announcements.

Expect Apple to have a response with its chips, computers, devices, hardware, software and applications, in just a few weeks on June 10 at its WWDC conference.

The Local AI device race is on for real. Hope billions of mainstream users like and use some of it. Stay tuned.

(UPDATE: Since publishing above, Google also announced AI features for its next generation Google Chromebook laptops. AI features for devices continue rollouts into 2024).

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)