The new wave of CoPilot Plus PCs are amazing.

“Even those who arent often dont quite know where or how they should be using AI.

An NPU, But Why?

An illistration of an AI NPU

New laptops now have AI inside.Igor Omilaev / Unsplash

An NPUneural processing unitis silicon designed specifically to fire off the kinds of operations that AI-throw in functions require.

All this stuff can be run on the regular computer CPU, but much slower.

And that’s before we get to the new AI features coming in iOS 18.

Four Microsoft Surface laptops

There aren’t any killer apps for AI PCs yet.Microsoft

So right now, the NPU chips inside the CoPilot Plus laptops are kind of vestigial.

And they use chip spaceand electricitythat could have been better spent elsewhere.

While companies continue to fuel the AI hype cycle, computer users just aren’t buying in.

Microsoft’s recall feature in action.

People do not trust AI.Microsoft

AI has already come to be something of a joke.

Worse, when itisused seriously, it’s often annoying.

Anyone who gets AI-generated marketing pitches via email will know exactly what I mean.

AI is just another way for computers to do a task, not a feature in itself.

This brings us to a very weird situation.