Forget about AI, the entire PC market is getting killed over this.
As an avid gamer I'm unsure if in 5 years I can even buy a gaming PC anymore. Not even because of cost, but it's unclear if anyone will still make the components anymore.
NVIDIA isn't interested, nor is AMD.
BUT! I feel that lost hope could/will turn into a new forms of "min-maxing" or whatever where we will see people focusing on small, efficient software to make the most of what we have to weather the drought. We got spoiled with cheap hardware. Time to make the most of all that cheap hardware we have.
Though of course, replacing this hardware as it breaks down will be expensive. Perhaps we could go back to 1/2/4 GB RAM sticks and 256/512 GB Disks. Then run minimal Linux installs, minimal GUIs, minimal services, minimal software.
To amend this: Reading the 8088 domination article and the little $8 RISC-V Linux board I think we have plenty of opportunity. Maybe we learn to shed our inefficient BIG computers for small, low power, purposeful, yet general computers. I play with Plan 9 a lot and its portability, small footprint, low resource, and distributed design has showed me we can do a lot with a little as long as we stay disciplined to keep things simple and to the point.
Many games that come out still, and are quite successful, do not require such technologies.
1. Indy developer releases a game or trailer of a game. 2. Within an extremely short time (days to weeks at most) there are clones on the market. 3. These games often outperform the original.
It's absolutely not something that's gone on for ages.
It might be a novel gameplay idea / twist on a genre, and mere days after launch instead of being able to stand on its own and gather attention it's drowning in a pool of lookalikes. It's no longer distinct.
The speed of being able to slop together something like this is less than 1% of what it used to be.
So yes maybe it happens more often now, but it’s still not new.
5 years ago it would have been science fiction
Also, this reminds me so much of the download more RAM ads back in the day.
I wonder what it would look like if Apple offered a slimmed down shell from the Neo for ~$300 that required a connected iPhone. Maybe as iOS and MacOS converge we'll get there.
There should be a big enough back catalog of great games for you to enjoy without having to buy a new gaming rig.
gaming does not equate to only things like the last of us or cyberpunk which need extreme machines. a lot of visual fidelity can be reached still without having such a monster. Just need to not use certain features which are currently pretty much exclusive to Nvidia...
And I assume they will only continue to go up. When it came out, purchasing one seemed like an easy decision. But I paid half as much for one with the same CPU/RAM (and upgraded my SSD for cheap).
But then it became normal.
The monopolization of knowledge and expertise is the next step. I don't mean as if it were intended, but it is the logical progress given the technological evolution. The cause is inventive structures: the tech is neutral (in my opinion), but the way in which it is used and deployed is subject to and disciplined by capital.
You might say that this is impossible but look at current trends. A lot of information today is getting shared in the walled gardens of Internet. You have to login to social media to view posts. The Twitter, Reddit threads that were accessible freely now require you to log in. Similar thing is happening across other networks. People are no longer asking questions on Stackoverflow. All those queries are gonig to AI. If someone chooses to not use AI, their options will be limited in future.
Not even talking dictatorship scenarios here. The USA might simply decide it doesn't like your country. Or maybe heavily cripple the models you can use, or censor them, for whatever reason.
I guess this is an argument for local AI. Probably not feasible for the less technically savvy.
So it’s plausible they’ll block me from accessing Mistral since they host DeepSeek models.
- Large centralized compute is more powerful than portable compute
- Wired is better than wireless
- The public wants new things
- The tech industry grows to use/“use” the available processing power
As long as you’re not continuously comparing to AI in large centralized compute, what you’re really looking for is “when does portable compute become powerful enough to run AI models that are capable of meaningful work” and I’d say we’re already there and it’s getting better.
- local latency is lower than network latency
- latency is important for action games
The AI boom first reversed the trend, to now try to get back to that cycle.
Lot of people using their office-notebooks at home, even if its not allowed. Most people out of tech do not have big hardware at home anymore.
This is complete conjecture on my part, but I bet if you're late 20s - early 40s, you probably have some form of pc/laptop laying around. But people 50+ (gen x / gen boomer), a phone is likely all you use or own. My mother, aunt, et. al operate totally through their phones. The same is true for my pre-teen, teenage cousins or cousins children (ipad generation).
New application of computing requires a lot of compute -> compute centralizes -> compute improves, smaller, faster, cheaper -> compute decentralizes -> new application of compute is found -> (return to beginning of cycle)
Maybe arcade games?
But yes, it has been a test of just how few tokens you can get by on.
Which would not be all too bad. It would also mean the end of stupid SaaS subscription services, and mass surveillance, adtech. And shitty propaganda.
And your local AI could emulate the good parts of the internet.
Like talking to people?
In fact, it was closer to the opposite.
:insert Will Smith presenting meme:
The Cloud
I am using AI now to make a game engine that will run and make 'nice enough' graphics on simpler machines. things like laptops with iGPU and 4gb of ram.
U can still get quite ok graphics, and make very complex and rich gameplay systems using such a machine. It just needs to be the target machine while developing so the right tradeoffs are made.
Everybody will have a mini PC for the sole purpose of streaming content, with no storage to keep anything on it.
It's just unfortunate that producing a half decent computing platform is significantly more difficult than a rifle (and that in the case of said hardliners, the capital is backing them, here it's working against us).
Have an agentic enough setup and they'll do anything that the biggest closed models can. They'll also do more, making them the true frontier.
A sensible point of entry is a 2899$ Mac mini.
If you're not partaking that's only on you.
> If you're not partaking that's only on you.
There's honestly nothing sensible about that for a lot of developer budgets across the globe. Don't assume most folks have $3k to burn.