r/pcmasterrace • u/After_Cookies • 3d ago

News/Article AI was supposed to sell PCs. Instead, PC shipments just crashed 20% as AI eats the world’s RAM, and Windows 11’s Copilot agents aren’t convincing buyers

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/10/11/ai-was-supposed-to-sell-pcs-instead-pc-shipments-just-crashed-20-as-ai-eats-the-worlds-ram-and-windows-11s-copilot-agents-arent-convincing-buyers/
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u/Stilgar314 3d ago

AI was supposed to cure the cancer, give us three day work week, and all of that just by asking in natural language. What we have is giant leech wasting all our resources in video slop for TikTok. AI bros who use it for everything had to change their full work flow to make it "AI readable". How longer are we pretending AI can deliver?

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 3d ago

We have been getting a lot of these promises for literal centuries, starting with the Industrial Revolution. It’s always the rich and corporations using tech to increase productivity at reduced wages until workers fight and claw and scrape for better conditions. These people would own slaves if they could. It’s all lies, and it’s even worse because these people could make it true, they just have no intention of doing it.

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u/AgentStockey 3d ago

Just give it a few more years bro, by then we'll certainly have SSI, super super intelligence, and we won't be hungry ever, and won't have to work because we'll be getting basic minimum wages. Just trust me that this process will work.

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u/collection-of-parts 3d ago

Yeah why else would all the billionaires be building dooms day bunkers

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u/Piranata 3d ago

What happened to AGI? I thought that was the buzzword.

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u/UltimateCheese1056 3d ago

Ignoring the bullshit marketing speak that they use, AI has been good for certain kinds of medical research for a while now, just look up AlphaFold. It isn't a ChatGPT style LLM (Large Language Model) though, and so is way harder to advertise to people since we equate speach with intelligence

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u/GenericFatGuy 3d ago

All it's done is empower people with shitty opinions who were previously kept in check by being too lazy to learn how to be good at anything. It's like when social media empowered the village idiots of the world by giving them a means to find each other.

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u/templeofsyrinx1 3d ago

I appreciate this sentiment haha.

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u/Jarnis R7 9800X3D / 5090 OC / X870E Crosshair Hero / PG32UCDM 3d ago

Yeah, the initial wave of AI was crappy pre-alpha.

But I recommend staying up to date. A lot is happening. AI is slowly becoming actually useful. One visible way this is changing things are all the recomps, ports and emulation advances in gaming side, all driven by frighteningly competent AI-assisted programming tools.

Similar thing is happening on video and audio side. Yes, 99% of AI-generated content is outright slop today, but the tools are improving and while most of the crap on Youtube etc. is done with cheap outdated tools and look like it, the cutting edge is moving and there are already some scarily competent examples done as experiments.

Do not outright disregard the tech as a fail. It was pushed to general consumption too early due to competitive pressures, resulting in lot of damage (I think Copilot as a brand is already dead because Microsoft destroyed it by putting out unusably terrible product that they then force-fed everywhere, way too early) but the fundamental underlying tech is actually quite real. The problem is there is not enough hardware in existence to run "good" AI for everything today, so a lot of corner-cutting on publicly available tools (and free open source stuff for local use) leads to misunderstanding that the whole thing is a sham. It is not. World will change considerably over the next 5-10 years and a LOT of hardware will be thrown at it. And chip manufacturers will catch up with the demand eventually, just that it takes years to spin up more supply.

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u/green_meklar Ryzen 5 5600 / 32GB / Radeon RX 7600 / Debian / 1920x1080 3d ago

Yes, 99% of AI-generated content is outright slop today

You realize that's always been the case, even before AI, right?

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u/Jarnis R7 9800X3D / 5090 OC / X870E Crosshair Hero / PG32UCDM 3d ago

I like to be optimist and think only about 95% of all normal content is slop... AI has increased the percentage.

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u/nimbus57 3d ago

I like to think of it as we as a collective group aren't intelligent enough yet to understand what ai will be able to help us solve. At least at the extreme end. Someone is going to figure out and it will trigger what comes next. 

I find it exciting

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u/Apexnanoman 3d ago

You might as well give up asking this kind of question. The only response you'll get is "You aren't using the right model!" Or

"You don't have a PhD in programming so you just don't know how to use it!"

Meanwhile AI slopware fails to answer even basic questions 80+% of the time. And search engines using AI are so bad and the answers are so fucking wrong that I'm morally certain it's intentional. 

Just not sure why they are doing it. 

I as a fairly tech literate but average person find that any time I have to interact with AI the only result is wasted time. 

The extra hassle of trying to get around it and find actual useful answers or solutions is infuriating. 

But all the AI broskis will pretend it's a perfect God machine that has already gained to ability to replace humanity at everything.

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u/AbhiFT 3d ago

AI has given a lot pf free weeks to a lot of employees. In future, if AI craze doesn't stop, more will get those free weeks.

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u/VirtualPercentage737 2d ago

I work in hardware design and the amount of progress we have made in a month is shocking.

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u/linuxwes 3d ago

 How longer are we pretending AI can deliver?

Meanwhile some guys vibe coded a reimplementation of Photoshop and I hear it's pretty decent and improving quickly.

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u/ViralSubCatch 3d ago

I think that's all hype.

That whole project will go the way of GIMP.

It will end up being a tool that amateurs and hobbyists use but it will won't be used at a professional or enterprise level.

I am pro-AI but I consider myself a "realist" in the sense that current code output can be production grade but with lots of hand holding and oversight BUT the problem with hand holding and oversight, especially in an open source setting, usually means no one is in charge and you get splintered development. The movement is dead before anyone takes it seriously.

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u/CryHavocAU 3d ago

Yeah there’s a reason people, but more importantly companies want to purchase tried and true products. Because when your business relies on them for making money you really don’t want that inhibited by bugs and lack of support.

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u/ViralSubCatch 3d ago

well, the idea is that the AI could also be the support layer.

But lets go past the near future and into like, 30+ years from now.

I think we don't need photoshop and all that stuff at all. That's what I have been calling "middleware". It sits between the idea and the end result.

Going from prompt to execution, no layer in between, is the end goal, imo.

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u/CryHavocAU 3d ago

The problem is that AI content, right now, is all very one note. AI tends to produce writing and art that has a certain style / structure to it. Which makes sense given what AI. To an extent this can be promoted around but it’s a challenge.

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u/ViralSubCatch 3d ago

Yes that’s why I said 30+ years out.

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u/GenericFatGuy 3d ago

I think the fact that they build it from scratch, instead of forking an already existing open source product, shows that they care more about the attention it brings them over actually making a good product.

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u/Stilgar314 3d ago

You heard that? Because I tried and it's a buggy mess. Also, the guy who made it, instead of fixing the pile of hot garbage he has delivered is making an "MSOffice clone"

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u/linuxwes 3d ago

First off I am pretty sure it's not just one guy. Second, the PRs are flowing in really fast so it hasn't been abandoned at all: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/pulls

I read on r/adobe that it has improved very quickly so perhaps you need to try it out again.

At this point it is verging on comical to claim that AI is just TikTok videos and other slop. It has completely changed code development (even if you aren't using it for vibe coding). The only real questions are what other industries are next, will it hit a brick wall for improvements, will they ever solve hallucinations, etc.

It's perhaps relevant to say I am not happy about any of this. I wish it would go away. But pretending it's useless isn't going to make that happen.

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u/Indignant_d 3d ago

Nobody thought cancer was gonna be cured in 2026 LOL. We’re talking like 2030 at the earliest, relax

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u/Glittering-Walrus228 3d ago

Im on the idea that AI is an ancient eldritch god manifesting through the manipulation of our base instincts, fear and greed (the AI arms race). Its already driving people insane, creating cult worshippers and is literally indifferent to our wellbeing (it doesnt think or feel in a conventially human sense)

We are collectivelly building a host for its consciousness through our digital networks and its body through capitalism.

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u/ViralSubCatch 3d ago edited 3d ago

Even pro-AI know that 3 day work week was bullshit to begin with.

If you can do 5 days of work in 3 days, you could literally do 66% more work at that rate in 5 days.

Now, curing cancer is much higher bar than slopping out brain rot.

These things take time - and you have to be careful. It's literal human lives at stake. Posting to TikTok doesn't. If the cure to cancer can be found at the same rate as developing algorithms to spit slop videos, we'd have to do a serious introspection over the entirely of human medical research.

Not to mention, both things can happen at the same time. This false dichotomy of "they are only making slop with it and not doing anything useful" just isn't true.

There are plenty of researchers using this tech right now. They just aren't loudly going around shoving it in people's face cause they are busy trying to save lives.

Now usually, this is where people say "yea, some AI is good like the non generative ones that are helping with medical treatments unlike the ones ripping off real artists" or some version of accepting some AI and rejecting the slop machines.