Posted on 09/19/2025 7:43:41 PM PDT by fireman15
AI PCs are equipped with powerful processors and AI accelerators designed to increase productivity and creativity. With our round-up of the latest news, learn how AI PCs are poised to shape the future of computing.
Virtually every aspect of technology has been affected, and potentially improved, by artificial intelligence (AI). PCs are no exception. While the meaning of “AI PC” is still evolving, it generally refers to a computer specifically designed to excel at AI-powered tasks. These beefed-up computers typically feature:
High-end CPUs and GPUs to handle the demanding computational requirements of AI applications such as AI assistants that automate tasks, schedule meetings, answer emails, and provide personalized recommendations and data analysis and visualization.
Dedicated AI accelerators like Neural Processing Units (NPUs). These specialized chips are optimized for AI tasks such as machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing.
Pre-installed AI-powered software such as AI assistants (like Microsoft Copilot), creative tools, and AI-enhanced productivity applications.
Will AI PCs play a big role in 2025 and beyond? As AI becomes more integrated into daily use, the demand for powerful computers capable of handling AI workloads will grow and provide new levels of productivity by automating tasks, generating creative content, and providing intelligent assistance. AI PCs are also designed to improve the user experience with AI-powered features like voice assistants, intelligent search, and personalized recommendations to enhance the overall user experience.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
“So we replace all our lower intelligence
people with AI,
so what do we do with them?”
Golgafrincham was a planet, once home to the Great Circling Poets of Arium. The descendants of these poets made up tales of impending doom about the planet.
The tales varied; some said it was going to crash into the sun, or the moon was going to crash into the planet. Others said the planet was to be invaded by twelve-foot piranha bees and still others said it was in danger of being eaten by an enormous mutant star-goat.
These tales of impending doom allowed the Golgafrinchans to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population.
The story was that they would build three Ark ships. Into the A ship would go all the leaders, scientists and other high achievers.
The C ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the B Ark would hold everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitisers.
They sent the B ship off first, but of course, the other two-thirds of the population stayed on the planet and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
A trilogy in 5 parts...
I acquired an EVO X2 with 128G memory to run AI models under Linux (actually, I've got it set up to dual boot so that I can use it for game play if I want). I'm happy with it, but here are the important things I've learned along the way (at great time expense):
- I find it useful to think of LLMs as coming in small (< 10G parameters), medium (< 75G parameters) and large (>75G parameters). The X2 can run smalls and mediums, which is good for many things, but it's never going to be as good as the large commercial online AI services.
- The LMM server is running the non-nonsense 'Lubuntu' Linux distro, which still provides a decent GUI, but without the desktop special effects that would steal CPU cycles from the LLM.
- The X2 uses an AMD GPU for which NVIDIA's CUDA software is not yet available to take max advantage of the GPU. However, the performance with small and medium sized LLMs is satisfactory. I do believe that CUDA will become available for this processor in the future. CUDA-compatibility is one of the most critical concerns when selecting hardware to host your own LLM.
There is a 'Vulkan' emulation layer that supposedly emulates CUDA and increases performance when using AMD GPUs.
- Forget about using AI to generate graphics locally unless you're ready to part with maybe $50k. Apparently the graphics generation requires huge memory and multiple high-end CUDA-compatible GPUs working in concert.
- In addition to X2 LLM machine, I've got a Dell 7040 microtower with an I7 processor and 16G of memory as myworkstation ($125 used on eBay), with Kubuntu installed (for bells and whistles), and a Dell 7060 microtower with I7 and maxed out to 32 Gig as the application/web server ($150 used on eBay). Like the LLM server, the 7060 is also running Lubuntu for efficiency purposes.
The app/web server is running the killer combo of LiteLLM (a smart 'LLM router' that interfaces with external and local LLMs, and 'Open WebUI' which provides a LLM portal that talks to LiteLLM, and basically provides a pretty darm capable web-based LLM chat UI similar to the big boys. Each of these, as well as the PSQL database that LiteLLM really needs for all features to work, run in individual Docker containers (actually, I'm using 'Podman' rather than 'Docker', but you'll save a ton of time and headaches going with standard Docker.
Open WebUI has some really nice features, such as the ability to define your own virtual assistants with their own guardrails, personalities and instructions.
For the LLM server, there's a nice console program 'nvtop' which allows you to view GPU load as a real time graph. This is how to get a warm fuzzy when running a query against a local LLM install.
Here's the video that got me started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQCOTzS5oU0
No problem...the question I have is: did AI write this Computer World article?!? 😬
Yup, agreed.
What I’ve seen of AI so far is full of mistakes and the opinions of it’s creator.
A bigger fear is if it must stay online in order for the computer to function at all. This would mean a complete and total loss of privacy, for you know the damn thing will be recording and analyzing anything and everything you say and reporting it to only God knows where.
Too much privacy has been lost with the cell phone. Those that doubt me need to ask the J6’ers that were tracked with their cell phone use and put in dungeons. Add AI computing to the mix and we are toast.
I see your point, and agree.
I’m one of those oddballs that like Windows 7, and find that OS along with the collection of hardware I’ve had for years still suits my needs.
A couple years ago I wanted a W7 lap top. And found one that was literally brand new. By brand new I mean it had zero scratches or wear and tear marks on it. Perfectly clean. And worked to perfection with a clean OS load.
And I’m still finding brand new software that is W7 compatible.
The next level of spyware.
Thanks.
I watched an interesting YouTube video last week that shows how to determine if something was likely written by AI without consulting with an AI detector:
Of course, the other thing that you can do is to go ahead and use one of the many AI detectors such as this one which use AI to determine if someone else is using AI...
https://quillbot.com/ai-content-detector?src_source=blog&src_medium=sidebar
This one concluded that 55% of the text that I pasted into the form that made up the excerpted part of the article was generated by AI. Depending on your customary writing style however these detectors can and do generate a lot of false positives ironically using AI to make the determination.
The entire article however was really more of a collection of articles and regardless of the plusses and minuses it had a fairly wide scope which I felt would be an interesting topic for discussion. Unfortunately, many of the people here who I enjoy hearing from either did not notice the thread or chose not to participate in the discussion.
I typically purchase most of our cell phones used and a fairly high percentage of computers and computer parts along with many other electronics items used. I have only been burned a few times over the years.
It took years for me to be convinced to switch from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I remember using tools like Never10 to stop the incessant nags and unauthorized Microsoft upgrades. So, I understand your sentiment. But eventually enough of my new gear came with Windows 10 installed that I made the transition and as time went on it was just easier to have most of my equipment running on the same operating system.
The two very inexpensive but brand new mini-PCs that I purchased in the last few months have 3rd generation Ryzen APUs and supporting chipsets and finding Windows 7 drivers for them is not much of a challenge. I just haven't bothered to do that because the choice of browsers is limited, there are security concerns, and mostly I end up trying to use a feature in Windows 7 that is actually from Windows 10.
I switched the primary OS on all of my machines that are not capable of running Windows 11 to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC which will receive security updates until 2032. I did this for friends and family as well. In total I “upgraded” over 20 computers. The licenses which are around $20 from my preferred provider cost about $400 for all of those machines.
Thanks for the link to the great video! I have enjoyed watching NetworkChuck’s other videos in the past but I had not seen this one. This is the type of post that I was hoping to get when starting this thread. It is fun to respond to all of the people who enjoy belittling any topic, but it is a waste of time compared to reading posts from people such as yourself who actually decided to try something and have actual experience with advice to share.
I have been mentored by a number of amazing people here, so I thank you again!
My pleasure. I’ve had the noteworthy mentor or two along the way myself. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.