"A ruler for the seventh grade": what's wrong with artificial intelligence in smartphones and laptops

By: Technoslav Bergamot | 17.03.2025, 13:35
"A ruler for the seventh grade": what's wrong with artificial intelligence in smartphones and laptops

In 2024, we were all overwhelmed by a wave of marketing concepts that closely integrated artificial intelligence. Samsung was the first to enter the game in January with its Galaxy AI in smartphones. It was followed by Apple, which tried to creatively name its AI as Apple Intelligence during WWDC 2024 in June. And in May, we learned about the first ASUS laptop with artificial intelligence. Of course, the smartphone market (and even more so the laptop market) is currently stagnant. The race for gigahertz and megapixels is a thing of the past. And marketers need new, simple and understandable meanings to promote their devices, meanings that would create attractive reasons to buy. I'm deliberately leaving AI TVs and AI home appliances out of this discussion, as they are a separate topic. Let's try to find out what is wrong with the concepts of "smartphone with AI" and "laptop with AI" from the point of view of not a marketer (everything is clear here - there is an NPU, so formally there is conditional AI, the thesis that in 99% of cases artificial intelligence means neural networks is also put outside the brackets), but the mythical "average user".

"A ruler for the seventh grade"

Not everyone remembers, but the joke about the globe of Ukraine also included a ruler for the seventh grade, which enhanced humour at the level of surrealism. Today, artificial intelligence in smartphones (and laptops) plays the role of that seventh-grade ruler. No one is stopping you from installing the ChatGPT app on any smartphone or laptop and getting AI in your device right now. Regardless of whether its processor has NPU cores.

Moreover, according to a SellCell survey (2000 participants), 73% of Apple users and 87% of Samsung users believe that new AI features do not add significant value to their smartphone experience. Most respondents consider these features to be of little or no use. Interestingly, a significant number of users have not even tried the latest AI features on their devices. This is not least because manufacturers often cannot clearly explain how AI improves the experience of using their products for the average consumer. After all, everyone who wants to is already using AI in their smartphones or laptops.

Overall, AI is not a marketing toy, but a new level of technology

All this does not mean that AI is a useless technology, on the contrary. I see it as a real next era that will change the world as computers and the Internet did before. They have literally destroyed (as it happened before during technological revolutions, such as the advent of the steam engine or electricity) a bunch of professions. And they created a bunch of new ones (that's why all the opponents of technology are the same Luddites, only in the 21st century). And in fact, humanity is not at all threatened by the fact that some professions (and, consequently, jobs) are disappearing. Because for every profession that is destroyed, there is always an answer in the birth of a new one that no one has ever heard of before. Some of them are temporary (for example, webmasters or software engineers). Some are with us forever (system administrators). That is, we will still be able to see "confident ChatGPT user" on our CVs for a while, but we will never see "confident PC user" or "confident MS Office user" again, because it will not have an advantage in the long run, as those who do not have it will simply remain on the sidelines of the labour market.

What about NPU?

The most inquisitive readers may immediately ask: but all these new "AI smartphones", "AI tablets", or "AI laptops" have a specific technology that distinguishes them from other devices - the NPU core of the CPU, which significantly enhances the computing capabilities of these gadgets when working with neural networks. Here, the answer is the same: despite the emergence of AI laptops with specialised neural processors (NPUs) on the market, many users and experts note the lack of truly convincing scenarios for using these devices for everyday tasks.

NPUs are designed to perform AI-specific tasks efficiently, but for many ordinary users who use laptops primarily for web surfing, document management, and multimedia viewing, their value may be limited. Many of the tasks performed by AI can be processed by the central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU), although this may result in higher (but not significant) power consumption.

For this benefit to be felt by the user, the majority of applications that use neural networks in their work should be available. Where is this happening now? Except for blurring the background during video calls. But do many people use this feature? I doubt it. By the time the majority of applications in your "AI device" start using NPUs, you will definitely change your device to a more modern one (maybe more than once).

The bottom line.

Artificial intelligence (currently in the form of narrowly focused neural networks, but there are already many of them) is a new level of technology that has already changed the world and will change it even more in the next few years. The future of AI in smartphones and laptops depends on the ability of manufacturers and developers to overcome these challenges and offer users truly useful solutions. That they cannot get in any other way without losing the discomfort they are used to. In the next few years, all of these "AI smartphones/laptops" will still be in the technology stage, the time for which has not yet come for mass adoption. Here we see the same trap that we have been observing for several decades in the computer games market: first, hardware for new features appears. And only later do game developers adapt new features in their products. And not all at once and not for all products. Therefore, the benefit of having an NPU in a device is still theoretical, and it will become practical only later. Therefore, we remain calm and just wait for further penetration of AI in software. If you want to use AI capabilities in your "old" device, no one will prohibit you from doing so even now. And, of course, all this is not a reason to refuse to buy a new device (if you have such needs and desires). Regardless of whether it has AI or not (it still does).

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