I think there will be a “return on ai” eventually, just not with this race to the bottom with chatbots. It’ll come from machine learning applied to solving problems in medicine and sciences and other areas of complexity.

Admittedly machine learning and “ai” get lumped together these days but I think there is a difference.

Also, thanks for reading my (long) rant. 😆

shipments of PCs could shrink by up to 9% in 2026

I’ll be shocked if it’s not at least double that. Thing is, this is going to be like the covid-19-crypto-bro-GPU-pocalypse that drove up GPU prices so much we now just collectively accept paying double.

Except this time it’s not just GPUs. It’s now hitting RAM, SSDs, HDDs, CPUs, Laptops, probably next year’s smartphones, and who knows what’s next. Motherboards? Power supplies? Cases? Everything else?

It’s not just that these companies are all cannibalizing their consumer capacity for AI customers and it’s not just the hardware they’re buying. As consumer demand plummets because they can no longer afford PCs, companies will reduce consumer production even further because waning demand. It’s a feedback loop whose only killswitch is economic collapse.

Sure we might be able to seek refuge for a while in the secondhand market, but that won’t be our saviour either. As demand increases in the secondhand market, a market with a largely fixed (and likely dwindling) supply, expect sellers to increase their prices too. Whether they’re trying to recoup costs from the first-wave price increase they paid buying new hardware, or just because they know the market can bare inflated prices that are somewhat less inflate compared to new.

And what do we have to look forward to? Prices will “settle” to 2-3x what they were last year compared to 5-6x as today. That’s if there’s a manufacturer left who hasn’t abandoned the consumer segment by that point.

I’m just coming to terms with the fact that the computer I built 2 years ago is probably my last, and my ability to help my neighbours fix their computers probably has a near expiry date. This has been a hobby of mine for decades that the rich have always fought against. With the AI bubble, they may have finally found a way to kill it completely.

I hope I’m wrong but I’m genuinely worried about this. For now I’ll have to wait and see how things go, look to the secondhand market for my next build, and maybe, start learning to solder.

Yeah, I stopped using Nvidia like 20 years ago. I think my last Nvidia card may have been a GeForce MX, then I switched to a Matrox card for a time before landing on ATI/AMD.

Back then AMD was only just starting their open source driver efforts so the “good” driver was still proprietary, but I stuck with them to support their efforts with my wallet. I’m glad I did because it’s been well over a decade since I had any GPU issues, and I no longer stress about whether the hardware I buy is going to work or not (so long as the Kernel is up to date).

If they’re going to release things under a proprietary license and send lawyers after individuals just trying to get their hardware to work, then yes, yes I can.

Don’t want to support it anymore? Fine. Open source it and let the community take over.