Nowadays, there isn’t a tech launch without these two letters being front and centre. Most manufacturers already hail AI, or artificial intelligence, as the way forward, but it turns out that most people feel the opposite. When polled, 84% of people stated outright that they would not pay extra for hardware with AI capabilities.
TechPowerUp user W1zzard posed the question on forums, and 26,357 voters flocked in to have their say. A whopping 22,151 enthusiasts put their foot down, stating that AI isn’t worth the premium companies usually add to products. On the other hand, at least 1,942 folks are open to the idea, and 2,264 sat on the fence.
It’s a tough notion to escape, too. It’s the bread and butter of all the best CPUs inside laptops, both new and upcoming. Intel Core Ultra 200, Snapdragon X Elite, and AMD Ryzen AI processors all vie for the crown with bespoke neural processing units (NPUs) built to handle generative workloads. Microsoft even has Copilot+ PCs to signal which devices are capable of these new features.
While it’s reasonable to assume companies will charge a premium, we haven’t seen any proof that new laptops are more expensive than previous releases—at least beyond general inflation. Brands are pumping millions of dollars into innovative new hardware, so it certainly feels like an inevitability.
That said, the cost is possibly offset by another sacrifice. Some are concerned that making room for the dedicated NPU comes at the expense of SLC cache. This trades frames in games for an otherwise more powerful and private Windows Copilot, which hasn’t proven popular in certain communities.
Despite rapidly accelerated growth, it’s still early days for AI. Right now, it still feels like an inaccurate text, image, and video generator with many moral concerns. As some in the forum note, perhaps “not this generation” but the next will see people more open to it. Otherwise, the people have spoken and are voting with their wallets.
