On May 20, 2024, Microsoft introduced its “Copilot+PC” (hardware with AI and copilot support). It is supposed to be the harbinger of a new era.
However, with “Copilot+PC”, Microsoft may once again face failure due to demand. Really, who needs AI-enabled hardware right now? Not to mention that Microsoft's new “Copilot+PC” with its “Recall” function, which is supposed to be able to take screenshots of the operation and analyze everything, is already causing controversy on the internet. It seems to be a privacy and security nightmare.
So Elon Musk recommends switching to Linux.
in case you were somehow short of reasons not to use windows https://t.co/46b8qcZDc8
— sophie (@netcapgirl) May 20, 2024
Microsoft introduced a new class of Windows PCs, machines built with hardware for AI. The new generation of PCs will come under the name “Copilot+ PCs” and will usher in a new era, as according to Microsoft, Copilot+ PCs will be the fastest and smartest Windows PCs ever made.
If we isolate Microsoft's promises from marketing colas, the company is talking about AI chips, which will offer 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all-day battery life and access to the most advanced artificial intelligence models.
Copilot+ computers will start at US$1000 and, according to Microsoft's website, pre-orders are possible from May 20, 2024. The first devices will be available from June 18, 2024.
A Google developer Osvaldo Doederlein some time ago published a series of tweets in which he attempts to estimate the future of processors in the next one to two years.
In a nutshell it says:
A significant silicon budget will be invested in ML accelerators that no one needs. Hardware nerds will buy them to test, evaluate and play locally with LLM games, but 99% of customers won't use them.
“AI PCs” so far are purely supply-based. The real power users who need AI have high-end GPUs with more power than the upcoming ML accelerators. The demand for new hardware today is mainly low-power, low-cost devices for background processing for local inference.
Google developer says:
“I need a good local AI/ML, just not what everyone is selling. I don't want copilot or snake oil code editors. I want better grammar check. Green screen quality background detection in videoconf. Diagnostics for windows event logs that don't give false negatives and I want speech recognition that works.”
Even more interesting is the statement:
ML/AI elements that are useful and sophisticated, e.g. GPT4/Gemini/etc, are cloud based. This will not change as the cloud provides the required power more easily and can be used on many more devices. The sale of AI computers and the hardware required is betting on cloud latency.
But all the above are simple observations. Another question is, does the naive belief of data protection exist?
Huge data protection issues will soon be on the table. Some processes only run in a private cloud. The reasons: Data protection and security.
If the Google developer is right, Microsoft and its OEMs will go to the next big step called Copilot+ PC and nobody needs to. Of course, since there is no need the marketing department will try to turn the desire into a need in the next period.
Will users be able to prevent the Recall feature from taking screenshots if they are concerned about their privacy or simply don't want to use the feature?
In the technical documentation for Recall, Microsoft talks a lot about “privacy”. Recall will take and save a screenshot every five seconds and after the initial installation of Windows, this feature is enabled by default.
Ransomware and security vx-underground put it a little differently in the tweet below:
"Microsoft Introduces 24/7 Monitoring Feature for NSA and/or CIA, But Markets It as a Feature People Will Like" .
https://x.com/vxunderground/status/1792745307580911676
In a nutshell:
The InfoStealer malware stores users' saved passwords.
In the future, CoPilot Recall will be the malware that steals everything a user has typed or viewed on their computer. It will then store them in an already created database.
If someone gets access to the Recall database instead of the browser's local password database they can get all your passwords, and not only that, your financial data, chats, photos, etc. will all be exposed.
Read this also:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/22/windows_recall/
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
