The rise of AI PCs: How businesses are reshaping their tech to keep up
This hardware revolution is driven by the demand for faster and more powerful computers to support AI technologies. Companies are increasingly relying on specialized hardware to optimize AI performance. The competition to develop the most efficient AI hardware is fierce, with companies vying to stay ahead in the race. As AI continues to evolve and become more sophisticated, the need for advanced hardware will only continue to grow.
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom is transforming industries and reshaping work. Now, it's setting its sights on a long-overlooked tool: your work laptop. The reach and capabilities of AI models go far beyond what people have seen from tinkering around with ChatGPT, which, although a great tool for proofreading or debugging code, only gives a brief glimpse into what large language models (LLMs), the technology powering tools like the chatbot, can do.
AI PCs: The Future of Work Laptops
What is an AI PC exactly? And should you buy one in 2025? For instance, HCLTech, a consulting firm, worked with one of the largest end-to-end healthcare providers in the US to help implement a user-friendly, compliant AI clinical advisor. The clinical advisor, trained using one of the world's largest clinical libraries, allows medical professionals to conversationally ask for the information they need to consult without wasting time digging for it. According to Alan Flower, EVP and head of AI & Cloud Native Labs at HCLTech, running the models locally on the device was key to effectively implementing this model.
Nvidia dominates in gen AI benchmarks, clobbering 2 rival AI chips. "By using the clinician's laptop, it frees up clinician time whilst also ensuring the privacy and security of the patient's information," said Flower. "It has that secondary advantage -- it reduces the cost to run the solution since we're not consuming expensive cloud tokens when we can use the neural processing unit on an AI PC, effectively, for free." Running AI models on devices is proving to be a game-changer in various industries.
The Rise of AI PCs in the Market
Companies are discovering that to take full advantage of AI and run models locally, they need to upgrade their employees' laptops. This realization has introduced a hardware revolution, with the desire to update tech shifting from an afterthought to a priority and attracting significant investment from companies. Researcher IDC predicts that AI PCs designed to run generative AI tasks locally will grow significantly in the coming years, reflecting the changing landscape of technology.
This new category of AI PCs is differentiated from legacy PCs by having an NPU, or neural processing unit, which is designed to turbocharge AI tasks and allow models to run right on the device. The benefits of running locally include cost, privacy, and security. Local running reduces lag, creates a smoother user experience, and gives organizations more control over their information, making it crucial for industries where privacy and security are paramount.
The Future with AI-Capable PCs
As more companies opt for AI-capable PCs, the shift paves the way for deeper AI integration into business processes. Upgrading technology keeps companies at the forefront of innovation, giving them the flexibility to invest in AI applications. The result is an ecosystem where AI applications drive hardware upgrades, and upgraded hardware accelerates AI adoption in the workforce, rapidly transforming industries and reshaping how professionals work.