AI Transforms Laptops: Big Tech’s Bold Vision for Computing
· David Pierce
We're deep in developer conference season, and Big Tech keeps hammering the same point: AI is going to change everything about how we compute.…
We're deep in developer conference season, and Big Tech keeps hammering the same point: AI is going to change everything about how we compute. Nvidia's Jensen Huang made the strongest case yet this week. He described a totally new way of using a laptop, and a completely new kind of laptop built to make that possible. It's fascinating stuff. But watching these demos, you can't help asking the same question we ask about so many AI products: does anyone actually want this?
On the latest Vergecast, Nilay and David ran through a flood of announcements from Microsoft Build and Google I/O. Products like Gemini are popping up everywhere. The vision is ambitious: your computer stops being a passive tool and starts acting like an active assistant that predicts what you need. Huang's pitch takes it even further, suggesting the hardware itself has to change to keep up with this new software reality.
The conversation around these launches keeps circling back to one thing: usefulness. Tech companies are betting that people will adapt to AI powered workflows, but there's a gap between what's technically impressive and what's actually practical. A lot of these features feel like solutions in search of a problem.
For now, the industry is charging ahead. The question isn't whether the technology works. It's whether anyone will actually use it. That answer is going to define the next few years of computing.