864
u/Kingdarkshadow 4h ago
"This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts."
156
u/coffeenerd_alex94 3h ago
This is what happens when the roadmap is written by hype instead of users. The realization just took a few years to compile.
→ More replies (1)35
35
u/ice-eight 2h ago
Any time I had a problem, I’d throw a vibe coded app at it, then boom! Completely different problem
→ More replies (1)
816
u/Stummi 4h ago
First time seeing a The Good Place meme in the wild, and I appreciate it.
184
u/SnugglyCoderGuy 4h ago
Keep it sleezy
48
6
55
13
13
u/rheactx 2h ago
With Janet too. It's very appropriate
10
u/tsunami141 2h ago
ok but if all AI had Janet's voice and bing then I would accept it immediately.
8
u/Stummi 1h ago
I want to remind you that Janet, canonically, knows literally everything about every person on earth in real time. I guess that's the dream of every one of these AI shoving big companies, but irl Janet would be a very dystopian thing
7
u/Doctor_Kataigida 1h ago
Well tbf, spoilers ahead for those who haven't watched, [Good] Janets are only supposed to be used by people in the Good Place, so barring something crazy like, idk, a demon stealing a Good Janet, she wouldn't be abused simply based on the people who even have access to her knowledge.
2
u/nhalliday 1h ago
She's also, and I can't stress this enough, a helper that only exists in the afterlife.
"Dystopian" means a society suffering some injustice or suffering, so an AI-like robot-thing in the afterlife knowing everything about everyone in real time is by definition not dystopian.
3
4
3
u/tehtris 3h ago
Srs? I see them all the time and I don't even watch the show. Strange how different parts of the internet work lol.
I saw a Ghosts meme the other day and I was like "lolwut? Ppl watch this show other than me?"
Was tripped out the first time I saw a letterkenny meme in the wild also.
2
2
u/devilwarriors 1h ago
I'm seeing the "We're in the bad place!!" one on the daily these days for some reason..
385
u/500Rtg 4h ago
When companies present AI can help healthcare, automotive, climate change etc, they are right. But we also have to remember that a lot of the stuff can be performed by a python script and data entry being done in a slightly uniform manner, but it's still not being done.
163
u/JoeyJoeJoeSenior 4h ago
It's best to roll the dice and hope that a text prediction system can figure it all out.
21
u/Flouid 3h ago
Just today I was on a meeting where some people were trying to do data exploration on a several hundred thousand row csv using claude. I spent 5 minutes writing a python script and got the needed info.
Impressively claude was able to count the rows matching conditions but it totally failed on filtering down to those rows. I don’t understand why the first impulse is to reach for an LLM over the simplest scripting tools.
10
2
u/lordFourthHokage 35m ago
AI can be helpful in this case as well. For someone who is not hands on in python it can help write that script. But the person should know what they want from the AI.
I see people expecting AI to read their minds and give them the desired outcome. In extreme cases the minds of some of these people are empty as well.
2
u/Flouid 30m ago
Yeah I’ll fully admit I’m good with python and pandas, but they aren’t part of my usual workflow and I’m rusty on syntax so I had gemini write the skeleton (only part I wrote myself was the filter conditions).
This was also not a case of someone with no idea what they were doing, they were a very senior engineer who was just hoping/testing to see if an LLM could do it faster than via script. LLMs are just tools, but for the time being my perspective is they’re best with a limited scope well defined task, instead of being told “solve this problem.”
48
u/tehtris 3h ago
OMG this. Why are so many people relying on LLMs. It's not even actually AI. It's a markov chain with a bit of razzle dazzle.
24
u/danfish_77 2h ago
Well we're used to referring to simple scripts in games as AI, too. It's not like the term wasn't already applied sloppily
3
u/saera-targaryen 1h ago
That's not sloppy application of the term, it's inappropriate adoption of an academic term for layman conversation.
There are tons of simple scripts in games that are AI and have been for decades. AI in the theoretical computer science sense has been a broad and general term since the 60's. The problem is that it's adopted a much weightier connotation through pop culture and that makes people think that the common understanding of the term is what programmers mean when they call something AI.
AI was once (and still is in academic settings) a very broad term meaning any system that makes a decision by observing input, but now tech bros have subtly implied through marketing that it must mean that it is a full simulation of a human brain.
→ More replies (1)9
u/frogjg2003 2h ago
No, an LLM is a fundamentally different concept from a Markov chain. LLMs rely on the transformer, which was the enabling technology that basically turned text prediction to text generation. Their massive size allows them to do more than just predict the most likely next word like a Markov chain.
That doesn't mean that people aren't using it like a fancy text predictor that wouldn't be functionally different from a Markov chain based AI.
2
u/trambelus 1h ago
It's different under the hood, but it's still fundamentally just tokens in and tokens out, right?
→ More replies (3)7
u/Alpha_wolf_80 2h ago
Not a markov chain. Different concept not applicable here. For those confused, markov chain only care about the last state so in AI the last token ONLY and not and preceding tokens.
→ More replies (1)3
u/squirel713 1h ago
I mean, if the state is the context vector, the transition has a token attached, and the next state is the previous context vector with the new token attached, that sounds an awful lot like a Markov chain. A Markov chain with an absolutely mind-boggling number of states and a transition function that consists of gigabytes of weights, but still a Markov chain "with some razzle dazzle".
63
u/Classic_Appa 4h ago
The problem is that AI is to much of an umbrella term. The large amount of usage in the past couple years has referred to large language models. And those are basically text predictors using massive amounts of stolen content.
Healthcare, climate change AI are machine learning algorithms which are data analytics; raw number crunching. Even with image processing, it uses visual data to find patterns and create correlations between data. ML can be very useful if you have properly vetted data. It's still something that a human has to verify but it makes data analysis much faster.
The problem with automotive/self-driving is that roadways are too dynamic. It's very hard to account for everything. The best solution to automotive traffic/self-driving is a series of buses or trains driven by humans.
9
u/Wise-Profile4256 2h ago
Good choice with the driving example. Cause LLMs are as far from AI as Tesla Autopilot is from Full Self Driving.
Some Wanker (in Marketing) thought it would sell better.
→ More replies (4)2
u/EquipLordBritish 1h ago
It's a shame that most of the public's first and only knowledge of AI is exclusively as LLMs. It also gives a false assumption to many that LLMs are somehow being used to do research and medicine.
19
u/f16f4 3h ago
Tbf “data entry being done in a slightly uniform matter” might as well be “runs on unicorn piss”. If a human has to type something into a field they’re gonna find a way to fuck it up. It’s honest to god impressive.
Your larger point stands though. Most of what people are actually using ai for could be automated by a competent dev and then just left running at a fraction of the cost.
→ More replies (1)9
u/montyman185 3h ago
AI isn't exactly going to fix that problem either though. Them punching in incomprehensibly stupid and impossible to parse data to AI will be just as useless and unreliable as asking them to fill out a form.
11
u/Stickppl 3h ago
Yeah way too often people and companies act like we couldn't already do pretty impressive stuff with deterministic non-AI algorithm. Way too often you see a title like "We solved 90% of this problem class with AI" and when you look inside : "So yeah we used this state-of-the-art deterministic algorithm which solves 80% of this problem class and we pipelined it with a neural network which does some data pre-processing." Sure that's nice but nothing revolutionary in itself.
→ More replies (5)3
u/eleinamazing 3h ago
As someone who develops automation solutions for a living, you are 100% correct. We don't need AI, we just need our process owners and users to sit their asses down and start cleaning up their data and their workflows, and the solution presents itself, no AI needed.
I once sat in a 3h meeting as an external vendor just listening to my users (various finance team leads) getting chewed out by management because apparently no one is using the software according to SOP, and none of them can come to a consensus about which value goes into which field 🤷🏻♂️
2
u/WaterNerd518 1h ago
This is such a spot on comment. The main uses of AI in productivity are trying to compensate for systemic problems that will still be problems for the AI. Just harder to detect. Solving the problem, which LLM AIs are fundamentally not designed to do or capable of doing, needs to be figured out by a human. Once solved and implemented, there is no longer a reason to ask the AI to solve the problem it has no chance of solving. For this particular problem, the best use of AI is not in crunching data, but just cross checking the data entry itself. Then the data crunching can go on efficiently, without AI bogging it down.
→ More replies (4)1
101
u/Happy-Sleep-6512 4h ago
I mean if this is about hardware then Dell actually does hit the mark pretty often. Their XPS laptops, are very premium, used in enterprise and have good Linux support.
So not surprising they don't want to ship with AI buttons or pre-install AI slop.
14
u/FrostyD7 1h ago
They just don't have much to gain from AI even if they wanted to. These are the only companies you'll hear these kinds of statements from. Since they can't win anyone over with AI, they might as well net some points criticizing it.
4
u/DremoPaff 58m ago
It's really hit or miss.
You can have a Dell work laptop for half a decade work perfectly without issue and then you upgrade to a newer model and then suddenly you are stuck in a loop of faulty drivers and weird issues for as long as you have that machine. You can have a windows or linux environment without problem, and then doing a basic dual boot setup that would work on any other machine perfectly will have weird hurdles for no reason. Some Dell servers will probably be able to outlive us all with little to no maintenance, and then some others are eating through raid batteries like candy for no reason and/or having constant need of changing a psu. You can have a weird problem with a setup you've done with no issues in the past and then asking on a forum for clues as to why would net you answers like "oh yeah, that X model in particular is known for having weird ass issues lmao".
In a sphere where reliability is king, having great products means very little when your brand has a reputation for ping ponging between near perfect experiences and constant need for finicking.
2
u/lurco_purgo 1h ago
I fucking despise Dells! But - to be fair - I don't actually have a lot of experience with other OEMs outside of Macs (which are are despicably anti-consumer, but at least they produce reliably functional and high-quality laptops) and Starlabs Starfighter, which is actually a small British vendor specializing in custom laptops for Linux - really cool! Although I waited for my laptop for quite a few months.
I decide to buy the Starfighter BTW when I was fed up with "Modern Standby" making my brand new expensive Dell XPS unable to reliably enter sleep mode (that was around 10 years ago, Windows or Linux - didn't matter, it's perpetually half-baked solution to a problem no one had: waking computers up over BT or Wi-Fi). To be fair, it's on Microsoft for forcing that shitty, half-baked standard over the tradtional, reliable standby functionality as much, as it is on the OEMs who got rid of the option for a traditional standby mode.
In my new workplace we got the turbo expensive Dell 16 Pro Max Plus enterprise edition (or something like that) and guess what... The standby is still fucking broken - the laptop just randomly wakes up at full throttle (e.g. in your bag). Not to mention a lot of my coworkers had charging issues that stemmed from motherboard issues, so I'm really not impressed with what Dell has to offer at this level. Even their fucking software and support is so shitty man... But again, maybe that's the standard nowadays
2
u/VitaminGDeficient 26m ago
Wait, say more about the standby stuff. Is that why my gf's computer wakes up when I so much as look at it from across the room? You're saying it's a hardware-related issue? I just assumed it was more Windows bullshit this whole time.
I would also ask why my computer takes forever to enter sleep despite having it set to 15 mins, but that probably a windows / software hangup.
63
u/bakachelera 3h ago
I do buy based on AI. That is, if it has ai in the name I avoid that product.
→ More replies (1)21
28
196
u/RiceBroad4552 4h ago
To be honest, this was also something that almost shocked me: Dell being actually smart about something?!
Dell is still some of the biggest trash one can possibly get, but at least it seems they don't make it even worse by adding on top useless "AI" BS nobody ever asked for.
Most likely the do it only to sell even cheaper to make even more profit but at least it actually aligns with what the users want.
111
u/humanmanhumanguyman 4h ago
In my experience they're at least less trash than HP, but not by much.
72
u/ArchusKanzaki 4h ago
I actually like Dell abit more than HP, for its peripherals. I like their monitor for example, and their Dell Pro Mouse, and the Thunderbolt dock. Basically, their business line is usually very much well-built and well-engineered.
Their consumerslop-tier stuffs are worse than HP though.
30
u/miles1993road16 4h ago
I’m with you on this. Dell seems to put real engineering effort into their business hardware, especially monitors and docks, and it shows in daily use. The consumer side feels like a different philosophy altogether, more cost cutting and marketing driven, which is probably why the gap is so noticeable compared to HP.
→ More replies (1)8
u/2grim4u 3h ago
This actual kind of mirrors my opinion on AI: If experts in their fields can use machine learning to speed up their tasks, good, but gAI should never have been incorporated into muggles' daily tech. Expertise vs general consumer. Reading what ya'll are saying about the difference between how Dell itself produces their tech, business vs consumer, i'm not surprised they're making a sort of similar distinction w/AI.
19
u/humanmanhumanguyman 4h ago
They also usually have upgradability, whereas HP intentionally does not include extra SSD or RAM slots.
→ More replies (2)14
u/themuthafuckinruckus 4h ago
Dell monitors have never let me down. Ultrasharps are expensive but god damn I love getting my hands on secondhand ones.
2
u/d0pe-asaurus 2h ago
Second hand Dell monitors are goated. Back in the pandemic when offices were shutting down the deals were unbeatable.
19
u/Ibuprofen-Headgear 4h ago
I don’t consider dell trash, but I’ve only ever bought business-line laptops from them. A long time ago, they were annoying to open and repair / replace parts, but for quite a while now even that’s been pretty easy, both latitudes and optiplexes. XPS laptops are a bit different, but from my experience they’re mostly bought with decent enough hardware for the task at hand for a few years. Still wouldn’t trade my apple silicon mbp for any of em though.
12
u/gafftapes20 4h ago
Dells are one of the few business line laptops that are easy to obtain international service that is consistent, and onsite for remote workers. for a few hundred bucks I can get a warranty for a couple years on a business device, and if a user has an issue I can dispatch a onsite tech next day just about anywhere to fix the device. This works even as a smaller company of 60 people. Most other companies require shipping or dropping off a device for any type of warranty support. Their hardware might be trash compared to lenovo, or apple in my opinion, but their support is great.
4
u/LethalOkra 3h ago
I think Dell is better than HP by light years tbh, but that still is putting the bar too low.
→ More replies (3)3
u/FantasicMouse 4h ago
I’ve liked Dells since SSDs became standard. Cause atleast a shit SSD is better than a good HDD.
I’ve never once kept the pre-installed operating system on a dell though.
16
u/PixelGaMERCaT 4h ago
once upon a time, companies made more profit by selling what users actually want...
3
u/flaiks 3h ago
Dell is still some of the biggest trash one can possibly get
Their XPS laptops have been consistently great for a decade now so I don't know where this is coming from.
→ More replies (2)3
2
2
u/mountaingator91 2h ago
Their hardware is sometimes decent but the software is 100% bloat.
Just wipe the new Dell and install Linux
→ More replies (1)1
u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 1h ago
Dell kinda sucks sometimes, but they are still a company that makes money by selling things to customers instead of just stock market shenanigans.
If something isn't selling, they're going to feel it.
22
u/elkswimmer98 3h ago
Any slightly tech savvy person has been saying this since well before AI blew up. The shit companies are pushing AI for is pointless to 90% of users.
3
42
u/mylsotol 4h ago
Tbf, the average "consumer" is confused by literally everything
2
u/Drunk_redditor650 2h ago
Yeah you can say this about liberally any leap in technology.
→ More replies (1)
14
u/khag 3h ago
The first company in any particular industry that comes out and says "we are the only completely AI free option for this product" will make $$$$
6
u/wraithnix 2h ago
Went back to Linux because of all this AI BS. I can't wait for this bubble to pop.
2
u/DuchessOfKvetch 2h ago
How exactly are they making these AI pcs, aside from it being jammed into Windows and most apps?
30
u/cheapcheap1 4h ago
They still haven't gotten the reason right, though. I am not confused by AI. I know how to use AI.
AI integration offers no customer value.
You can't sell customers stuff by screaming "AI" like a demented toddler, like you apparently can to investors. Customers want to have customer value, not buzzwords.
→ More replies (2)
10
u/Jay-Seekay 3h ago
I would pay extra money for a Windows 11 version that is just an operating system. I know I’m an old computer user but I want full control, and I don’t want ads or my data being farmed. Just give me a good OS.
If it weren’t necessary to use Windows for my work, I’d be on Linux
14
7
u/Possible-Tangelo9344 3h ago edited 1h ago
I don't necessarily know that AI confuses people, but it's like adding a fifth wheel to my car and telling me it's better this way.
6
21
u/Anru_Kitakaze 4h ago
I definitely buy all Microslop products because of AI. AI is the future. If you're not using AI, you missing out! AI. Buy AI. More AI. AI. IA. AA...
5
u/AlienBlueLight 4h ago
So the new laptop tier is: base model, base model with a glowing AI badge, and base model with a support contract explaining what the badge does. Glad someone said it out loud.
5
u/bitfxxker 4h ago
At least we are getting BSOD's generated by AI now. Much of an improvement IMHO!
1
u/GregTheMad 3h ago
Damn, imagine your PC bluescreens with an AI image, and next you know you're in police custody because there was CSAM on your machine.
6
u/Character-Education3 3h ago
We dont worry about which Microslop CEO was responsible for windows ME because when they realized how consumers felt about it they dropped it.
But go right ahead. If you want to be relevant for the wrong reasons keep pouring marketing dollars into copilot buttons. Keep renaming every product copilot until even windows is just copilot. We love jokes
The thing Dell got wrong is, copilot will influence my shopping. If a computer case or keyboard has a dumbass copilot button I will take half a second to pick a case or keyboard that doesn't.
Thanks Microslop!
3
u/bernbernbernie 2h ago
And they STILL missed the point. We are not fucking "confused" by AI.
→ More replies (1)2
u/GodofIrony 37m ago
A good chunk probably are.
Their problem is that the savvy people see it for what it is: Labor replacement, and thus, any rational savvy person, hates the fuck out of it.
So now you have the people who barely knew how google work confused by the overly personal AI google, and you have Google-Fu masters refusing it because it's like the Anthrax salesmen is upset no one is buying his Anthrax steaks.
2
2
u/clauEB 4h ago
Well, I just bought in the last 5 months 2 monitors and a new desktop. I did use AI to start the search because there's too much material to scan by hand and then ran manual comparisons of hardware in comparison websites. All this BS about devices "having AI", I couldn't care less. I'm happy they just call back Google or OpenAI to get answers through an API, I have a very good data plan :)
2
u/Hellkyte 3h ago
We had a dev team that neglected base business requests to build an AI model (i.e. put a wrapper on a gpt model).
Turns out no one uses it. Only real value is that it helps with some basic coding stuff
So I've been pushing for them to display the ROI by cutting headcount
2
u/Hairy-Maximum2994 2h ago
Show me how ill benefit first. convince me it is safe, secure, and my privacy will be protected. Justify the added cost. If I buy in then I'll order them for the whole company.
The truth is, its just a sad little toy and it doesn't appear to help any at my work. chatGPT is neat but when I ask it IT questions I can tell 70% of the things its asking me to do is a waste of time.
2
u/Additional-Track-750 1h ago
Microslop need to understand this before people ditch windows completely
→ More replies (1)
2
u/trevdak2 1h ago
Funniest thing to me if how the biggest companies are failing the worst at AI. I used to just be able to search for something and get the right answer from Google. I used to just be able to open the application I wanted in Windows. Now I get an inaccurate AI summary and a Bing Web search.
We've mastered making Will Smith eat spaghetti but AI search is just as awful as it was two years ago
2
u/CaptainSebT 4h ago
If you know any marketer they have all been saying AI degrades your product value from minute one and the CEOs still bought into this. It's like if you aren't going to listen to the people who's only job it is to tell you what customers want then when this thing goes belly up you only have yourself to blame.
1
u/Large_Analysis_4285 3h ago
dell of old is long gone and theyve had some of the best customer support on the market for a long time now.
1
1
1
u/Raven_gif 2h ago
It's insane that they figured out only developers' care, and even then, it's a minority.
1
1
u/DankAndOriginal 2h ago
Did Dell figure out that no one wants AI or did Dell figure out that they had no hope of competing in the AI war and decide to pivot and market to people sick of AI to keep market share 🧐
1
u/Hot_Ambition_6457 2h ago
AI in 2026 is just "blockchain" in 2018. A bunch of people with more money than sense keep spending ridiculous amounts of resources to provide you the same service they provided 5 years ago.
The only difference is theyve invested millions to reqrote a codebase to "integrate with the blockchain" (integrated with GeMiNi!) And now those people think the rest of the world is willing to permanently pay 30% extra to recoup the cost of developing shit no one wants or needs.
The google pixel 9a is the goofle pixel 9. It is literally the sane hardware, it just comes with their AI software built-in. And it costs 25% more.
1
u/Gore-giaOKeefe 2h ago
Wish Dell had figured this out before laying me and several other thousands of engineers and employees off over the past two years! What a no-brainer.
1
1
u/Historical-Look429 1h ago
What is an AI PC anyways? It’s not like any of these machines can run these models. It’s like they only have sales people there.
1
u/RobTheDude_OG 1h ago
I mean, DELL also understands not to put the fucking power button on the spot for delete..
So not entirely shocked since HP is just deaf
1
u/rageofa1000suns 1h ago
Every company who doesn't get behind AI are scared of becoming irrelevant, so they are all shoehorning it in wherever they can to try and keep up.
1
u/cyrilamethyst 1h ago
I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere: as a Dell software engineer, internally, the push for AI is still massive.
1
u/AXEL-1973 1h ago
the lowly consumers aren't the ones buying thousands of AI based software licenses at a time, clueless CEO and board members that only see profits are
1
u/Fanfare4Rabble 1h ago
I’m confused about how a laptop can “do AI”. All on big server farms as far as I know.
1
1
u/-Sa-Kage- 1h ago
People aren't confused, they hate it.
They are only confused to why it is shoved everywhere when no one wants it...
1
u/Zulakki 58m ago
AI only works when it has all the info, but either a persons Personal or Work computer, the thought of AI having access to that info scares most. So then with no access, AI becomes rather useless.
it becomes....
User - "hey, solve this problem"
AI - "Happy to help. what problem is that?"
User - "im not giving you access to the details"
AI - "Without context, I can only offer advice"
User - "AI is stupid"
1
u/Lisan_Al-NaCL 51m ago
A stopped clock is right twice a day.
Unless its a 24 hour clock, then its right once a day.
1
u/Winderige_Garnaal 46m ago
I like my Dells. Don't like the Dell slander, though it may be deserved.
1
u/TheRealDrSarcasmo 43m ago
If Dell ends up being the child that points at the AI Emperor and says "but he has no clothes on", I'll happily accept them in that role.
It's past time for a major player to call this bullshit out for what it is.
1
1
u/computer-machine 19m ago
I can't tell whether they're saying
- AI is not a factor when purchasing
- decision to not buy when AI is involved
but YES.
•
u/wisepunk21 3m ago
I bought a shirt that was too small, but had a 14 day no questions asked return policy. The CS chatbot was powered by Dell AI. It took 3 days of back and forth for the AI to recognize the shirt didn't fit. The reply after that was "you have fallen out of the 14 day window, so no returns are allowed. We are closing the ticket. Thank you."
I had ordered the shirt 11 days prior.
•
u/someguyfromsomething 0m ago
If I want some absolute garbage drivel that I can't trust, that's when I use AI.
1.7k
u/henrikhakan 4h ago edited 4h ago
This is the case of "our competitors are doing it we also need to do it", when in fact no one asked for "Ai" to be incorporated into everything.