Microsoft’s new Copilot+ artificial intelligence personal computer illustrates a common pattern in technology deployment, namely that hardware or platform capabilities have to come first before widely-used applications can be developed to take advantage of the new platforms.
That can be seen in mobile network generations, where it can take five years or more for new applications taking advantage of the new platform to be developed, and longer for even popular innovations to be widely embraced.
An optimistic estimate--showing app availability and not widespread use--suggests it takes two to three years for a new capability to be available on a new mobile platform, even in a relatively difficult or limited user experience, and has relatively low adoption.
That same process tends to unfold for other innovations as well. The new CoPilot+ AI PC will require 16 GBytes of RAM and 256 GB of storage, for example. The device also will require an integrated neural processing unit with performance rated at 40 trillion operations per second.
Right now, the only application that really takes advantage of that processing power is the “Recall” feature, that indexes and retains (on the PC) an image of each page a user has opened, for about three months of activity.
The feature is touted as allowing users to find content they have viewed recently. Early on, most users might not find that one use case compelling enough to cause them to buy a new PC. But, over time, use cases could develop that do provide high value, even if we do not know what they are, yet.
The point is that, for most users, it might be some time before the utility of an AI PC is obvious.
That has been the case for prior innovations related to the PC, such as the graphical user interface. That also was the case for the hobbyist phase of the personal computer evolution.
