The main selling point of artificial intelligence (AI) PCs is that they help increase productivity, a message that PC companies like Dell and HP have been putting front and center in as their sales pitches. Markets are also bullish about these PC makers pivoting to AI PCs with Dell shares up around 82% so far this year. However, a new Intel survey pours cold water over the thesis that AI PCs would lead to dramatically higher productivity.

Here, we’ll discuss Intel’s survey and whether AI PCs really raise productivity at all.

Intel Study Shows AI PCs Are Making Users Less Productive

Intel conducted a survey of 6,000 people in the UK, Germany, and France which shows that “AI PCs offered a potentially transformative impact on people’s lives, saving individuals roughly 240 minutes a week on routine digital tasks.” These tasks, which Intel terms “digital chores” include things like drafting emails, managing files, and meeting transcriptions.

However, the survey showed that currently, those owning an AI PC spend more time on tasks as compared to those using traditional PCs. Intel’s survey shows that “greater consumer education is needed to bridge the gap between the promise and reality of AI PCs.”

It adds, “Many AI users spend a long time identifying how best to communicate with AI tools to get the desired answers or response. Organizations providing AI-assisted products must offer greater education in order to truly showcase the potential of ‘everyday AI’.”

In short, while the survey shows that AI PCs have the potential to improve productivity, users are actually spending more time and becoming less productive with these PCs due to the lack of adequate education about these features.

AI Is Expected to Lead Higher Productivity

Notably, one of the reasons markets are so excited about artificial intelligence is because of its potential to increase productivity (and cut labor costs). Last year Goldman Sachs said that AI could increase productivity by 1.5% annually which can increase S&P 500 profits by 30% or higher over the next 10 years.

The Intel survey does not sound encouraging for PC makers who have been banking on AI PCs to revive their sagging shipments. Notably, PC sales have been tepid over the last couple of years, but IDC sees a ray of hope in AI-enabled PCs and expects them to account for 60% of all shipments by 2027. In a note earlier this year, Tom Mainelli, IDC’s group vice president of Devices and Consumer Research said, “In 2024, we’ll see AI PC shipments begin to ramp, and over the next few years, we expect the technology to move from niche to a majority.”

In another report, Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers said, “While the noise around on-device AI may seem a bit unwarranted due to the lack of well-defined use cases for business and enterprise users, these devices will bring with them a momentous shift in computing by offering content generation and increased productivity over the next few years.”

However, he warned, “Consumer adoption will likely take longer as educating users on the benefits of on-device AI vs cloud-based solutions won’t be a straightforward task.”

Most People Don’t Know About AI PCs

The Intel survey highlights some interesting data points. For instance, 86% of the respondents have either not heard about AI PCs or used one. Intel itself is banking on these PCs to revive its sagging sales but it seems the company along with PC makers would need to do a lot more to market these as the majority don’t know about them in the first place.

Over half of the respondents believe that AI PCs are designed for creative and technical professionals which is clearly not the case. Importantly, 86% are concerned about the safety and privacy of their data while using an AI PC.

There are some valid privacy concerns over AI as many people are concerned that using AI features sacrifices one’s privacy. The fears were well illustrated when Microsoft revealed its new “Recall” feature for Copilot+ PCs at its Build conference event earlier this year. The feature will retrieve snapshots from the PC’s timeline, saving screenshots of everything you do on your PC, which was naturally a red flag for many. After much online furor, Microsoft announced that it won’t be a default feature on the device.

Apple Intelligence Puts a Lot of Focus on Safety

Apple perhaps learned from that saga and has said that safety would be the core of Apple Intelligence, which would power its iPhone 16. It emphasized that Intelligence would run on several large language models (LLMs) many of which would run on the device itself. According to Apple, in case a request needs to go to a cloud server, it will only send limited data, and that too “cryptographically” to ensure its security.

However, Apple iPhone 16 sales haven’t really taken off, even as arguably it is partially because of the late rollout of Apple Intelligence features. It might be fair to say that end users are not as excited about artificial intelligence as markets, which sent stocks north on the mere mention of the “golden word” during the earnings call at the peak of the euphoria.

AI Euphoria Has Somewhat Subsided

To be sure, the AI euphoria seems to have subsided somewhat, as was evident in the tech companies’ September quarter earnings. Investors are no longer cheering at every mention of artificial intelligence during the earnings calls and are instead looking for tangible progress on monetization and signs of healthy ROI (return on investment) on AI capex. For example, Meta Platforms and Microsoft stocks fell despite better-than-expected earnings over concerns about their growing capex despite commensurate impact on their earnings.

In their article, Gary Smith, a professor of economics at Pomona College, and Jeffrey Funk, a retired professor and winner of the NTT DoCoMo mobile science award, argue that AI is a massive bubble. They point to the scant revenues that generative AI is generating since many, if not most, of these services are free to use. Unsurprisingly, apart from Nvidia and perhaps its key supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), none of the other companies have any sizeable revenues to show from AI.

Critics of the AI boom liken this trend to the famous 19th century California gold rush where those smart enough to sell shovels and other mining tools made it off like bandits while intrepid miners were left destitute.

Are Artificial Intelligence Tools Worth It?

Then there is the big question mark over whether the current artificial intelligence tools are worth it for either workers or freelancers even as many have started to use them. Most AI tools are currently not perfect and require human intervention and we have multiple examples of AI chatbots giving out false answers. Even AI detectors that claim to help detect if someone used AI for their work and are widely used by universities and companies only end up amplifying the problem and it is becoming clear that these detectors are not as accurate as they may seem with a propensity for false positives.

On a similar note, a study by researchers at Wharton University and Pennsylvania University conducted on nearly 1,000 school math students in Turkey showed that using GenAI tools makes it tougher for kids to learn and acquire new skills – even as it helps improve their performance in the short term.

Wharton professor Hamsa Bastani who co-authored the paper said, “We’re really worried that if humans don’t learn, if they start using these tools as a crutch and rely on it, then they won’t actually build those fundamental skills to be able to use these tools effectively in the future.”

Overall, while these are still early days for the technology, and OpenAI aims to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) a theoretical AI model with human-like intelligence and reasoning that can learn and improve itself, in their current form the current tools leave a lot to be desired.