Computex 2026: Are We Heading for the Agentic PC Era Yet?(www.eetimes.com)
29 pointsby rbanffy8 hours ago7 comments
  • Avicebron6 hours ago
    As long as the models are local this doesn't seem that crazy. What concerns me is that these are "agentic PCs" that only work with a subscription.
  • Mabusto4 hours ago
    As long as I can connect my 3D TV, I can't wait to sip some Juicero and watch Quibi on it.
  • Animats5 hours ago
    The "agentic PC" for consumers probably would be something you talk to, and would look like Alexa or a living room TV or glasshole glasses. Something other than a keyboard and screen combo.
  • devn0ll7 hours ago
    Seeing how we are responding to AI or the copilot button on pc's... I _dare_ to suggest this "Agentic era" is nothing more then wishful thinking. Not supported by any real wish or need on the consumer side.

    Well, at least for me: no thanks.

    • Closi5 hours ago
      > Seeing how we are responding to AI or the copilot button on pc's... I _dare_ to suggest this "Agentic era" is nothing more then wishful thinking

      Depends who 'we' is - I've seen plenty of non-tech people in the real world begin to use ChatGPT as a primary information source rather than the web (rightfully or not!)

      I suspect that 'we' might not be the true early adopters here, similar to how quite a lot of the most technical users in the 80's thought GUI's were a waste of time.

      • Octoth0rpe5 hours ago
        > Depends who 'we' is - I've seen plenty of non-tech people in the real world begin to use ChatGPT as a primary information source rather than the web (rightfully or not!)

        I don't think that's really what people are talking about when they talk about 'agentic' PCs.

        • cromka4 hours ago
          I think that was example of how previously seemingly impossible things are happening things are happening quickly.
    • cromka4 hours ago
      As much as I hate it, you and your opinion is exactly what Jobs always talked about: people don't need things until they realize they need them.

      You not envisioning use for it is just a past bias. You can't know that. You can't because we haven't yet reached the point where the OS is fully useful when controlled with AI.

      • gedy3 hours ago
        But the industry types have been talking about "agents" for 30 years... This used to be a thing that "intelligent agents will go on the internet and gather information for you" then search engines came out and people were happy with that instead.
        • spankibalt3 minutes ago
          Yeah, just a week ago I read an interview with Alan Kay from 1990, where he shared his thoughts about the third revolution in computing: the "intimate computer" (the agentic platform that follows the "institutional computer" and the "personal computer").
      • sublinear3 hours ago
        I'm sorry, but what was Steve Jobs ever uniquely right about except that we needed better touch screens on smartphones?

        We don't see the same obvious applications of AI because nobody has developed a proper user interface for it. We're stuck with voice, chat, and dumping documents onto it. The current pro-AI stance is basically "fuck the user and fuck interfaces".

    • georgeburdellan hour ago
      Agentic for most people should mean an easy way to fix what were previously missing UI features. Hopefully companies are (with permission) paying attention to user prompts in aggregate to guide UX work
    • tmaly6 hours ago
      I had to buy a new washing machine last year. It has an AI mode, what ever that is. I have never used the mode.
      • squid_ca3 hours ago
        Mine too. I think it's just a buzzword, like, this would have been called "Smart Wash" five years ago.
      • syberspace6 hours ago
        as far as I've understood the AI mode on my new-ish washing machine: it's just a renamed "automatic" mode that uses a sensor to measure how heavy the load is and adjusts the cycle length. there is absolutely no AI involved, just an if-statement or equivalent logic gates. I'd guess yours does something similar
        • Animats5 hours ago
          Washers now do have useful control systems. Mine starts out by spinning the tub a little, before adding water, to measure the load. Out of balance problems are a thing of the past - that's sensed and dealt with automatically. It's able to handle bed comforters or sneakers without problems. But it's not "AI", and it doesn't have a network connection.
        • jagged-chisel6 hours ago
          Literally, “simulated intelligence” at best.

          But for marketing, “artificial intelligence” is fine. And better than LLMs being called “AI”

          • ajam15075 hours ago
            Surprising that there are still people who don't think LLMs qualify as AI
            • Octoth0rpe5 hours ago
              I think in some people's minds, the concept of sentience and intelligence are intertwined, and there are at least some people (myself included) who do not think they're the same. There is a strong (but surprisingly not universal) consensus that LLMs are not sentient, so if you insist that sentience/intelligence are the same thing, then LLMs don't qualify as AI either. If you think the two concepts are separable, then they're intelligent but not sentient. The devil is of course in the definitions.
      • andai6 hours ago
        On my walk today I passed an LG company van. It had an ad for one of their new AC units on the side. "AI Air"
        • throw-the-towel2 hours ago
          A bar I know had an "AI designed shot" back in 2023.
      • forinti5 hours ago
        There's a billboard near my home with an ad for "AI designed glasses".
      • 6 hours ago
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    • corv6 hours ago
      Less space than a nomad. Lame.

      To be fair, I find the term to be as contrived as “performant”

    • XorNot5 hours ago
      What you're not planning to upgrade from your Web 3.0 platform to an Agentic one?

      Scandalous!

  • Henchman216 hours ago
    Given that we’re making ourselves dumber through AI, education funding cuts, social media, and foolish propaganda AND the population is shrinking and everyone is seemingly depressed:

    The most likely outcome is the world in the children’s cartoon “Thundarr the Barbarian”. People living in the collapsed ruins of the past society, belief in magic, etc.

    A post-apocalyptic hellscape, essentially.

    • andai6 hours ago
      > People living in the collapsed ruins of the past society

      Kind of feels like I was already born into that.

      • baron3dl3 hours ago
        is this not an essential human condition?
  • yogthos6 hours ago
    I think it's almost certain that we'll be moving to running local models as a default in a few years. The quality of small models has been improving at an astonishing rate in my opinion. My favorite example is how Qwen3.6-27B that you can run on a laptop outperforms Qwen3.5-397B which was a flagship model requiring a commercial grade server that was released just in February. https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.6-27b

    I fully expect that local models models that are comparable to current frontier models in performance will appear in the near future. Additionally, a lot more can be done with the harness as well, which in my opinion is an under-explored territory right now. For example, ATLAS does some clever tricks in this area https://github.com/itigges22/ATLAS

    I started working on my own harness and also notice a significant improvement in model capability with it https://dirge-code.github.io

    Apple seems to be one of the few companies to have realized that the future is likely local, and they've been focusing on optimizing hardware for that while everybody else seems to still be stuck in a model as a service paradigm.

    • baron3dl3 hours ago
      I think Apple's tech-heavy user base and vertically integrated hardware/network/software mega architecture positioned them perfectly to beat the rest of the market to 1st runner up. The competition knows, they just can't move that fast.

      > I started working on my own harness and also notice a significant improvement in model capability with it https://dirge-code.github.io

      You should mine your session logs for examples of scenarios that demonstrate this improvement. If you can characterize it in a time series metric, like tokens/feature, as you applied improvements, then you're offering a receipt.

      • yogthos2 hours ago
        Yeah, that's a good idea. I haven't really been rigorous with tracking the token usage metrics when I started. I was thinking I could compare solving tasks with opencode too and track metrics for both.
  • sanreds2 minutes ago
    [flagged]