Muse, Dots, and other always-on agents may be the end of the PC era. Once you’re asking agents to do things on their own virtual machines, it’s game over. Everything moves to the cloud
Anyone wondering "why would I use this when I can use (OpenClaw|Hermes|my own computer)" -- these new services are not really meant for you. They're meant for the non-tech savvy and for the next generation of AI-natives who won't know anything other than how to use these type of services
For your casual user, these services will be hard to beat, since they’ll handle all the expensive and hard parts of using computers. No computer purchase necessary, no troubleshooting with tech support, etc. They’re also scalable where you could have not just one agent with one computer at any time, but many
In return, the agent providers would own your compute and data. I can even see them offering this low cost or for free so they can train off of users. Lock in would be insane
For privacy reasons, I really hope we find equally useful, private alternatives on our own hardware
Computers arent actually intuitive at all.
Even a mouse and keyboard literally take weeks of practice to learn.
Imagine picking up a new product that will take you weeks of practice to use at basic level. And then you have to learn how to do every little thing in the OS.
Via what interface would people use the agents? Voice to text on a smartphone? That's clunky and slow and only works in quiet areas where you can talk freely. And mouse and keyboard is really not that hard. If anything was going to kill PCs, smartphones & tablets would have done it, but everyone I know still has at least a laptop. Overall I think getting people to trade in the freedom of having their own personalized devices for a remote agent is a much harder sell then you're making it out to be.
Smartphone. Think of people in your life who aren't tech workers. When do they use a computer if they don't use one for work? Almost never and if it if it's for specific tasks like create this document, fill in this form, research this destination, book this trip.
There are a lot of people I can think of who would be happier just describing this task to a dot or some other agent rather than digging out a laptop, booting it up, fighting with Windows update etc etc
For those people this could absolutely replace the need for a computer.
I was already thinking of the people in my life who aren't tech workers. They have at least a laptop because it does exactly what you want, you don't have to talk to it (which again, is clunky and only works in a quiet place, which is why adoption of existing voice to text features is already spotty), it has a sizeable screen (video streaming, photo editing, gaming, lots more things), it doesn't have a subscription fee, and it doesn't have to be jailbroken if what you want to do is deemed harmful or otherwise unsupported by the platform. It's (mostly) free to use as you wish. That's the P in PC, it's yours and people value that.
That's not to say that agents won't be a popular product, but as I see it there's a near 0 chance that they kill PCs.
jameslk · · focus · HN ↗
Anyone wondering "why would I use this when I can use (OpenClaw|Hermes|my own computer)" -- these new services are not really meant for you. They're meant for the non-tech savvy and for the next generation of AI-natives who won't know anything other than how to use these type of services
For your casual user, these services will be hard to beat, since they’ll handle all the expensive and hard parts of using computers. No computer purchase necessary, no troubleshooting with tech support, etc. They’re also scalable where you could have not just one agent with one computer at any time, but many
In return, the agent providers would own your compute and data. I can even see them offering this low cost or for free so they can train off of users. Lock in would be insane
For privacy reasons, I really hope we find equally useful, private alternatives on our own hardware
devindotcom · · focus · HN ↗
wordpad · · focus · HN ↗
Computers arent actually intuitive at all. Even a mouse and keyboard literally take weeks of practice to learn.
Imagine picking up a new product that will take you weeks of practice to use at basic level. And then you have to learn how to do every little thing in the OS.
pink-ming · · focus · HN ↗
theintern · · focus · HN ↗
There are a lot of people I can think of who would be happier just describing this task to a dot or some other agent rather than digging out a laptop, booting it up, fighting with Windows update etc etc
For those people this could absolutely replace the need for a computer.
pink-ming · · focus · HN ↗
That's not to say that agents won't be a popular product, but as I see it there's a near 0 chance that they kill PCs.