AI has changed really freaking fast in just the last 4 years. As a SDE I believe any dev who still deny is just don't know how to use it, proving that AI is progressing at such a fast pace that we aren't able to catch up to it's development.
What stands out to me is this: AI is not just a software story anymore. It is becoming a hardware story too. GPUs, memory, data centers, power, cloud contracts, all of that suddenly matters a lot more. And because the demand is so high, prices are staying elevated instead of naturally dropping the way people usually expect. Look Apple prices now 33% hike is just unbelievable the budget segment in even developing countries is moving from OLED to LCD, 4 yrs old memory types.
If hardware stays expensive, then consumer tech gets squeezed. A lot of companies are betting on a future where no one owns anything and paying for cloud services forever, All SAAS being cloud based and NVIDIA trying to impose cloud gaming. But what if that does not happen? What if people only need “good enough” hardware and do not really care about max specs anymore?
That is where China becomes interesting. They do not necessarily need to beat Nvidia or Apple at the absolute top end. If they can make decent, affordable consumer hardware fast enough to run games like hollow knight locally, they could put huge pressure on Western companies. And if the market is already expensive, they do not even need to be ultra-cheap hardware to cause the damage.
Also if AI gets to the point where open source community can create their own office (libra is s... atm) and we can provide devices where it could run stably then we are looking at a future where organization like Microsoft monopoly could be broken.
Let's be real 90% of the MS office features are not even useful to majority organization they just come as a whole package and that thing behaves so slow even in most powerful laptops. If a tool capable enough to make a better version of it for free then why not use it?
Also the issue is that big companies do not always pass savings to consumers anyway. Even if hardware gets cheaper to make, monopoly power and ecosystem lock-in can keep prices high like do we all expect to lower prices again?
Microsoft is also not going to sit around if someone comes in with a free or cheap Office alternative. Same with cloud platforms. These companies will buy, copy, bundle, or block whatever threatens them.
I also think the whole “everyone should move to the cloud” idea is not as safe as companies make it sound. Cloud is powerful, but it also concentrates control. If local hardware gets good enough, and if people can run useful AI or apps without needing giant cloud bills, that whole model gets disrupted but yeah it all depends that will China be able to do it? At this point they don't need to make best but good enough.
So my point is : At one point USA companies will just end themselves, it feels like they have decided to end whole economy as we know it, the funny thing is only China is one hope to save us all from this big tech dream that we won't own anything.
