I want AI help in the OS, but I want it to be local. I don’t want to have to open a browser to ask “how do I use create a bootable partition on a USB drive”. I know the information is buried in man pages, but where to start? A conversational man could be useful IMHO.

This reasoning should make us all sick. Consumers are asking to not have it but apparently the products aren't for the people who buy them. The markets have broken the core tenets of capitalism and led to dissatisfied consumers with no control over choice. Competition in these areas is highly competitive and due to high investment and low anti-trust enforcement too easy to destroy.

I've decided to not buy these computers and and either make due with an older computer or buy one without the chip. If the message of lower sales gets through to the shareholders maybe things will change. Hasn't worked for vegetarianism, won't work here, but at least I can sleep at night. I doubt others will settle for hardware downplayed in marketing material or years out-of-date so the sales will stay up as a self-fullfilling prophecy and the shareholders will pay each other on the shoulders.

That's the thing, they don't have to give it to them.

I think a large portion of HN commenters are unaware of the consumer demand for these features.

I remember that AI voice assistants (Amazon echo, etc) had some of the fastest adoption rates among older individuals. That’s unusual for tech, which is often adopted first by younger people. The speculation was that older people were less comfortable with existing interfaces and therefore welcomed the new mode of working.

The same situation plays out with AI and software people: I see a lot of people sneering at every AI tool as something that nobody wants, but really it’s just that they don’t personally want it and therefore think nobody else should either.

Capitalism fully explained in one terse comment.

Just substitute AI for X ~ profit fad du jour.