TechTalk A New Era of Productivity: Copilot+ PCs Explained
Discover the transformative power of Copilot+ PCs — and how they’re helping teams accomplish more, faster.
By Insight Editor / 22 Aug 2024 / Topics: Data and AI Devices Generative AI
By Insight Editor / 22 Aug 2024 / Topics: Data and AI Devices Generative AI
In this episode, we explore the challenges of modern productivity and the transformative potential of Copilot+ PCs in revolutionizing efficiency in the workplace. Discover how AI capabilities, NPUs, and the innovative features of these devices are empowering workers to focus on more creative endeavors and strategic tasks.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below, or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Insight TechTalk on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
Erin
Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of Insight's "Tech Talk." My name is Erin Hazen, Strategic Initiatives Manager here at Insight, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Michael Belcher, director of North American commercial channels for Qualcomm. I'm really looking forward to this conversation, Michael, thank you so much for your time.
Michael
Oh, glad to be here. And thank you for inviting me, yeah.
Erin
It's a sincere pleasure, and I'm super excited to dive into this topic with you. So I'm just going to set the stage just a little bit here where we're talking about how, in an era where the average worker is inundated with an array of digital tools and platforms, productivity has paradoxically become both a measure of success and a source of stress. The sheer volume of tasks completed does not necessarily equate to meaningful productivity, however, with the introduction of Copilot+ PCs, there's a promise of a paradigm shift, and by leveraging the power of AI, Copilot+ PCs aim to streamline workflows, reduce redundant tasks, and focus our human intellect on creative and strategic endeavors that truly move the needle. So does that sound like it resonates with you, Michael?
Michael
Absolutely.
Erin
Perfect. Perfect. (laughs)
Michael
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling overwhelmed almost all the time. (Erin laughing)
Erin
I am also feeling overwhelmed almost all the time, so absolutely understand that. Maybe we can dive into what are some of the challenges that most of us face as we try to maximize productivity.
Michael
Yeah, right? So I... What, you know... We do a lot of thinking about this, and it was one of the kind of tenets underneath how Microsoft was looking at Copilot+ devices and the experiences that they would create of, "How do we take a lot of this off our shoulders?" So we had to do some research on it, right? And so, you know, some of the research was showing that, you know, almost two-thirds of the survey folks found out that they were struggling, right? Having the time and the energy to do their job to the way they wished they were able to do it, right? And I think... But part of that struggle came from the pandemic. We all of a sudden went from in our offices, lots of connection points, you kind of knew when you were on and when you were off, and all of a sudden, we're on all the time, right? (laughs)
Erin
All the time.
Michael
And our camera here... (indistinct) Right now, right? Absolutely. And so those-
Erin
And I think...
Michael
Oh, go ahead.
Erin
No, sorry to interrupt, Michael, I was just going to say, I think sometimes... I think you had mentioned that productivity has become anything but productive, right?
Michael
Absolutely. Absolutely. So that same sort of challenge, right? Knowing that we have so much to do, we're feeling kind of overwhelmed, and as we think about it, right? I looked at my emails today, and I have 900 unread emails, right? (laughs) And doing those emails may not necessarily be the best use of my time always, writing and plowing through those. And so I'm having to make those decision criteria on my own, right? Without any other sort of input. And I really do believe that as we start to think through this, that there's some other technologies that could be really, really helpful as we try to maximize our productivity, right? So that it... We truly are productive, not just doing more. (laughs)
Erin
I love that sentence, because I absolutely feel that way sometimes, I'm like, "If I just could do more," when the truth is we really just need to do better, and let's talk about how we do that. So can you tell me a little bit more about what it means to be a Copilot+ PC? What is this?
Michael
Yeah, so this technology is so interesting, and it was one of the key reasons I came to Qualcomm and Snapdragon. I saw this when I was at HP several years ago, right? Well before we had any sort of devices even sort of planned. And Microsoft came up with this idea that we needed to have PCs that were far more efficient, far more powerful, and that could start to drive AI capabilities, as AI was developing so quickly. And so these Copilot+ PCs were designed with some specific criteria. We helped Microsoft in the development of this because we were at the forefront of it. One of those key sort of tenets were that we needed a different processor. And so, in our computers, we have a CPU, a central processing unit, we have a GPU, a graphic processing unit, and they're great for what they're designed for, right? Think of Microsoft Office, great for your CPU. Graphics, right? Doing design work. But boy, doing the AI sort of capabilities, they weren't very efficient, and so they would eat up tons of power to actually process all the data that we needed to make good decisions or provide good feedback to us so that we could actually do better, right? That, you know, do better versus do more, right? And so these NPUs have a specific criteria, the way that they're designed, they run really low power, but they can run trillions of operations per-second. And so the development of this... We realized in working with Microsoft that we would need to be at at least 40 trillion operations per-second to be able to have the AI running in the background, and then, we needed to have some specifics with memory and storage that would allow those devices to do the work that they needed to do to hopefully provide us with really good insights on how to do our work better.
Erin
Okay. So I think that what I'm understanding, Michael, is that the devices needed to be able to do some real heavy lifting. And so that has been baked into these devices now, and that's going to allow us to enable the AI tools that are going to get us working more efficiently, more productively. Did I understand that correctly?
Michael
Absolutely. And part of what we knew had to happen using AI... And anybody who's used Copilot in the cloud, or ChatGPT, or other sorts of tools, they're amazing, right? With what they can come back with in just, you know, seconds in most cases. But we needed that AI to be running in the background, and we needed to train the AI to learn how we work, right? And if we think about it, I talked about my 900 emails I'm sitting on still right now that haven't been read, I would love to have my device be able to start to plow through those, right? Knowing that these are the things that are most important to me, and as I do my work every day, as I answer other emails, as I type and create a PowerPoint, whatever, the AI is learning how I work, what words and language that I use, what's important to me, and maybe what's not so important to me. And so having that running in the background all the time, the AI just gets better and better at understanding you, how you work, how you operate, so then, when you start to use tools like, say, Outlook, and you start to reply to an email, it's going to start to come up and say, "Hey, you wrote an email like this two weeks ago, here's all that language that you used, you want to just copy and paste it in? And you also use these two files, you attached this video, and you attached this PDF, do you want to attach those as well?" Right? So instead of me going, "Wow, who did I write that email to? Where is it?" Boom, it comes up in front of me. And so a lot of that mind numbing task can now be done by the actual computer, right? I believe what the computer should be doing.
Erin
I love this because... Hi, super guilty of searching for an email that's going to take me one minute to reply to, but I've searched for it for 10 minutes, like, 100% done that so many times, and so this leads into our next topic, which was really about unburdening workers, and I think you've kind of addressed how that's going to happen. What other ways are we going to be allowing workers to do better, not more? (laughs)
Michael
Oh, absolutely. So as these Copilot+ devices get deployed, as our workers start to begin using them, as I start to begin using them, I can't wait to get my hands on mine, mine's coming in the next week or so, because these are some of those cool things I'm looking for. Some of the feature sets that are in these are things like you just described. There's a feature called Recall that Microsoft is in the midst of getting ready to deploy that is just that, right? You were in a website, and you saw this red truck, but you can't remember what the website was when you looked at it, boy, you can use Recall and say, "Hey, in the last two weeks, show me all the websites that had a red truck in them," and it will go find them, right? It's kind of wild how this works. But the way that we speed this up, right? Where we aren't going out and searching and trying to figure out where that was, that minute to write something, right? (laughs) That took you 10 minutes to go through, now you've got it in seconds. Recall is one of those key features that I think is going to be just dramatic for almost everyone who uses a PC. The other things that are really kind of cool that I think will start to unburden, right? I don't know about you, but I do a lot of work outside of the US as well, and I have a lot of family outside of the US, they speak languages that I don't speak very well, and so being able to actually take, you know, what AI does well, which is language, images, et cetera, bring those in, and start to provide live captions on almost anything we do, right? So think of any video you're watching, you watch this video and it's in Turkish, and you go, "I have no idea what they're saying, but they're laughing and having fun, I want to know." You can immediately... You can capture just the pieces of that video if you want, bring it into your device, and then, it will live caption that for you. Inside of our teams applications, Zoom, et cetera, being able to live caption whatever you're doing to whatever language you want to whoever is on this call, right? We have those same sorts of issues when I'm working with some of the folks at Insight in Canada who use French, right?
Erin
Totally.
Michael
And my French's is... (indistinct) It's very, very weak, very small. The ability to... (indistinct) Is great, yeah.
Erin
Yeah, no, and I... When... You know, when I think about this, Michael, I think about the sort of emotional relief that comes from having these tools, "Okay, I don't have to worry so much about remembering absolutely everything before. I don't have to worry so much about whether or not I'm going to be able to communicate properly." That takes a weight off of our shoulders and allows us to be more creative and thoughtful and collaborative. Do you agree?
Michael
Oh, absolutely. Dead on, right? And honestly, right? We want to do the work, typically, that is more creative, that rote, repetitive sort of work for the vast majority of us, particularly in the work that we all do using a device, we typically want to do more of that creative work. And so eliminating a lot of this repetitive task sort of thing, oh, hugely unburdening, right? And to your point, I think those are the things, when we can take those off our shoulders, that's when using a computer becomes fun, it becomes absolutely rewarding, and we achieve more, right? Utilizing the devices the way they should be used.
Erin
Totally. And that actually leads us to a great sort of segue here. When we're talking about what people are saying, and how they're using these devices, maybe you can give us a little bit of insight into what is the feedback from employees using these AI tools on Copilot+ PCs?
Michael
Oh, great question. And honestly, we're starting to get some of that from some of the Insight employees who are starting to utilize these tools, right? We actually deployed over 500 devices well before these were released into the wild back in June. And so back through March through May, we got this control group to start to utilize some of these new features like the Recall and the AI capabilities that are built into Copilot+. And with this new technology, we have so much better battery life, right? I travel about 250,000 miles a year domestically. I'm on the road all the time, right? And so, you know, having a device that could last more than a couple of hours on battery is incredibly important. But to do so, and still have all this power to run what I need it to do, was incredibly important. And so what we heard back from some of these employees were, "It gives me my time back in the workday, the things that I want to do," right? "My apps just work and it performs screamingly fast," right? Some of this technology, it is so much faster than what you've ever used before, it's wild how quickly it works. The tasks are so much easier to do as I'm getting these reminders, or thoughtful sort of guidance, right? Of directionally what I could do. And to be able to do them on the device and not be connected, we heard, like, "I can't believe that I can use all these AI tools offline," you know? And using Copilot to help you write something or to search for something, and to do so when you aren't connected to the internet is super valuable, you know? I travel on planes all the time. Just last night, I was trying to do some work and trying to use some of the tools online, and while I'm connected the entire flight, the connection is so poor it takes forever to do anything online, so doing it all self-contained, incredibly valuable. And so those are some of the pieces we're hearing.
Erin
I love that. So once you have your new device, are you just going to be walking through the airport just, like, in front of everyone working? (people laughing) "Look how productive I am!" (Erin laughing) I love it. I love it.
Michael
Yes, no, god, being able to be productive on an airplane to me is, like, game changing, right?
Erin
Totally. Totally.
Michael
Yes, absolutely.
Erin
Yeah, absolutely. And you did share that 77% of user groups did not want to give up those new features, which I 100% understand. (laughs)
Michael
Absolutely, right? Once... And I think that's what we're going to see as more of these get deployed, and I know Insight is doing some great things in providing proof of concept devices to their customers. I know what we're going to hear are those same things, right? "Oh, my gosh, I do not want to give this device up, and I can't believe how fast it is, and how long this battery lasts." Those are the things that we're hearing already directly from some of the first deployed users at Insight.
Erin
This is so exciting, and what a game changer for everyone. And Michael, I'm so grateful for you for joining us today to share your insights around this exciting advancement in technology. I can't wait to get hands on one myself. (laughs)
Michael
We can't wait to get you one either, Erin, absolutely.
Erin
Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you again so much for being here and talking with us today. Your insights and expertise certainly have been of value to our viewers. And thank you for joining us today. If you would like to learn more about the Copilot+ PCs, you can visit our website, and we've included a link to the Qualcomm partner page in today's show notes so you can visit there for more information. And again, my name is Erin Hazen, and on behalf of Insight, thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to tech talking again with you very soon. Thanks again, Michael, have a great day.
Michael
Thank you. Take care, Erin.
Erin
Thank you.
Client Solutions Executive, Insight
Erin is passionate about supporting clients and helping organizations thrive by leveraging digital transformation. Throughout her career, she’s made it a priority to develop meaningful connections — whether that’s through events, leadership opportunities, marketing initiatives, or connecting over coffee. Erin is an intuitive and attentive leader and collaborator who establishes and fosters trust relationships with clients, teammates, and stakeholders alike.
Director, North America Commercial Channels, Qualcomm
Mike has over 25 years of IT experience, starting at Gateway Computers and HP, where he led initiatives in business development, product management, and emerging technologies. In his current role at Qualcomm, he oversees the Snapdragon North America Commercial Channel team, focusing on aligning new Snapdragon X series compute processors with the needs of B2B user groups and use cases, providing training, marketing, and enablement resources for North America channels and distribution.
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