AI is eating the tech world – and your favourite gadgets are next
From retro consoles to smartphones, nothing is safe from the relentless march of AI
This week, something unusual happened while I was reviewing a gadget. The configuration I’d been sent (12GB RAM/256GB storage) was abruptly discontinued. Not because it was bad, but because of “significant changes in the global memory market”. The product was a retro-gaming handheld, the Retroid Pocket 6. But Retroid had been punched hard in the face by “ongoing shortages and sharply rising energy costs for both RAM and storage”. Meanwhile, the 8GB/128GB model received a price hike, so it could live on.
The silver lining: the Retroid Pocket 6 is still brilliant. 8GB is plenty for most of what anyone would want to do with it. But the ‘sludge, bile and asbestos’ lining is that Retroid is far from alone. What we’re seeing is a creeping, ugly pattern. Barely a week passes without some retro gadget or other getting a kicking from supply chain chaos. Some shoot up in price. Others are sneakily downgraded. A few wink out of existence entirely.
You might not care. Maybe you left classic games back in the 1980s and sit there happily gorging on AAA blockbusters and multi-GB patches. But this mess is coming for you anyway, because AI is systematically killing all our favourite gadgets, one at a time.
Killing time
That might sound hyperbolic, but look around. Check how much the microSD card you bought a year ago cost. Then see how much it would set you back now. (Probably sit down first.) Building a PC and hoping to beef up its RAM? You may need a second mortgage. But surely hard drives are at least safe, right? Apparently not. Western Digital recently announced it ran out of 2026 production capacity. In February. Why? AI. 89% of Western Digital’s revenue now comes from feeding the gaping maw of the data centres powering today’s AI models. Consumers account for a paltry 5%.
That doesn’t mean no hard drives for anyone. (Nor even no Western Digital drives from March onwards.) But it is yet another recent example of the squeeze tightening. It suggests that, eventually, only those with the deepest pockets will be able to source key components modern hardware needs. And guess what? That isn’t you. Nor, increasingly, even tech and gadget companies that lack the cash to bankroll an AI-fuelled moonshot. So that means all the oddball little tech projects that have kept us interested throughout the years while TVs and smartphones converged into identical black rectangles. Weird synths. Tiny computers for tinkerers. The good stuff.
AI(EEEEEEEEEEE)!
This is what I really hate about AI. Sure, there are positive use cases, such as in medicine. But AI giants have funnelled so much cash into this tech bubble that they have no choice but to ram it into every facet of our lives. And that means devouring the resources that make the tech world so much fun.
Companies obsessed with AI overstep, constantly. It’s not enough that you can use AI to remove Uncle Barry from your wedding photos. (You should never have worn the clown costume, Uncle Barry!) These companies want your entire life drenched in AI, because otherwise all those billions invested will look like a very expensive blunder.
The final irony is that, eventually, this will catch even the giants – the biggest companies making the biggest profits. That new smartphone you were thinking about? It will cost more so that it can be packed with AI features that don’t work and that you don’t need.
Unless you post on LinkedIn.
Using short sentences.
Clearly written by AI.
Because that’s not annoying. It’s engagement.
Probably.
Anyway, AI claims it’s here to save the world, but instead it’s set to burn it. And the tech world with it. We’ve grown used to tech becoming cheaper and better all the time, and small projects performing minor miracles on tiny budgets. Something has to give. But it won’t be Big Tech giants busy buying up every component they can to fuel ever-growing mountains of AI slop.
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
