MKBHD on the future of tech & his most-recommended laptop

We recently spoke to YouTuber MKBHD during his appearance at the R&A Open Invitational, where he revealed his opinion on Threads, AI, and his most-recommended laptop.

Marques Brownlee is one of the hottest tech YouTubers out there, with over a decade of videos under his belt, in addition to over 17 million subscribers on his main channel. Starting at a young age, Brownlee has been at the forefront of new consumer tech releases and has even interviewed the likes of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and more.

We had the opportunity to chat with Brownlee during his appearance at the R&A Open held in the UK, where he reveals his most recommended laptop, his opinion on new social platforms, streaming, and much more.

MKBHD on Social media platform wars

Elon Musk

With Meta’s social media platform Threads being one of the hottest topics around, Brownlee shared: “Having such a close-knit connection with Instagram [made joining] Threads a social event. It was so frictionless and easy.”

But, after enjoying some time in the sun, the Threads userbase dropped off of the platform massively, Brownlee continues: “Obviously, everyone was engaging the first few days, but what remains? And how does that compare to Twitter? So I’m curious, to see who stays on Threads, who actually continues to engage, because it has the potential, obviously,”

But, the social media platform wars are not over, with Twitter’s rebranding to X, in addition to massive changes for the Elon Musk-owned giant. “I still use Twitter a lot. I think that the big milestone that was really interesting was creator payouts actually sort of starting to happen.” Brownlee comments, after the company revealed that it would be paying users to post tweets if they attain a certain number of impressions per month. “Basically, any platform that does this creates a wave of people incentivized by making money on the platform to use it more.”

“Every time Elon tweets about traffic on Twitter being at an all-time high, it kind of doesn’t surprise me.” The YouTuber concluded.

Current AI lawsuits will “set the precedent” for future tech

Generative AI applications like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly are at an inflection point with the wider tech industry, as companies rally to develop AI software of their own. With specific AI models scraping everything from works of art, books and other data. “It creates like a tonne of questions around it like, how do you give credit?” the tech YouTuber said.

“…we’re literally right at the beginning of it. So it’s hard to define what it’s going to turn into. But once we get these first lawsuits, and first question marks out of the way, then that sort of skews the rest of how the scraping happens.” Brownlee states.

The YouTuber also made a video about AI in late 2022 about AI art, and its implications and ethics. Needless to say, given how early all of the technology is currently, we’ll be waiting a while before the ethical kinks get ironed out on AI.

X86 vs ARM & the future of computing

Apple’s M series chips have made waves in the years since their debut. Now on M2, the laptop showcases dominant power and efficiency when compared to their traditional x86 counterparts, which are much more power-hungry. With the Mac Pro not being able to utilize its PCI slots for dedicated graphics cards, we posed Brownlee with a curious question: Will graphics cards be going away any time soon?

“…discrete GPUs are at the opposite of efficiency. They’re just brute forcing as much hardware power into a box as you possibly can. And I still think there’s going to be a market for that for a long time.”

There are multiple uses for dedicated graphics cards, such as AI, Gaming, and 3D rendering workloads taken on by movie studios. But, Brownlee also notes: “The fraction of people or users that require that GPU power is shrinking with every generation.”

Brownlee reveals his most-recommended laptop

YouTube: MKBHD

Given that we have the vast tech expertise at our disposal during the interview, we asked Marques what device he recommends for an average user with $1000, and his answer might surprise you.

“I feel like the go-to right now is like the M1 MacBook Air at $999. [It’s a] safe efficient, good battery life, general computing thing.”

He further commented on Apple’s WWDC 2023 gaming announcements: “We’ll see how many developers start to take advantage of it and make cool things out of it. But yeah, could be an interesting thing”. Meanwhile, gamers can take advantage of it, and get their favorite titles up and running on Mac silicon already, but it is a challenging process.

MKBHD has no streaming plans for now: “It’s a whole other skillset”

With the world of online media expanding with live streaming platforms like Twitch, Kick, TikTok, and YouTube shorts, we questioned Brownlee on if he had any plans for migrating or posting on other platforms. “I always thought, like streaming is a whole nother skill set that I don’t necessarily have.” the YouTuber replied. But some creators like CDawgVA have made a very smooth transition from YouTube to Twitch and live streaming platforms in the past.

“So I like watching live streams, but I’m not doing a tonne of streaming myself, but I do appreciate the competition because we see Twitch making all kinds of moves and head-scratching decisions, which means there are open doors for platforms to come take a bite out of that and offer something better for creators, so that’s always gonna be interesting to me.”

Expect more MKBHD merch in the future

Given that Brownlee recently launched a shoe, and is firmly in the content creator-merch game, we quizzd him on if there are any projects he is working on currently. “Yes, period.” he responded, before divulging what the process looks like for getting a product out to market.

“The shoe, for example, took like two years with iteration and planning and stuff in the background. Obviously, that’s a learning process for me, too, because it depends on how much experience you have. I had never made a shoe before. So it took longer.” Marques replied.

“We learned a lot”, he continues. before noting that there are all kinds of new ideas swirling around in his head for new physical products.

In the meantime, the YouTuber seemingly will have plenty to talk about, whether that be the future of our consumer electronics, AI, and much more to come.