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Apple's AI work is decent for what it is, and their AI hardware is fine too, but so much of this article is just weird. It starts by talking about how until re

Apple's AI work is decent for what it is, and their AI hardware is fine too, but so much of this article is just weird. It starts by talking about how until recently Apple wasn't doing AI work where it needed to be. Then there's the weird excerpt where he claims Google is “not known for shipping consumer experiences that are used by hundreds of millions of people.” The author then raises the legitimate point that AI benefits from having lots of data to train on, but then quotes an answer by Giannandrea to a different question, which includes him stating that bigger models aren't more accurate than smaller ones. The point that on-device inference is more responsive is valid but not unique to Apple; the article says “Android phones don't do nearly as wide an array of machine learning tasks locally”, but I don't think this is true.

plutonorm 6y ago
Was it written by gpt3?
jolux 6y ago
Apple’s chips are way better so whether they’re doing more locally or not they have the headroom to do a lot more. I would agree with that characterization of Google. They have a very small handful of successes and an enormous pile of failures that they’ve discarded. They give every impression of not really knowing what to do. I think Giannandrea was also referring specifically to the kinds of experiences Apple can provide on the iOS and iPadOS platform because of their high end hardware and deep software integration. Google has yet to replicate that, and even seem to be bored with Android recently: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/08/05/wear-os-music https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/08/05/wear-os-music
- IshKebab 6y ago
  What AI failures have Google had? Google Home is much better than Siri or Alexa. The camera feature in Google Translate works really well. Their new auto subtitles on Android work really well. Searching photos for objects works really well. The only thing I can think of is that think they demoed that would call restaurants to book them for you, but that was clearly highly experimental, and it's not like Apple has done that.
  - tedeh 6y ago
    https://github.com/elsamuko/Shirt-without-Stripes https://github.com/elsamuko/Shirt-without-Stripes
    - IshKebab 6y ago
      Ok what's your point? Does Apple's search engine work for this query?
  - jolux 6y ago
    None of those are at risk of taking over as a revenue stream from ads on search and YouTube, is my point. You're right that it's cool stuff but right now it is being subsidized by a staggeringly more profitable business. I'm skeptical of their ability to pivot away from the dependency on search, which is good enough, obviously, but they seem to have higher aspirations of which they consistently fall short. I really do want to see them succeed I guess I'm just overall disappointed with where they're at right now and I think they've somewhat overhyped it. I'm not a voice assistants person, I disable Siri personally.
- Veedrac 6y ago
  Apple's AI accelerator is meaningfully better than the Snapdragon 855's, but way behind the 865's. > I would agree with that characterization of Google. No. It's fine to dislike Google's stuff, but words have meanings. The claim that Google doesn't ship ‘consumer experiences’ to hundreds of millions of people is objectively false.
  - jolux 6y ago
    The 865 is a generation newer than the chips Apple has released. I'll wait and see what happens come September and October of this year. >No. It's fine to dislike Google's stuff, but words have meanings. The claim that Google doesn't ship ‘consumer experiences’ to hundreds of millions of people is objectively false. Sure, they have some experience. But their core business is not shipping experiences that consumers pay them for. That is all.
Joeri 6y ago
I found the conflation between training and running models very confusing or even disingenuous. The whole thing about evaluating a model frame by frame with low latency local on the device, that is a good point, but then having that as a follow-up to why they don’t train the models with lots of data on the server ... well, I don’t really know what to make of that.

plutonorm 6y ago

Was it written by gpt3?

jolux 6y ago

Apple’s chips are way better so whether they’re doing more locally or not they have the headroom to do a lot more. I would agree with that characterization of Google. They have a very small handful of successes and an enormous pile of failures that they’ve discarded. They give every impression of not really knowing what to do. I think Giannandrea was also referring specifically to the kinds of experiences Apple can provide on the iOS and iPadOS platform because of their high end hardware and deep software integration. Google has yet to replicate that, and even seem to be bored with Android recently: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/08/05/wear-os-music https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/08/05/wear-os-music

IshKebab 6y ago
What AI failures have Google had? Google Home is much better than Siri or Alexa. The camera feature in Google Translate works really well. Their new auto subtitles on Android work really well. Searching photos for objects works really well. The only thing I can think of is that think they demoed that would call restaurants to book them for you, but that was clearly highly experimental, and it's not like Apple has done that.
- tedeh 6y ago
  https://github.com/elsamuko/Shirt-without-Stripes https://github.com/elsamuko/Shirt-without-Stripes
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    Ok what's your point? Does Apple's search engine work for this query?
- jolux 6y ago
  None of those are at risk of taking over as a revenue stream from ads on search and YouTube, is my point. You're right that it's cool stuff but right now it is being subsidized by a staggeringly more profitable business. I'm skeptical of their ability to pivot away from the dependency on search, which is good enough, obviously, but they seem to have higher aspirations of which they consistently fall short. I really do want to see them succeed I guess I'm just overall disappointed with where they're at right now and I think they've somewhat overhyped it. I'm not a voice assistants person, I disable Siri personally.
Veedrac 6y ago
Apple's AI accelerator is meaningfully better than the Snapdragon 855's, but way behind the 865's. > I would agree with that characterization of Google. No. It's fine to dislike Google's stuff, but words have meanings. The claim that Google doesn't ship ‘consumer experiences’ to hundreds of millions of people is objectively false.
- jolux 6y ago
  The 865 is a generation newer than the chips Apple has released. I'll wait and see what happens come September and October of this year. >No. It's fine to dislike Google's stuff, but words have meanings. The claim that Google doesn't ship ‘consumer experiences’ to hundreds of millions of people is objectively false. Sure, they have some experience. But their core business is not shipping experiences that consumers pay them for. That is all.

Joeri 6y ago

I found the conflation between training and running models very confusing or even disingenuous. The whole thing about evaluating a model frame by frame with low latency local on the device, that is a good point, but then having that as a follow-up to why they don’t train the models with lots of data on the server ... well, I don’t really know what to make of that.