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Is this really a commitment to AI? MLX only enables apple silicon to do things. It feels very little like "we're committed to pushing AI forward" and much more

Is this really a commitment to AI? MLX only enables apple silicon to do things. It feels very little like "we're committed to pushing AI forward" and much more like "we're afraid if we don't do this, frameworks will have middling support for our expensive hardware and developers won't embrace what we're doing and consumer software will have AI pushed to the cloud". Which is to say, it does not feel altruistic commitment, it feels like strategy.

UncleEntity 3y ago
> Which is to say, it does not feel altruistic commitment, it feels like strategy. ...to sell more iThings.
- zamalek 3y ago
  Extend...
dangus 3y ago
On the other hand, you might as well say that about literally anything they make because they happen to be a company that makes their own OS and hardware. We might as well say that Meta isn’t committed to VR/AR because the fruit of their labor is only sold on their own platform, but I think that description wouldn’t give credit where it’s due. Not that I disagree with the idea that Apple is at risk of being left behind. They are bad at cloud like Nintendo is bad at online play.
olliej 3y ago
Yes, a library made to use hardware only works with the hardware it's made to work with. This comment is like saying Nvidia isn't committed to AI because their CUDA libraries only work on Nvidia hardware.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  Nvidia is the single biggest hardware supplier for anything related to AI. Apple's name essentially doesn't come up in conversations about AI. If Nvidia wasn't a meaningful player in the AI space and they put out a library for their hardware, I'd also say it didn't feel like a "commitment".
  - olliej 3y ago
    Almost every apple product produced has included "AI" coprocessors for years at this point, and I would guess they've sold many more of those to many more people than Nvidia has. The limiting factor is the ability of 3rd parties to use that hardware, which is what it seems apple has been trying to do for the last few years.

UncleEntity 3y ago

> Which is to say, it does not feel altruistic commitment, it feels like strategy. ...to sell more iThings.

zamalek 3y ago
Extend...

dangus 3y ago

On the other hand, you might as well say that about literally anything they make because they happen to be a company that makes their own OS and hardware. We might as well say that Meta isn’t committed to VR/AR because the fruit of their labor is only sold on their own platform, but I think that description wouldn’t give credit where it’s due. Not that I disagree with the idea that Apple is at risk of being left behind. They are bad at cloud like Nintendo is bad at online play.

olliej 3y ago

Yes, a library made to use hardware only works with the hardware it's made to work with. This comment is like saying Nvidia isn't committed to AI because their CUDA libraries only work on Nvidia hardware.

bastawhiz 3y ago
Nvidia is the single biggest hardware supplier for anything related to AI. Apple's name essentially doesn't come up in conversations about AI. If Nvidia wasn't a meaningful player in the AI space and they put out a library for their hardware, I'd also say it didn't feel like a "commitment".
- olliej 3y ago
  Almost every apple product produced has included "AI" coprocessors for years at this point, and I would guess they've sold many more of those to many more people than Nvidia has. The limiting factor is the ability of 3rd parties to use that hardware, which is what it seems apple has been trying to do for the last few years.