4 ms·

It's crazy to say Apple is late to AI or missing the boat. Yes, OpenAI gets a lot of attention to the extent LLM's could displace search - except search is bas

by w10-1 3y ago

It's crazy to say Apple is late to AI or missing the boat. Yes, OpenAI gets a lot of attention to the extent LLM's could displace search - except search is based on ads from links and selling data, which are even less promising for AI. "Big" AI now is stuck with organization-defining cloud bills for training and huge players are scrambling to push software into hardware. They are barely getting started on the integration. OpenAI has been talking about AGI as it lines up commercial partners across the globe and up and down the stack. But AGI is no more realistic than crypto taking over from central banks. It's possible in theory, but not in fact. Meanwhile, Apple has had neural processors on devices for 4+ years; AI features have figured in every subsequent marketing campaign. And VisionOS augmented reality provides a whole new domain for AI utility, explicitly targeted not just for play, but also for work, as remote work becomes the rule instead of the exception. Plus, Apple is the only safety- and privacy- enforcing ecosystem in existence.

ErneX 3y ago
Yes, 1st neural engine was in the A11 Bionic, 2017.
parineum 3y ago
> OpenAI has been talking about AGI as it lines up commercial partners across the globe and up and down the stack. But AGI is no more realistic than crypto taking over from central banks. It's possible in theory, but not in fact. At some level it feels like the pearl clutching about GPT4 as it relates to AGI is astroturfed.
- jakderrida 3y ago
  I'm inclined to agree with you on that to an extent. When I hear Sam Altman talking about it like it's inevitable and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, just seems a little cringey. Don't get me wrong. I like the guy, but it is cringey.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    The idea that they could create such a thing both enhances their reputation and is something they can use to try and get legislation to prevent anyone from catching up with them. “How could you trust random people to do this safely? It needs to be illegal and something only we can be trusted to make money o… I mean use responsibly.” It’s an attempt at regulatory capture.
__loam 3y ago
I still think LLMs displacing search will have hugely negative consequences for the heath of the internet. Yes, a lot of Google results are seo garbage now, but there's value in interacting directly with the source of a piece of information. LLMs alienate people from those sources, and that threatens the structure of the information economy on the internet. Why share anything if OpenAI is just going to train on your data and cut you out of the transaction?
- jakderrida 3y ago
  > but there's value in interacting directly with the source of a piece of information. Well, who said they're just gonna abandon it altogether. I'm not going to. Those of us that make use of all the google operators sure as hell ain't abandoning it. If anything, it will provide augmented results where appropriate and explicit results where appropriate. Otherwise, we'll switch to a competitor that does.
alpaca128 3y ago
Yes, my Apple devices are the first where I felt AI was integrated for something actually useful. I can just select and copy text in pictures as if it was the most normal thing. I can search pictures based on their content, again including visible text. And it runs locally. Too bad it only seems to work on the latin alphabet. With greek letters, chinese symbols etc I get nothing at best.
- wharvle 3y ago
  > Yes, my Apple devices are the first where I felt AI was integrated for something actually useful. I can just select and copy text in pictures as if it was the most normal thing. I can search pictures based on their content, again including visible text Apple’s so good at pushing out these kind of “little” features that immediately feel like a kind of bare minimum a system should do. Having to use a system where these two things weren’t automatic, quick, and practically flawless would feel like taking a big step back. See also: Live Photos. I wouldn’t even consider any kind of phone or camera without that feature, now that I’ve experienced it. [edit] context of how good it is: some days back there was a link here that went to an image with a bunch of text on it. I followed the link, read it, and did my usual compulsive-text-selection thing I do when reading on the web. I didn’t realize I’d been looking at an image, rather than html, until I came back to the thread and read complaints about it. Double checked, yep, it was an image.
- GaggiX 3y ago
  I mean I have these features too on my Xiaomi phone and it does work with other alphabets and chinese characters locally.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    That's great, but I wanted a small phone with long update support. Xiaomi isn't bad in that regard for Android standards though. Either way I also get that feature on the laptop, where it's more useful to me overall.
- Scubabear68 3y ago
  I was really surprised and happy to be able to take a picture of my son’s hand written Christmas list and the phone made the text selectable with very few errors.
troupo 3y ago
> It's crazy to say Apple is late to AI or missing the boat. Apple is always "late to X". Their approach to all things ML so far has always been "can we run this on device". And very few, if any, of the latest LLMs can be run on the device reliaby, and without sacrificing device resources. > OpenAI has been talking about AGI Of course they have. Precisely because they "line up commercial partners" --- Edit: previous version said, confusingly, "AI is always late to X". Also fixed typos and cleaned up sentences
MaKey 3y ago
> Plus, Apple is the only safety- and privacy- enforcing ecosystem in existence. You mean the company that wanted to ship CSAM detection for iCloud uploads with iOS, which was only abandoned because of the huge backlash? Or the company that's implementing privacy features which neatly don't affect its own apps, effectively boosting their ad platform? [1] [1]: https://adguard.com/en/blog/apple-tracking-ads-business.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/apple-tracking-ads-business.html
- movedx 3y ago
  CSAM was pushed on big tech by most governments.
  - MaKey 3y ago
    It's important to know and keep in mind that governments didn't (re)discover this topic on their own, it is being pushed massively by lobbyists: https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-ylva-johansson-csam-csa-regulation-european-commission-encryption-privacy-surveillance/ https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-y... Apple wasn't required to implement any CSAM detection, so why did they do it? Saying it was pushed onto big tech by governments when there is no law demanding it feels apologetic to me.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      > Apple wasn't required to implement any CSAM detection, so why did they do it? As things were, Apple was able to serve up peoples images when presented with a warrant. If they went to end to end encryption for photo libraries they wouldn’t be able to do that. And I can basically guarantee something would happen and there would be claims about how “Apple protects child molesters”. It’s just too juicy, and we saw the ones about Apple protecting terrorists by not unlocking phones. So I think they tried to come up with a solution. Something that would let them do end to end encryption but be able to show they’re not protecting child pornographers.
      - 3y ago

by w10-1 3y ago

ErneX 3y ago

Yes, 1st neural engine was in the A11 Bionic, 2017.

parineum 3y ago

> OpenAI has been talking about AGI as it lines up commercial partners across the globe and up and down the stack. But AGI is no more realistic than crypto taking over from central banks. It's possible in theory, but not in fact. At some level it feels like the pearl clutching about GPT4 as it relates to AGI is astroturfed.

jakderrida 3y ago
I'm inclined to agree with you on that to an extent. When I hear Sam Altman talking about it like it's inevitable and he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, just seems a little cringey. Don't get me wrong. I like the guy, but it is cringey.
- MBCook 3y ago
  The idea that they could create such a thing both enhances their reputation and is something they can use to try and get legislation to prevent anyone from catching up with them. “How could you trust random people to do this safely? It needs to be illegal and something only we can be trusted to make money o… I mean use responsibly.” It’s an attempt at regulatory capture.

__loam 3y ago

I still think LLMs displacing search will have hugely negative consequences for the heath of the internet. Yes, a lot of Google results are seo garbage now, but there's value in interacting directly with the source of a piece of information. LLMs alienate people from those sources, and that threatens the structure of the information economy on the internet. Why share anything if OpenAI is just going to train on your data and cut you out of the transaction?

jakderrida 3y ago
> but there's value in interacting directly with the source of a piece of information. Well, who said they're just gonna abandon it altogether. I'm not going to. Those of us that make use of all the google operators sure as hell ain't abandoning it. If anything, it will provide augmented results where appropriate and explicit results where appropriate. Otherwise, we'll switch to a competitor that does.

alpaca128 3y ago

Yes, my Apple devices are the first where I felt AI was integrated for something actually useful. I can just select and copy text in pictures as if it was the most normal thing. I can search pictures based on their content, again including visible text. And it runs locally. Too bad it only seems to work on the latin alphabet. With greek letters, chinese symbols etc I get nothing at best.

wharvle 3y ago
> Yes, my Apple devices are the first where I felt AI was integrated for something actually useful. I can just select and copy text in pictures as if it was the most normal thing. I can search pictures based on their content, again including visible text Apple’s so good at pushing out these kind of “little” features that immediately feel like a kind of bare minimum a system should do. Having to use a system where these two things weren’t automatic, quick, and practically flawless would feel like taking a big step back. See also: Live Photos. I wouldn’t even consider any kind of phone or camera without that feature, now that I’ve experienced it. [edit] context of how good it is: some days back there was a link here that went to an image with a bunch of text on it. I followed the link, read it, and did my usual compulsive-text-selection thing I do when reading on the web. I didn’t realize I’d been looking at an image, rather than html, until I came back to the thread and read complaints about it. Double checked, yep, it was an image.
GaggiX 3y ago
I mean I have these features too on my Xiaomi phone and it does work with other alphabets and chinese characters locally.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  That's great, but I wanted a small phone with long update support. Xiaomi isn't bad in that regard for Android standards though. Either way I also get that feature on the laptop, where it's more useful to me overall.
Scubabear68 3y ago
I was really surprised and happy to be able to take a picture of my son’s hand written Christmas list and the phone made the text selectable with very few errors.

troupo 3y ago

> It's crazy to say Apple is late to AI or missing the boat. Apple is always "late to X". Their approach to all things ML so far has always been "can we run this on device". And very few, if any, of the latest LLMs can be run on the device reliaby, and without sacrificing device resources. > OpenAI has been talking about AGI Of course they have. Precisely because they "line up commercial partners" --- Edit: previous version said, confusingly, "AI is always late to X". Also fixed typos and cleaned up sentences

MaKey 3y ago

> Plus, Apple is the only safety- and privacy- enforcing ecosystem in existence. You mean the company that wanted to ship CSAM detection for iCloud uploads with iOS, which was only abandoned because of the huge backlash? Or the company that's implementing privacy features which neatly don't affect its own apps, effectively boosting their ad platform? [1] [1]: https://adguard.com/en/blog/apple-tracking-ads-business.html https://adguard.com/en/blog/apple-tracking-ads-business.html

movedx 3y ago
CSAM was pushed on big tech by most governments.
- MaKey 3y ago
  It's important to know and keep in mind that governments didn't (re)discover this topic on their own, it is being pushed massively by lobbyists: https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-ylva-johansson-csam-csa-regulation-european-commission-encryption-privacy-surveillance/ https://fortune.com/europe/2023/09/26/thorn-ashton-kutcher-y... Apple wasn't required to implement any CSAM detection, so why did they do it? Saying it was pushed onto big tech by governments when there is no law demanding it feels apologetic to me.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    > Apple wasn't required to implement any CSAM detection, so why did they do it? As things were, Apple was able to serve up peoples images when presented with a warrant. If they went to end to end encryption for photo libraries they wouldn’t be able to do that. And I can basically guarantee something would happen and there would be claims about how “Apple protects child molesters”. It’s just too juicy, and we saw the ones about Apple protecting terrorists by not unlocking phones. So I think they tried to come up with a solution. Something that would let them do end to end encryption but be able to show they’re not protecting child pornographers.
    - 3y ago