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I feel like Apple is in kind of a different position to the rest of the big tech people and so they can't take generative AI so "lightly". Let me explain. Mill
by jerojero 3y ago
I feel like Apple is in kind of a different position to the rest of the big tech people and so they can't take generative AI so "lightly". Let me explain.
Millions of users use the iPhone. So many more than any hardware that Google might have. But here's the other caveat, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all have their own huge cloud infrastructure while Apple doesn't. This means if Apple were to make a push for generative AI like the rest of the companies are doing it would cost them a lot. Everyone with an iPhone will want to try it, it would be a huge launch.
So... what's the answer to this? Well, it's pretty obvious. Ship small and efficient models that might have much more limited capabilities but still might be good enough particularly if they're well integrated with the rest of the software. Basically make Siri much smarter and capable.
It's kind of what Google has started to do as well with their 8 pro. There's a couple features that run entirely on-device. It's pretty exciting if Apple manages to get something that feels good running on device; that's the kind of machine learning i'm excited about.
- Tagbert 3y agoApple will probably do a hybrid between local and server processing. They will definitely do local where possible but some processing will still need to be done on servers. Apple just signed a deal with Super Micro for a large number of servers. i don’t expect Apple to focus on a clone of ChatGPT or Gemini. They are more likely to use it for photo operations, control of Siri, and to make each of their apps and features work better together.
- prepend 3y agoApple has a massive cloud, but they don’t sell it or really want to sell it. I think they’ll want local because it fits into their profit margins and pushes higher end hardware. Imagine really having a reason to buy an iPhone18Pro or whatever. And I think llms will be able to scale digitally if they are compact enough to run locally (ie, Apple pays for development once, deploys it and then all operational costs are on the client). This is really different from openAI, and other cloud LLMs, where each user has a marginal cost to operate so requires a monthly recurring cost.
- nujabe 3y agoApple does not have the scale of other major cloud providers, the fact they’re not in the cloud game having customers subsidize their cloud costs is why it would cost them a lot.
- prepend 3y agoDefinitely not as big as Amazon or Microsoft, but big enough to do whatever they want regarding AI. I’d expect the private cloud they operate is top 20 in the world just to support all their Apple saas offerings.
- shooker435 3y agoThis is actually not true, they're hosted on GCP. This was leaked and confirmed: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-googles-largest-corporate-customer-for-cloud-storage https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/06/29/apple-is-now-goog...