4 ms·

> It's an interesting (maybe very Apple) choice to build from the ground up instead of partnering with existing frameworks to provide first class support in the

by davedx 3y ago

> It's an interesting (maybe very Apple) choice to build from the ground up instead of partnering with existing frameworks to provide first class support in them. It smells of a somewhat panicked attempt to prepare for WWDC to me. Apple has really dropped the ball on AI and now they're trying to catch up.

pizza 3y ago
Wouldn’t WWDC-related endeavors be more product-facing? I’m not so sure this has to do with their efforts to incorporate ai into products, and tbh I would say their ai research has been pretty strong generally speaking.
- davedx 3y ago
  I expect that a lot of WWDC will be Apple trying to get more developers to build AI products for their platforms, because at the moment, Apple products don't have much AI. The other tech companies have integrated user facing LLM products into a significant part of their ecosystem - Google and Microsoft have them up front and center in search. Apple's AI offerings for end users are what exactly? The camera photos app that does minor tweaks to photos (composing from multiple frames). What else actually is there in the first party ecosystem that significantly leverages AI? Siri is still the same trash it's been for the last 10 years - in fact IMO it's become even less useful, often refusing to even do web searches for me. (I WANT Siri to work very well). So because their first party AI products are so non-existent, I think WWDC is a desperate attempt by Apple to get third party developers to build compelling AI products. I say desperate because they're already a year behind the competition in this space. (I can imagine they'll be trying to get developers to build Vision Pro software too, though I hear sales there have collapsed so again, way too little, too late)
  - niek_pas 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "AI products", and why you think Apple needs them for their platforms.
  - tzakrajs 3y ago
    They have tons of computer vision, NN inference and natural language processing in their products. It's reductive to say Apple products don't have much AI.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    Can you be more specific? What AI products are present in other ecosystems (eg. Android, Samsung, whatever) and missing from Apple? Honest question: I find the platform distinction largely meaningless in most cases apart from “what your phone looks like” and “can you side load apps”…
  - lynx23 3y ago
    I am guessing you are not familiar with the AI-powered vision features that already ship since a few years. Mostly accessibility related, so I am not surprised you missed it.
    - devinprater 3y ago
      Yep. Google, the AI company, only recently launched image descriptions in TalkBack, which VoiceOver has had for years now. Google still doesn't have Screen Recognition, which basically does OCR and image/UI classification to make inaccessible apps more accessible.
      - lynx23 3y ago
        Don't get me even started on TalkBack and Android. It was never on-par with VoiceOver, and is still a few years behind... However, VoiceOver is also getting slowly, but surely, worse and worse over time when it comes to small subtle bugs...
  - matthewmacleod 3y ago
    For one thing, I can search for any text I’ve ever take a photo of. Finding a picture of someone I took 20+ years ago by searching for a single work I remember on their t-shirt is pretty cool, and is all done on-device. I think it’s important to remember that there are a bunch of actual useful AI-driven features out there that aren’t just GenAI chatbots.
audunw 3y ago
I don’t get the idea that Apple dropped the ball on AI. They were fairly early with adding neural engine hardware to their chips and have been using ML extensively on-device for a long time now They haven’t put an LLM assistant out there. But they don’t make their own search engine either so I don’t think “online LLM assistant” is something they’ll ever put much effort into unless it’s part of a bigger effort to launch their own AI-based search engine as well. As for generative AI I don’t think the quality is up to a level that would be reasonable for Apple. The only area where i would expect Apple to keep up is the kind of Copilot integration Microsoft is working on. And we know Apple is working on on-device AI assistant, and probably have for a long time. It’ll be launched when they can get good quality results on-device. Something nobody else has achieved anyway, so we can’t say that they’re behind anyone yet.
- chrsw 3y ago
  >I don’t get the idea that Apple dropped the ball on AI. That's the public perception. Maybe due to them not getting in on a quick cash grab off the LLM hype wave?
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    I share this perception for two reasons: 1) Siri 2) Dearth of published AI research
    - chrsw 3y ago
      I agree with 1. For 2, have they ever been a company big into research? They're very consumer focused and it can take time to integrate new tech into consumer products at scale. Especially the way Apple likes to do it: polished and seamlessly integrated into the rest of their ecosystem.
      - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
        I would say not doing AI research (or buying another big company that does) is tantamount to dropping the ball on AI, if it turns out that AI is a capability they should have had and must have to succeed. You could argue that publishing research is not the same thing as doing it. But they don't seem to have done much of it until fairly recently. I agree that Apple does less research than other big tech companies. But they do it where they think it matters. Their M-series CPUs are more than just integration and polishing. And they have been doing some research in health AI as well, I think.
throw0101c 3y ago
> Apple has really dropped the ball on AI and now they're trying to catch up. Apple put a neural engine on-die in the A11 back in 2017: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine The A-derived M-series chips had them from the beginning in 2020: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Other_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Other_features Seems like they've been doing machine learning for a while now.
- jdewerd 3y ago
  They've been using them, too. Auto OCR so selecting text in images Just Works, image enhancements, Siri. I'm sure LLM Siri is in the works. Scanning your photos for CSAM. Let's hope that last one is more reliable than Siri :/
  - thealistra 3y ago
    Wasn’t csam ultimately rolled back? And wasn’t it not Ai based but hash based?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kerbonut 3y ago
      They added it back in as an optional thing for child accounts managed in a family in messages. It sure sounds like it's AI based and not hash based in this case.

by davedx 3y ago

pizza 3y ago

Wouldn’t WWDC-related endeavors be more product-facing? I’m not so sure this has to do with their efforts to incorporate ai into products, and tbh I would say their ai research has been pretty strong generally speaking.

davedx 3y ago
I expect that a lot of WWDC will be Apple trying to get more developers to build AI products for their platforms, because at the moment, Apple products don't have much AI. The other tech companies have integrated user facing LLM products into a significant part of their ecosystem - Google and Microsoft have them up front and center in search. Apple's AI offerings for end users are what exactly? The camera photos app that does minor tweaks to photos (composing from multiple frames). What else actually is there in the first party ecosystem that significantly leverages AI? Siri is still the same trash it's been for the last 10 years - in fact IMO it's become even less useful, often refusing to even do web searches for me. (I WANT Siri to work very well). So because their first party AI products are so non-existent, I think WWDC is a desperate attempt by Apple to get third party developers to build compelling AI products. I say desperate because they're already a year behind the competition in this space. (I can imagine they'll be trying to get developers to build Vision Pro software too, though I hear sales there have collapsed so again, way too little, too late)
- niek_pas 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "AI products", and why you think Apple needs them for their platforms.
- tzakrajs 3y ago
  They have tons of computer vision, NN inference and natural language processing in their products. It's reductive to say Apple products don't have much AI.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Can you be more specific? What AI products are present in other ecosystems (eg. Android, Samsung, whatever) and missing from Apple? Honest question: I find the platform distinction largely meaningless in most cases apart from “what your phone looks like” and “can you side load apps”…
- lynx23 3y ago
  I am guessing you are not familiar with the AI-powered vision features that already ship since a few years. Mostly accessibility related, so I am not surprised you missed it.
  - devinprater 3y ago
    Yep. Google, the AI company, only recently launched image descriptions in TalkBack, which VoiceOver has had for years now. Google still doesn't have Screen Recognition, which basically does OCR and image/UI classification to make inaccessible apps more accessible.
    - lynx23 3y ago
      Don't get me even started on TalkBack and Android. It was never on-par with VoiceOver, and is still a few years behind... However, VoiceOver is also getting slowly, but surely, worse and worse over time when it comes to small subtle bugs...
- matthewmacleod 3y ago
  For one thing, I can search for any text I’ve ever take a photo of. Finding a picture of someone I took 20+ years ago by searching for a single work I remember on their t-shirt is pretty cool, and is all done on-device. I think it’s important to remember that there are a bunch of actual useful AI-driven features out there that aren’t just GenAI chatbots.

audunw 3y ago

I don’t get the idea that Apple dropped the ball on AI. They were fairly early with adding neural engine hardware to their chips and have been using ML extensively on-device for a long time now They haven’t put an LLM assistant out there. But they don’t make their own search engine either so I don’t think “online LLM assistant” is something they’ll ever put much effort into unless it’s part of a bigger effort to launch their own AI-based search engine as well. As for generative AI I don’t think the quality is up to a level that would be reasonable for Apple. The only area where i would expect Apple to keep up is the kind of Copilot integration Microsoft is working on. And we know Apple is working on on-device AI assistant, and probably have for a long time. It’ll be launched when they can get good quality results on-device. Something nobody else has achieved anyway, so we can’t say that they’re behind anyone yet.

chrsw 3y ago
>I don’t get the idea that Apple dropped the ball on AI. That's the public perception. Maybe due to them not getting in on a quick cash grab off the LLM hype wave?
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  I share this perception for two reasons: 1) Siri 2) Dearth of published AI research
  - chrsw 3y ago
    I agree with 1. For 2, have they ever been a company big into research? They're very consumer focused and it can take time to integrate new tech into consumer products at scale. Especially the way Apple likes to do it: polished and seamlessly integrated into the rest of their ecosystem.
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      I would say not doing AI research (or buying another big company that does) is tantamount to dropping the ball on AI, if it turns out that AI is a capability they should have had and must have to succeed. You could argue that publishing research is not the same thing as doing it. But they don't seem to have done much of it until fairly recently. I agree that Apple does less research than other big tech companies. But they do it where they think it matters. Their M-series CPUs are more than just integration and polishing. And they have been doing some research in health AI as well, I think.

throw0101c 3y ago

> Apple has really dropped the ball on AI and now they're trying to catch up. Apple put a neural engine on-die in the A11 back in 2017: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine The A-derived M-series chips had them from the beginning in 2020: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Other_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Other_features Seems like they've been doing machine learning for a while now.

jdewerd 3y ago
They've been using them, too. Auto OCR so selecting text in images Just Works, image enhancements, Siri. I'm sure LLM Siri is in the works. Scanning your photos for CSAM. Let's hope that last one is more reliable than Siri :/
- thealistra 3y ago
  Wasn’t csam ultimately rolled back? And wasn’t it not Ai based but hash based?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kerbonut 3y ago
    They added it back in as an optional thing for child accounts managed in a family in messages. It sure sounds like it's AI based and not hash based in this case.