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Apple and the AI Divide

28 points by GavinAnderegg 2y ago

sandspar 2y ago
>There’s a group of the population that is disgusted by anything related to LLMs or generative AI. I feel genuine concern for this group of people, a group which includes some of my own family members. I worry that they're going to be left behind.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > I feel genuine concern for this group of people, a group which includes some of my own family members. I worry that they're going to be left behind. Such people should simply invest the time that other people waste hyping AI to learn complicated important topics. As soon as the AI bubble bursts, this decision will (hopefully) pay off.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  Is there a learning curve for shutting off your brain and letting the tech giants tl;dr your thinking for you with their version?
- BearOso 2y ago
  During the CES keynotes for AMD and Nvidia yesterday the number of times the phrase "AI" was said was in the thousands. "Disgusted" is the right word. "Embarrassed" is how I felt second-hand for the obvious pandering to the stock market.
  - 486sx33 2y ago
    Smoke and mirrors.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
malshe 2y ago
> Apple seems to be pressured to play catch-up on AI technology, and I feel like this is being driven by activist shareholders instead of people who are focused on products. I get the same sense. When Apple announced their AI features last year, the stock started moving up.
- ulfw 2y ago
  Apple has stopped being product driven. Sadly. It's all about maximising short term profits (see iPhones of the last years) or things top down from the CEO that make little sense (Vision Pro)
  - BenFranklin100 2y ago
    Apple seems ecosystem driven. At the product level, there’s not a big difference between an iPhone and Android phone, except the iPhone integrates well with the Apple Watch, iPad, AirPods, Apple TV, and MacOS. The resulting user experience is good, as is being able to drop into an Apple Store in case of a problem. I see Apple pursuing a long term vision where product integration and privacy are pillars in a seamless, trusted ecosystem.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      The problem is that the shareholders in these kind of companies want exponential growth not matter what, being profitable isn't enough. Since there is a limited amount of people on the planet that can afford Apple at Apple's prices, this eventually hits a ceiling. You don't see Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bang & Olufsen, and similar brands, expecting an exponential growth in sales, year after year.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        AirPod Pros are $160 on sale, regularly, and $200 otherwise. M3 Air 16GB/512GB is $1,100 at Costco, and $800 for an M2 (which is probably good enough for at least 50% of laptop users). iPhones might be a few hundreds more than a Galaxy competitor phone, but the amortize the extra cost over the number of hours people use their phone and it is negligible. Apple TV is a $120 or so, Apple Watch is a few hundreds, HomePods are maybe a couple hundred. I don’t see how anyone can put Apple in a pricing league with > Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bang & Olufsen Very large portions of the population can afford Apple products.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> Blockchains are slow, expensive databases masquerading as a social revolution while functionally being a get-rich-quick scheme. If you consider a blockchain to be (mostly) a "competitor" to a database, you use it wrong. Blockchains and in particular consensus algorithms for blockchains are a solution to a hard problem: reaching a consensus when not all participants can be trusted. For any application that needs this problem solved, blockchain algorithms are to my best knowledge basically the only game in town. These applications are rare, but they do exist - for these blockchain and blockchain consensus algorithms are a godsend. If you have another problem to solve, a blockchain will insanely likely not be the proper solution.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  Can the majority be trusted? 100% of the time? (50 + epsilon)% of blockchain participants can’t be wrong?
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  If I can’t trust someone to pay me I just take payment up front, if they don’t trust me to deliver a product we just don’t do business, no problem. What blockchain solves for is “I don’t trust my peers to agree on what transactions have occurred” which is only a problem for people avoiding banks.
raincole 2y ago
When even Mozilla is introducing AI summarization services, I find it's really hard to blame Apple.
BoredPositron 2y ago
Apple is pretty conservative in their AI approach or am I out of touch? I mean for comparison just look at google, samsung or microsoft.
- _mlbt 2y ago
  I think that’s because Apple has been playing the long game on AI. They introduced the neural engine with the A11 processor on the iPhone 8. They can do a lot of things on device that their competitors have to do in the cloud. Many of their AI features focus on practical everyday use cases instead of big flashy demos and constantly in your face things like Microsoft Copilot.
486sx33 2y ago
I’d say this is a very general article that isn’t well sourced or referenced.
- GavinAnderegg 2y ago
  I'm curious what additional sources or references you would like to see added.
imtringued 2y ago
I wonder why AI is used for these random things that nobody needs, instead of immediately useful things like calibrating microphone volume. I'm so tired of constantly redoing the echo tests, because the software is forgetting what microphone I used last time. Then there are also people who don't bother with the echo tests (I used to be that guy) and you can't understand what they are saying because of volume clipping.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

28 points by GavinAnderegg 2y ago

>There’s a group of the population that is disgusted by anything related to LLMs or generative AI. I feel genuine concern for this group of people, a group which includes some of my own family members. I worry that they're going to be left behind.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> I feel genuine concern for this group of people, a group which includes some of my own family members. I worry that they're going to be left behind. Such people should simply invest the time that other people waste hyping AI to learn complicated important topics. As soon as the AI bubble bursts, this decision will (hopefully) pay off.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Is there a learning curve for shutting off your brain and letting the tech giants tl;dr your thinking for you with their version?
BearOso 2y ago
During the CES keynotes for AMD and Nvidia yesterday the number of times the phrase "AI" was said was in the thousands. "Disgusted" is the right word. "Embarrassed" is how I felt second-hand for the obvious pandering to the stock market.
- 486sx33 2y ago
  Smoke and mirrors.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

malshe 2y ago

> Apple seems to be pressured to play catch-up on AI technology, and I feel like this is being driven by activist shareholders instead of people who are focused on products. I get the same sense. When Apple announced their AI features last year, the stock started moving up.

ulfw 2y ago
Apple has stopped being product driven. Sadly. It's all about maximising short term profits (see iPhones of the last years) or things top down from the CEO that make little sense (Vision Pro)
- BenFranklin100 2y ago
  Apple seems ecosystem driven. At the product level, there’s not a big difference between an iPhone and Android phone, except the iPhone integrates well with the Apple Watch, iPad, AirPods, Apple TV, and MacOS. The resulting user experience is good, as is being able to drop into an Apple Store in case of a problem. I see Apple pursuing a long term vision where product integration and privacy are pillars in a seamless, trusted ecosystem.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    The problem is that the shareholders in these kind of companies want exponential growth not matter what, being profitable isn't enough. Since there is a limited amount of people on the planet that can afford Apple at Apple's prices, this eventually hits a ceiling. You don't see Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bang & Olufsen, and similar brands, expecting an exponential growth in sales, year after year.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      AirPod Pros are $160 on sale, regularly, and $200 otherwise. M3 Air 16GB/512GB is $1,100 at Costco, and $800 for an M2 (which is probably good enough for at least 50% of laptop users). iPhones might be a few hundreds more than a Galaxy competitor phone, but the amortize the extra cost over the number of hours people use their phone and it is negligible. Apple TV is a $120 or so, Apple Watch is a few hundreds, HomePods are maybe a couple hundred. I don’t see how anyone can put Apple in a pricing league with > Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bang & Olufsen Very large portions of the population can afford Apple products.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> Blockchains are slow, expensive databases masquerading as a social revolution while functionally being a get-rich-quick scheme. If you consider a blockchain to be (mostly) a "competitor" to a database, you use it wrong. Blockchains and in particular consensus algorithms for blockchains are a solution to a hard problem: reaching a consensus when not all participants can be trusted. For any application that needs this problem solved, blockchain algorithms are to my best knowledge basically the only game in town. These applications are rare, but they do exist - for these blockchain and blockchain consensus algorithms are a godsend. If you have another problem to solve, a blockchain will insanely likely not be the proper solution.

odyssey7 2y ago
Can the majority be trusted? 100% of the time? (50 + epsilon)% of blockchain participants can’t be wrong?
jazzyjackson 2y ago
If I can’t trust someone to pay me I just take payment up front, if they don’t trust me to deliver a product we just don’t do business, no problem. What blockchain solves for is “I don’t trust my peers to agree on what transactions have occurred” which is only a problem for people avoiding banks.

raincole 2y ago

When even Mozilla is introducing AI summarization services, I find it's really hard to blame Apple.

BoredPositron 2y ago

Apple is pretty conservative in their AI approach or am I out of touch? I mean for comparison just look at google, samsung or microsoft.

_mlbt 2y ago
I think that’s because Apple has been playing the long game on AI. They introduced the neural engine with the A11 processor on the iPhone 8. They can do a lot of things on device that their competitors have to do in the cloud. Many of their AI features focus on practical everyday use cases instead of big flashy demos and constantly in your face things like Microsoft Copilot.

486sx33 2y ago

I’d say this is a very general article that isn’t well sourced or referenced.

GavinAnderegg 2y ago
I'm curious what additional sources or references you would like to see added.

imtringued 2y ago

I wonder why AI is used for these random things that nobody needs, instead of immediately useful things like calibrating microphone volume. I'm so tired of constantly redoing the echo tests, because the software is forgetting what microphone I used last time. Then there are also people who don't bother with the echo tests (I used to be that guy) and you can't understand what they are saying because of volume clipping.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]