This article has me wondering whether Apple Intelligence is in danger of falling further behind rather than becoming a significant and highly useful feature within Apple’s product line. Obviously, not being on the inside, any conclusions we might draw are extremely tenuous and likely to be wrong. Nevertheless, if you consider the last two years and reports like this, it doesn’t inspire much confidence in Apple’s AI efforts. In particular, I’m concerned that we may never, or at least not in the near future, get a robust, reliable version of Siri.
That said, other than wanting a reliable Siri, I’m not sure that I’m all that concerned about what Apple does or does not do with Apple Intelligence. I’m not particularly worried because I already have access to excellent artificial intelligence platforms, and I’m uncertain how significantly what Apple described would enhance my productivity. I suppose it could make a meaningful difference if it was extremely reliable and I didn’t have to double-check its work. As it was originally described, it has great potential. I’m just not sure whether we will ever really see the capabilities at a reliable scale that Apple originally demoed regarding Apple Intelligence.
Given the poaching that is going on and the other struggles that Apple has had with Apple Intelligence, what is your level of confidence?
Yeah, same, at least for now. I’m not even sure I care about Siri.
Does Apple really need to throw billions at building its own foundation models? I think I’d rather they expended their blood and treasure on figuring out how best to deploy AI in all its flavors across its portfolio of operating systems and giving developers the tools they need to leverage AI in their own apps.
I don’t think so. Apple isn’t in the same business as OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft. IMO, it mainly needs something to attract more iPhone buyers, the source of most of its hardware and virtually all of its services revenue.
The solution may be as simple as swallowing their pride and making a deal with OpenAI or Google, etc. to come up with a decent digital assistant. Apple’s customers are loyal and most aren’t going anywhere. I’m not sure if that’s true of all its investors.
Clearly, there are some people that choose to monetize their skill or experience above all other considerations.
I wish them well, but in the long-run greed is not good and karma has a way of coming back to bite you.
And that goes double for companies like Facebook and Zuck that that think they can buy their way into new markets. Seems Wall Street has forgotten about their “metaverse” fiasco and its multi-billion dollar failure?
It’s very hard to tell what, if anything, this means, except that Meta is aggressively and expensively hiring “talent” in AI. That might be because they have a thought-through business strategy that requires them to solve a few remaining problems quickly in order to make even bigger mountains of profit. It might be that they are desperately betting on some kind of breakthrough in the hope that they can continue to make gigantic mountains of profit and retain their (rapidly declining) dominance in the industry.
My guess is that the “remaining problems” with LLMs and LRMs are not going to be solved, and certainly not by iterating on existing approaches. If I’m right, the current AI boom is a “bubble” that will burst as soon as enough people stop believing the hype. Apple’s approach, of AI applied to specific tasks integrated into the operating system rather than seeking “general” intelligence or being the primary interface looks like a possible successor to a burst AI bubble, but time will tell.
And figuring out privacy. Sam Altman indicated that everything you say to ChatGPT is logged, and seems to think that’s legally required. That’s at least at odds with Apple’s public stance on privacy.
and “everything” that has ever been digitized has almost certainly been compromised, IMO.
I have no illusion of privacy, I’ve been using a credit card since the ‘70s. Apple can’t protect information that’s already been sold, stolen, or that sits on the other guy’s email server.
All I can do is not add to the existing collection.
Semantics is at play here. I agree that the “generative AI” excitement is probably a fad and a bubble that will burst at some point, but the advances overall in AI, when considered in the broader context of AI, I believe, is a major disruption and will permeate all of tech over time.
As a heavy user of other forms of AI beyond generative text/LLM, I can’t see myself getting along without it and going backward.
Having said that, I believe the mass media and wall street hype and concern about Apple and AI is 99% focused on LLM/generative AI and very short-sighted.
As a podcaster just said, can’t remember if it was KenRay (MacOSKen) or someone else, that point out (paraphrasing a bit):
Please point to any other smartphone or computer vendor that is doing an amazing job with AI and showing sales results at Apple’s expense.
“ Wedbush Head of Tech Research Dan Ives says Apple is so far behind in artificial intelligence development that it needs to make an acquisition to catch up”
Like it or not, the factors that drive financial markets aren’t just numbers and data. Ives is a big fan of Apple and investors listen to people like him.
You would have to ask the 10,000 clients of Wedbush Securities about that. As far as what AI company is doing better at Apple’s expense, I wouldn’t know. None of the major AI companies are in the consumer electronics business.
IMO, we will all have to wait to see if Ives prediction is correct. Apple hasn’t shown their cards yet.
According to Greg Wyatt Jr. from the popular YouTube channel “Apple Explained”, Apple refused to invest $10 billion in AI chips in 2023, even though it was already far behind its competitors, who had invested much more in AI hardware than Apple at that point. Apple’s developers now had to rent cloud computing resources from Google because Apple did not invest in its own hardware. In other words, Apple’s top management sat on $150 billion in cash but treated the research and development department like a tiny startup that couldn’t afford the necessary hardware. In the same year, Apple spent $77.5 billion on a share buyback.
In 2024, Apple’s top management then spread the fairy tale that Apple Intelligence would be released shortly because Apple’s competitors were becoming increasingly valuable on the stock market, while Apple’s market valuation stagnated and was overtaken. Again this year, Apple spent more money than its competitors on share buybacks and invested much less money than its competitors in research and development.
It is by no means certain that Apple will be able to deliver a truly conversational Siri by 2026 or 2027. Many more details and interesting information in the video.
OpenAI is spending $2.35 to make $1.00. (Citation needed - I forget where I read that, sorry.)
A whole lotta good those chips are doing them.
All of the major LLM companies are losing money. And have no obvious road to profitability. Yet random YouTubers hungry for views are once again telling us what Apple should be doing.
