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Apple Buys DarwinAI Ahead of Major Generative AI Updates Coming in iOS 18
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Apple's bad AI miss while screwing around with cars and AR/VR is the defining moment of Tim Cook's 10-years+ as Apple CEO. Vision Pro only launched now to distract investors and the public from its AI miss, not because it was remotely ready for the prime time and could well flop as a result. He has been great at milking the existing product lines that Jobs left him for all they're worth but his lack of vision has bitten them in the ass. So much for skating to where the puck is going to be - all they do these days is playing catch up skating to where it's already been.![]()
Apple acquired Canada-based company DarwinAI earlier this year to build out its AI team, reports Bloomberg. DarwinAI created AI technology for inspecting components during the manufacturing process, and it also had a focus on making smaller and more efficient AI systems.
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DarwinAI's website and social media accounts have been taken offline following Apple's purchase. Dozens of former DarwinAI companies have now joined Apple's artificial intelligence division. AI researcher Alexander Wong, who helped build DarwinAI, is now a director in Apple's AI group.
Apple confirmed the acquisition with the statement that it typically gives when questioned about purchases. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time" but does not discuss its purpose or plans.
In an effort to catch up with Microsoft, Google, and others in the AI market, Apple is working hard to build artificial intelligence features for its next-generation iOS 18 and macOS 15 operating systems.
If Apple wants to be able to rival Microsoft's Bing, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and other generative AI offerings, it will need to integrate generative AI into a range of products. Apple is testing large language models, and AI features are said to be coming to Siri, Shortcuts, Messages, Apple Music, and more.
Apple is aiming to have AI features run on-device for privacy reasons, and DarwinAI's efforts to make smaller AI systems could be of use to further that endeavor.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised that Apple will "break new ground" in generative AI in 2024. "We believe it will unlock transformative opportunities for our users," said Cook.
Article Link: Apple Buys DarwinAI Ahead of Major Generative AI Updates Coming in iOS 18
You are basing your claims on no substance. Apple's AI work on the Car will be driving their product growth for the next decade. The amount of advancements they have achieved, sans full self-driving/fully automated comfort on-the-demand inside the car, etc., is a target ten years ahead of reality. The work they have invested in already has them far more ahead of the competition than anyone seems to gleam.
Project Titan wasn't about bringing a car to market as much as it was pushing the envelope in large scale AI automation on hundreds of systems inside their electric car project. Every bit of research discovered and overcome on that project will go into dozens of products including manufacturing and more.
Building an EV was not hard. Making it a Minority Report 2045 fully autonomous and automated driving vehicle responding to the driver's vocal commands and more was a target they knew entering the project was decades away.
If they see a value in bringing out a consumer EV line it will be through a subsidiary and not Apple directly.
Despite their 30 or 100 companies 🤷🏻♂️, they fail to provide accurate translations or a diverse array of languages in their systems. 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️Did you know their Translate app lacks a wide selection of languages? How can it be, Your Highness, that their translations fall short with all this amazing internal power? Don’t they internally use their AI or is it only in English? 🤣
Your Highness, how can we account for the omission of Spanish in the Vision Pro, for example? Didn’t they use their amazing tech coming from all those companies they have acquired? I’m an ignorant peasant so I’m asking to learn.
How is it, Sir my Sir, that iMessage struggles/fails/sucks or f**ks up with understanding a broad spectrum of languages? Apple is already utilizing their premier software internally (regardless of whether it's released publicly) and yet fails to communicate with a global audience in their mother tongues.
All the necessary ingredients for success, right, Your Highness? Let's hope they finally get around to accurately translating basic words this time for those of us who speak more than one language.
Siri now:
“Hey Siri, set a timer for 3 minutes”
“I’ve set a timer for 3 minutes”
Siri AI:
“Hey Siri, set a timer for 3 minutes”
“I’ve set a timer for 3 minutes, I’ll tell you when your egg is boiled”
“Hey Siri, set a timer for 3 minutes”
“I’ve set a timer for 3 minutes”
Siri AI:
“Hey Siri, set a timer for 3 minutes”
“I’ve set a timer for 3 minutes, I’ll tell you when your egg is boiled”
No, that would be, "I don't know about Siri, but here's what I found on the Internet". Sorry - I guess I'm about the tenth person to type that.
This time they’ve even omitted Spanish ( for the moment ) from Vision Pro
And I agree that the future lies in multilingual support, an area where Apple is just terrible!!!
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Child, the other day I read a sobering article about the astronomical amount of energy consumption servers consume every day to handle 600 million requests. I know Apple are talking about user privacy as the reason for on board AI, and I know we are slowly equipping devices for local AI processing, but I really, really, really hope that AI ends up at a place it is mostly done off-line with minimal demand on servers. On one hand, companies green wash and talk about recycled materials, zero net emissions, yet Microsoft and Google in particular first into this planet killing new technology.
You might have read a headline stating, "ChatGPT consumes 17,000 times more electricity daily than the average US household."
Edited “it's likely just clickbait that manipulates statistics”
If this is the article you're referencing, then we're talking about a very small fraction of electricity usage per person. ** There are pretty much 132,000,000 households only in the US (according to Statista)
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Child, ChatGPT And Generative AI Innovations Are Creating Sustainability Havoc (forbes.com)
"Big deal" is pretty apathetic when you think of all the energy and WATER used to have conversations, cheat on tests and generate images and fine tune them with pRoMpTs.
"Big deal" is pretty apathetic when you think of all the energy and WATER used to have conversations, cheat on tests and generate images and fine tune them with pRoMpTs.
Also, the planet doesn’t care if individuals contributed a little when it's still being killed by potentially unsustainable energy usage in AI servers. Your allegory pretty much implies earth got gang banged by all of humanity, went through a climate apocalypse, and had civilisation rebuild.
it seems like this one is more specific to AVP. Like Ferret, Apple’s AI efforts seem to be focused in image recog.
DarwinAI brings AI-powered Visual Quality Inspection to market and announces a funding round led by BDC Capital to accelerate growth
DarwinAI, a company that is transforming manufacturing with AI, announced a $6M USD investment led by BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund.www.businesswire.com
Darwin AI Evolving the Islands of Automation
When Canadian artificial intelligence company Darwin AI was founded in 2017, machine learning and deep learning were still relatively new terms. In the past five years, CEO Sheldon Fernandez and his team have been working with this technology to develop some foundational IP to simplify...iconnect007.com
It’s very apathetic for the very very specific stat I was referring to. I edited it if it upset you that much.
Referring to the Forbes article I've already read, let's look at the numbers. Are we discussing the 0.02% electricity usage per capita? Regardless, I prefer not to engage in any debates on green ideologies here, nor do I wish to be part of any lecturing.
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I didn’t realize I shouldn’t have replied. My apologies. 😀
I had the impression I replied to the phrase
” Child, the other day I read a sobering article about the astronomical amount of energy consumption servers consume every day to handle 600 million requests “
which taking under account the article that was published, mathematically equates to pretty much 0,02%🤔 electricity usage per capita. If this statistic is incorrect, I’m keen to be corrected.😀
i think this remark shows a lack of understanding about IP and resourcing. look back at how Apple built up their chip design team. it started with a lot of small companies.
this. WWDC is mostly about software tools for developers. ai to help make spatial content and port aaa games would be immense.
Did you also predict how the AVP will be a smash hit? Won’t even break a million units btw.
Thanks for asking. Short story, I sit on my butt and collect a pension. And Social Security. Before that, I worked for Apple in their SMB division, sourcing and aggregating third party hardware and software that the sales engineers needed to set up networking systems for school districts, hospitals, medical practices, and the Veterans Administration, among others. Apple doesn't make everything needed to set up and maintain these clients' installations. There are things ranging from ethernet & fiber optic cables to server racks to RAID arrays to UPS power supplies, to cross-platform equipment/software and much, much more.
From that perspective, it only makes sense that Apple would reach out to the aftermarket for existing AI systems to incorporate into upcoming internal developments.
So to answer your second question, no, I could not do Tim Cook's job, or anyone elses' in the executive suites. Could I write advanced AI code? No. Could I fix your Mac? Maybe. Could I evaluate and sell to your employer what he needed to implement an Apple-based workflow solution? In many cases, yes. Could I cut the holes, run the cables and install all the hardware? No, I'm too old now, but in the day, I sure helped with that. Could I set up and maintain the network? Not at all. That's for the engineers, which I'm not.
I had the same issue when I discovered that it happens when HomePods are set up as the default sound output for Apple TV otherwise Siri is a bit smarter.How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.
To be fair though, on-device generative AI would be groundbreaking. Especially for privacy, but also the technology that’s needed to pull that feat off. The power to run it contained in tiny little phones and devices instead of relying on an internet connection to a huge data center.
My HomePod is fine for me.How about fixing HomePod Siri first then work on this stuff? The silly thing says "Sorry there is a problem with Apple Music" then in a second or so, it plays what I asked.