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Apple Loses Key AI Executive to Meta's Multimillion-Dollar Hiring Spree

turbineseaplane said:
Do you blame everyone that works on Boeing planes for 737 MAX issues?

What about government military contractors that work on drone programs?
Are they on the hook for "murder" depending upon how the drones are used?

It's a real rabbit hole you are potentially going down here.
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No, but also Boeing has actually contributed to something useful in society. Meta does not.

It's not really a rabbit hole tho - just speculating a horrible company still doing horrible things
 
klasma said:
Where would people publish if not on the web? Where will AI models get new information across the board about the outside world if not from the web? Maybe people will use the web less, but it might actually be a good thing if the incentives for web search advertising decrease.
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I guess I’m thinking that information will increasingly be structured as pure xml or something via apis to be for LLMs first and then other human readable front-ends second (web/ apps).

But yeah - maybe (maybe?) it’s ok if the web shrinks and becomes more of the playground / fun / useful space it was originally meant to be?
 
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bluecoast said:
I guess I’m thinking that information will increasingly be structured as pure xml or something via apis to be for LLMs first and then other human readable front-ends second (web/ apps).
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That was already the dream for the Semantic Web which didn’t materialize, so I doubt it will happen for LLMs, given that they are good at ingesting unstructured information. What will happen is that AI companies will pay platforms for content, as they already do now for Reddit I think, but the platforms will still provide the contents on the web independently, as that’s what the users who provide content are interested in. People won’t write blog posts, news articles, long-form content, open-source libraries, or social media comments for LLM-first consumption.

bluecoast said:
But yeah - maybe (maybe?) it’s ok if the web shrinks and becomes more of the playground / fun / useful space it was originally meant to be?
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Things like online stores, news sites, and all kinds of digital services and media will substantially remain present on the web I think, even if it shrinks a bit. LLMs are for seeking information for a particular purpose, but less for consumption and entertainment. Content providers have little interest in integrating into an AI front end where they’ll have to directly compete with each other, instead they will want to keep an independent presence, like for example streaming services do now.
 
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klasma said:
That was already the dream for the Semantic Web which didn’t materialize, so I doubt it will happen for LLMs, given that they are good at ingesting unstructured information. What will happen is that AI companies will pay platforms for content, as they already do now for Reddit I think, but the platforms will still provide the contents on the web independently, as that’s what the users who provide content are interested in. People won’t write blog posts, news articles, long-form content, open-source libraries, or social media comments for LLM-first consumption.


Things like online stores, news sites, and all kinds of digital services and media will substantially remain present on the web I think, even if it shrinks a bit. LLMs are for seeking information for a particular purpose, but less for consumption and entertainment. Content providers have little interest in integrating into an AI front end where they’ll have to directly compete with each other, instead they will want to keep an independent presence, like for example streaming services do now.
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I hope you’re right but I’ve been surprised at how much I am now using chstgpt and Gemini to seek information.

It won’t be too hard for me to ask them to price hunt, search for flights etc and then buy things for me when that functionality is added.

Then my interface to the web will not primarily be the web but chatbots. Ditto for apps.

And whilst I’m a (relatively early adapter), I don’t think I’m especially unusual.
 
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bluecoast said:
It won’t be too hard for me to ask them to price hunt, search for flights etc and then buy things for me when that functionality is added.
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Yeah, but the reason they can do that is because it's on the web. I don't see why the vendors would remove themselves from the web in preference to tying themselves to AI services.

Maybe in 10-15 years AI usage will be so high that it makes sense to replace the HTML web with a more machine-readable representation. But then it would also be possible to write a browser for that new representation.

The core of the web is sharing documents that can link to one another. I don't really see that use case going away. People producing content will still want to link to other such content, in a way that is independent of any one AI provider. And as long as such a general linking mechanism exists, we will have a web, even if the protocols change.
 
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klasma said:
Yeah, but the reason they can do that is because it's on the web. I don't see why the vendors would remove themselves from the web in preference to tying themselves to AI services.

Maybe in 10-15 years AI usage will be so high that it makes sense to replace the HTML web with a more machine-readable representation. But then it would also be possible to write a browser for that new representation.

The core of the web is sharing documents that can link to one another. I don't really see that use case going away. People producing content will still want to link to other such content, in a way that is independent of any one AI provider. And as long as such a general linking mechanism exists, we will have a web, even if the protocols change.
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Right, if they follow the ad model there may actually be a reversion to the traditional "web" since I can't imagine how annoying it would be to get promoted links inside of your chat. Hopefully they don't go down this path but Google at least is planning to, per interviews with Sundar where he defers only on the timing, not the concept.

There is a chance that the traditional web will be a bit like the fediverse where traditionalists and enthusiasts gather, I don't think we'll revert to something like web rings (although a few hundred people tried that a couple years ago) but the infrastructure is there for something similar.

There's another school of thought from people such as Altman who are incentivized to destroy the 'old' web in order to push everyone into a newer version that includes Real ID, through technology that they own (see: https://world.org/world-id). ChatGPT and others are very effectively "flooding the zone" and places like reddit are majority bots now.

That possible bifurcation is dystopian and hopefully will be met with a ton of resistance from the general public, but there is a lot of incentive from not only capitalists but governments to have that type of real traceability for everyone online so there may be some push toward it in the coming years which would be very unfortunate.
 
Apple’s usual strategy of letting competitors beta test new tech before they jump in to perfect the new tech themselves will not work in the AI field. That’s what is biting them in the ass right now. They’re not used to having to be this proactive.
 
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klasma said:
Yeah, but the reason they can do that is because it's on the web. I don't see why the vendors would remove themselves from the web in preference to tying themselves to AI services.

Maybe in 10-15 years AI usage will be so high that it makes sense to replace the HTML web with a more machine-readable representation. But then it would also be possible to write a browser for that new representation.

The core of the web is sharing documents that can link to one another. I don't really see that use case going away. People producing content will still want to link to other such content, in a way that is independent of any one AI provider. And as long as such a general linking mechanism exists, we will have a web, even if the protocols change.
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I’m agree that the web / apps won’t suddenly die. I’m just positing a near future where the web / apps aren’t used quite as much, which I’m expecting to happen.

It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen with AI. LLMs as we know them didn’t even exist until 2022.

There’s so much money to be made from them and hype, that unless you are deeply involved in making them - which I am not - it’s difficult to know technically how they will progress and how society - and other companies - will perceive and use them.

… or if we get a butlerian jihad in the 2030s!
 
aloysiusfreeman said:
Tim Cook being meek toward this administration pales to inadvertently facilitating a genocide in Myanmar, harvesting and selling everyones data, and partnering with an AI defense contractor
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You hand picked your examples there while ignoring the amount of behind the scenes surveillance Apple supports governments with.

Do you not recall the custom iPod device Apple made for the US gov to help detect bombs?

They've given other tech to the DoD, NSA PRISM, and many more examples - go look it all up if you really don't know.

This isn't even including the time in 2016 when Apple took a secret payment from the Chinese government in exchange for not using any other suppliers and focusing solely on the Chinese economy. Ever consider why Apple has been so reluctant to move manufacturing anyplace else?
 
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