Microsoft’s AI PC and Apple’s AI-powered MacOS

[Bodhitree]

If you look at the news posts surrounding Microsoft’s AI PC efforts, they mostly seem concerned with analysis of the screen, via the Recall feature, and generative capabilities on photo’s. They don’t seem to have tackled the idea of an AI assistant for the computer as a whole, yet, but I’m sure that with version 2, 3, 4 they will get around to it. As usual the first few versions will be rather half baked and partial, moving towards something that might eventually be good.

But following Gurman’s newsletter in which he said that Apple was focusing on providing practical tools for end users, I’m wondering if they are not missing the larger architectural approach to providing a real OS for AI. This is basically about providing APIs that are appropriate for an AI—which need to be able to read user data as well as write it, a software-level interface to steering the computer which is different from the graphical user interface.

It is work that would pay off three or four years down the road, when we have AI that is capable of being a partner to the human in the use of the computer’s resources, but I think in this area Microsoft are possibly in a better place than Apple. They’ve always been strong in automation, and that is the basis of an AI-interoperable OS.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see who actually comes out ahead in this.

 

[Pressure]

Apple have included dedicated machine learning hardware (NPU) inside their hardware since the iPhone X.

It's used for many things, like tagging photos and videos and computational photography workflows to name a few.

The mention of "AI" is just Wall Street fodder.

 

[jb310]

This is basically about providing APIs that are appropriate for an AI—which need to be able to read user data as well as write it, a software-level interface to steering the computer which is different from the graphical user interface.

Apple has had CoreML and SiriKit for years now, so I would imagine that whatever their next big AI technology is, developers will have access to it. I would like to think that'll be the focus of WWDC this year.

 

[stinksroundhere]

The mention of "AI" is just Wall Street fodder.

Yes, it is jargon. Any company that has any algorithmic tool set now claims to be an AI company. We have had algorithmic tools forever without the need for jargon. Machine learning is the correct terminology to use today. It's CoreML and not CoreAI.

Any "AI" in future Apple products should not be like Microsoft's offerings. It should only spring too life when a user calls the tools up. We prefer battery life, privacy and usefulness over bloat and tracking. That's what makes Apple different from MS.

MS has clients ranging from the military industry to government and from intelligence agencies to Wall Street. They are incentivised by their clients to gather data, track granular data at an individual level, and to front run or manipulate markets. We don't want Apple products to be anything like this and we are not that kind of user.

Hardware wise, Microsoft and Qualcomm are going through a kind of Sega Saturn phase. Their ARM offerings will fail to compete against Apple's performance wise, their marketing gimmicks will not age well, and MS will jump back to x86. They have a long term marriage with Intel that will never dissolve. Intel won't let it - they will throw money around at developers to keep them.

 

[sgtaylor5]

Yes, it is jargon. Any company that has any algorithmic tool set now claims to be an AI company. We have had algorithmic tools forever without the need for jargon. Machine learning is the correct terminology to use today. It's CoreML and not CoreAI.

Any "AI" in future Apple products should not be like Microsoft's offerings. It should only spring too life when a user calls the tools up. We prefer battery life, privacy and usefulness over bloat and tracking. That's what makes Apple different from MS.

MS has clients ranging from the military industry to government and from intelligence agencies to Wall Street. They are incentivised by their clients to gather data, track granular data at an individual level, and to front run or manipulate markets. We don't want Apple products to be anything like this and we are not that kind of user.

Hardware wise, Microsoft and Qualcomm are going through a kind of Sega Saturn phase. Their ARM offerings will fail to compete against Apple's performance wise, their marketing gimmicks will not age well, and MS will jump back to x86. They have a long term marriage with Intel that will never dissolve. Intel won't let it - they will throw money around at developers to keep them.

"Any "AI" in future Apple products should not be like Microsoft's offerings.": ESPECIALLY this!

Windows 11 Recall uses an SQLlite database that stores its OCR logs in plain unencrypted text, and it has already been shown, twice at least by security researchers, that that data can be captured and exfiltrated easily with a few lines of code.

Apple doesn't have a history of being this stupid with its users' data.