Introduction to Apple Intelligence: A New Era in AI

 

This post is a quick up skill and an alignment about Apple’s AI - they’re calling it Apple Intelligence, Apple AI...

 

It is insane How many people I talk to, who I would expect to be across the latest AI, because it is so topical and present all the time in social media mainstream right now, but they really have no idea.

The truth is that most people are trying to survive high cost of living and local life challenges so technology is not the be all and end all for them… it’s not the meaning of life just yet.

 

For some, AI is the purpose of life but for most and the-many it is only a tool, like so many before it, that helps us get through life quicker and happier, hopefully, but it doesn’t take and give life, at the moment. 

 

For those of us who follow AI and like me love Apple and are Apple enthusiasts, there has been an undercurrent of late: "Why has Apple taken so long or, Why has Apple been left behind as a laggard in the AI space?". 

 

Every 'digital' person, almost everyone with a device has been blindsided over the past 24 months or so, with the new shiny toy, the new kid on the block (at that time anyway) with Open AI's ChatGPT, the latest, shiniest new toy. We've also seen the surround OpenAI products release in creative, video and text. We've seen Google working on Gemini (ex Bard) and Microsoft launch CoPilot, the list goes on.

 

When it comes to tech we’ve learned that first-mover is not always an advantage, and AI is no different. A reminder to my readers that openAI was the first to put AI in consumers hands in its current format: via interactive chat prompt we’ve come to love. The ChatGPT AI appears as a new product but it is not really. It’s definitely the 'next level' and latest version of AI but its been built upon layers and layers of our past technology features.

The multiple complex layers or parts of the tech powering what we see as ChatGPT have actually been lingering in the background for almost 100 years in the making but the reason its proliferated now is timing, user adoption and how the many components behind the 'chat' have come together, easily and with simple accessibility… ChatGPT has not been deployed like the 'old days' from laboratory to commercial vendors and only being sold to the big giant retailers or used by governments. It was released as a disruptor, directly into the end users hands.

 

Siri existed in iPhone's since iPhone 4S - October 14, 2011.

With such a human phenomenon in iPhone itself, I think that this feature SIRI went largely undetected and in fact was maybe too soon for the less mature digital consumer in the world to adopt. The genius the world failed to see in SIRI was as much about the device itself containing SIRI as SIRI. The theme here is; hardware and then the software features contained on the hardware.

 

 

We are witnessing the greatest proliferation of technology in history with generative AI by end users.. the end users of the AI tools are not the inventor nor the creator and generative AI relies on server infrastructure to exist - hardware to host the tools we’re using. AI relies on the user interface which we, the average person in the street, engage with.

 

As end users of AI we are typically mostly aware of and seeing: OpenAI and Google and Microsoft, nVidia (yes I'm generalising) and a couple other leaders feature or are trying to secure a lions share of front end user AI application,...so where's Apple been?

 

As consumers, and as mentioned, for the past 24 months or so, we've learned to use the latest ChatGPT software replacing it in most cases with Google in search terms and we enjoy the speed and efficiency with which we get out any answer we want....but wait a minute,... Isn’t that experience the very same experience we've already been using in SIRI? I’m just saying...

 

So it’s perceived that Apple has been left behind but has it really? I also dropped the hint earlier about the question of whether AI (as users currently perceive it) is a 'feature' or 'piece of hardware'? 

 

Quick anecdotal story about my younger 12-18 year old nieces and nephews I was with this weekend and we were talking about the impacts of AI in their lives and at school. They seem totally freaked out when you break down where the world might be in 5 years time for example based on the impact AI may have on students spelling and grammar and the stupidity we're therefor adopting as we forego these literacy skills with each ChatGPT search we run. They are totally freaked out how disconnected the business world, who are using AI daily, and the schools are, since school children are being told not to touch the AI and ChatGPT cookies in the AI-ChatGPT cookie jar. 

 

Because of the proliferation of AI, some start-ups are trying to create hardware AI. Think robot preparing your dinner and welcoming you home at night. It’s proving to be somewhat difficult for the rest of the market. The digital world seem to be in a race to put AI on every device within every software platform we possibly can at the moment.  During the WWDC keynote, Apple gave a demo of what it’s calling Apple Intelligence, their catch-all name to account for AI running across several apps a.k.a. software, coded with capabilities to push boundaries of generative AI. 

 

As an Apple iPhone user for 17 years now, Apples approach to AI does not surprise me, with or without Steve Jobs being around. Apple have stood by, making sure AI is stable, secure, trustworthy in terms of adoption by end users and in terms of how they deploy AI, their plan is a fusion of what we know is stable now and their AI capabilities coming in future. I use Apple because I trust Apple. My data has not been breached by Apple. If you know otherwise, please shoot me an email, I’d love you to prove me wrong. Some of the software and hardware I leverage have had some level of breach for example Facebook to Google to Microsoft.

 

The AI we're playing with at the moment is more of a feature than a solution in hardware. Its the front end.

 

Conclusion

In Building and construction, large machine diggers (Like Caterpillar machinery) are the mechanical spades of the future. 

 

At the moment and until the robots arrive on our front door, AI is merely the next big digger. A Person digging a hole with the spade is not stupid, they just become less skilled at digging holes with a shovel. When sitting behind a truck or a digger that is heavy machinery the spade digging skills have to evolve to driving. They now need a license to drive a digger so our hole diggers become truck drivers, that is the honest truth. Features involving us to skill and change our role is going to become the answer around AI and our future. AI may not be leading the charge today but I bet they may be in future..

 

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