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Does Apple's car→AI news mean they didn't have a secret AI project after all?

5 points by behnamoh ↗ HN
I'm talking about this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528134

For months (maybe years), the arg made by some people was that Apple is heavily invested in AI, but they're waiting to surprise everyone with something that's better than everything else. So the idea was that Apple may be late to the party, but their product would be the best in class.

After today's news, I'm not so sure about that anymore. How could a $3T company sleep on what's the humanity's greatest achievement? Like, wasn't there anyone among the higher-ups that thought "oh maybe we should do something about this GPT thing everyone is talking about."?

8 comments

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al_borland
Apple has been investing in AI for years, they just always using "Machine Learning" to explain it instead of AI.

Their SOCs have dedicated areas for ML processing and their last keynote mentioned ML all over the place. It may not be a stand alone product, like ChatGPT, but it's being integrated into various apps. Camera and Photos are probably the two most notable.

Thinking they are ignoring AI, while having chips with silicon dedicated to ML, seems a bit silly.

WheelsAtLarge
"As part of the restructuring, Kevin Lynch, an executive who had been involved in the car project, will report to John Giannandrea, the company’s head of artificial intelligence strategy, the person said." The NY Times reported.

They have an AI division. It seems that they gave up on the car and thought to move the now-freed auto AI gearheads where they could do some good.

pacmanincarnate
Apple has been using ML for years in camera image processing, facial IDing in photos and faceID, Apple Watch health tracking, and likely other ways I’m not thinking of. The idea that a car project would get in the way of any other R&D in a trillion dollar company doesn’t seem to make much sense, so I’m unsure where that rumor came from. And it also seems to ignore that Apple has recently announced AI related architecture, and AI models. Those didn’t just happen overnight; they would have been cooking for months.
lulznews
The car project was not a real project either. When you make infinite money from selling really good phones you can afford to have lots of fake projects.
kingkongjaffa
Yeah it just seemed like a reactionary me-too just like Dyson tried and failed to do.
aristofun
Have you ever thought that maybe gpt is not “humanity’s greatest achievement”?

In that case it is only smart to wait for hype to settle down before making big commitments.

pacmanincarnate
Apple has been using ML for years in camera image processing, facial IDing in photos and faceID, Apple Watch health tracking, and likely other ways I’m not thinking of. The idea that a car project would get in the way of any other R&D in a trillion dollar company doesn’t seem to make much sense.
ActorNightly
>I'm not so sure about that anymore. How could a $3T company sleep on what's the humanity's greatest achievement?

Because Apple doesn't do tech. They do tech jewelry. Right now, LLMs are just a more efficient google. Most people don't really are that much about LLMs in the context of personal devices.