I do like how Apple has backed themselves into a consumer-protecting hole here. I’m sure they would love to have access to that much conversational data themselves, of which no other company has access to.
If Siri ever improves too significantly I’ll get nervous.
I don't think so. There are people in the world that don't want to pry into other's lives. Collecting un-needed data on people is Nixonian.
I think Apple managed to understand and attract those types of customers. I find a generational disconnect between the 70's computer users and the user in the 00's.
I don’t think it’s possible for a company as big as Apple to act solely on principle. We’re just lucky the profit motive aligned with consumer privacy for once.
Untainted (without ML-generated content) human communication is becoming more and more scarce. It’s only a matter of time before they take advantage of that.
They'll forbid any app using ML generated content from providing iMessage extensions, or possibly it’ll receive a warning mark in iMessage when sent. Could also work with content pasted from those apps. Some sort of “provenance check”. They’ll pitch it as a consumer privacy thing, I promise.
That’ll also be the same update where E2E encryption falls off the the marketing.
There is very much a motivation to access massive amounts of user data, especially when you control the OS that would be the gate keeper to that data, as well as how the “choice” is presented to the end user.
I don’t think it’s possible for a company as big as Apple to act solely on principle.
I agree but think that Apple is the exception that proves the rule. Its origin story is as good as any Shakespeare.
The second act of Apple started small and focused and re-built itself while keeping the Wall Street mind set at a distance. I think your sentiment misses the fact that Apple doesn't really need Wall Street. Their stock can do whatever it wants the lower it goes the more they can buy. Why would Apple lower their standards?
On their conference calls they always talk about reaching cash neutrality as their goal. I never really understand what that looks like
Untainted (without ML-generated content) human communication is becoming more and more scarce. It’s only a matter of time before they take advantage of that.
I'm not sure if I understand this comment. Apple's size relative to other nation's GDP enables them to hire real humans at an amazing scale. This different than a company that doesn't have a culture of support built-in already. They also have the advantage that many countries would partner with them to raise their own GDP.
I think their approach is to grow the AI to help the existing workforce scale. Get more work done using fewer live bodies.
They'll forbid any app using ML generated content from providing iMessage extensions, or possibly it’ll receive a warning mark in iMessage when sent. Could also work with content pasted from those apps. Some sort of “provenance check”. They’ll pitch it as a consumer privacy thing, I promise.
I hope so that is why I'm Apple customer. I also think you are misreading the times. Apple is about to hand over a lot of authority to the customers.
There is very much a motivation to access massive amounts of user data, especially when you control the OS that would be the gate keeper to that data, as well as how the “choice” is presented to the end user.
Don't project your ambitions on others.
I do believe that Apple's ability to maintain their performance is mystifying and wonder how long it will last.
The difference is that they make money on hardware and the app stores, not on advertising (they have a small ad product but it's probably closer to a rounding error).
Since Apple does not disclose how much money they make from advertising specifically, conflating it into their "services" business, we have to guess a bit:
"In 2021, Apple generated 3.7 billion U.S. dollars with its global advertising business." [1]
"Apple’s services business, which includes advertising and subscription revenues, grew 24% year over year last quarter to a record $19.5 billion"
"It’s likely that a large share of this category’s growth comes from advertising" [2]
"Apple ad business could reach $6B by 2025, with $4.1B from Search Ads" [3]
For reference, 2023 Q2 revenue from "services" amounted to 20.9B USD, while
hardware product sales amounted to 73.9B USD. [4]
We're thus talking about ~4%, not exactly a rounding error.
Conversational data between human beings is exactly the sort of tokens you’d want to train a massive in-house LLM on. Then you could have embeddings for the local stuff on-device, and still call it “private” models.
The magic data dust is only useful if they can use all of it though. I just see some incentive there that I can’t imagine them ignoring in a couple years.
If Siri ever improves too significantly I’ll get nervous.