Apple’s latest entry to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is one of many recent developments bringing AI capabilities to market, and it bears some similarities to competitors such as Microsoft Copilot, as well as Google Bard. However, Apple’s new offering – named Apple Intelligence – is unique in areas that could set it apart from its competitors. In fact, the company’s philosophy of AI emphasises user privacy and personal intelligence over collective intelligence, steering the company from the path of its peers. Apple is trying to lead us into a smarter future, but just how will they do it? How is Apple charting a different path that could lead to a different sort of AI?
At the core of this leap is Apple Intelligence, a data-analysis platform that merges the power of AI with the essential ethos of user privacy and customised digital assistance. Unlike the largely indiscriminate, data-mining methodologies of Microsoft and Google, Apple has developed a way to deliver AI productivity and convenience without crossing ethical boundaries.
The global discourse on AI growth awaited the WWDC 2024 keynote, which not only unveiled the latest in Apple’s AI vision but also set a benchmark for how intelligent technology should be incorporated into everyday life. Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar of Engadget write post-keynote about Apple’s thoughtful and methodical approach to embedding AI across its suite of products – while keeping privacy, accuracy and all carried out ‘the Apple way’. This means that humans, not machines, will be in charge of having the interactions we know and love.
Its raison d’être rests on the concept of ‘personal intelligence’. Unlike other large language models its competitors use, Apple Intelligence offers a new paradigm of data use: a user-first model. This commitment to lodging the trust hierarchy somewhere between the consumers of our information and the AI models that generate it reflects Apple’s determination to build a sustainable design for all of us. It puts Apple in a position to gracefully and responsibly integrate the inevitable march of recursive models such as ChatGPT.
But one of the most tantalising possibilities is that Apple Intelligence will become a kind of truly intelligent personal assistant. Rather than letting Siri simply ask questions and transcribe or maintain access to records of spoken queries, Apple is using AI to offer intelligent advice when it is most needed, and give helpful, relevant insights. It would offer assistance about what to do next, or information about something you were thinking of doing, in a helpful, pareddown way that does not involve ‘knowing’ anything about you. This is a form of AI productivity that doesn’t need to be monitored and tracked – and thus guarded – because it doesn’t actually involve anyone ‘knowing’ anything about you.
Apple’s wariness is well-placed. Having seen the foibles and fiascos of Microsoft’s Recall feature and the initial missteps of Google Bard, it appears hesitant to let its copy of its AI model run riot. Its insistence on an AI that is not just smart but wise positions it as a reflective custodian in an industry full of lumbering behemoths. It won’t be long before the full potential of our synthetic minds is realised. With it comes the realisation of an important truism: a glimpse into our new, augmented minds also becomes a moving reflection of our humanity.
In this respect, it’s looking like Apple might have its AI story straight: not that AI is necessarily a bad thing, but that people should still be at the centre of the invention. As Apple Intelligence evolves, it has the potential to usher in a noveau age of smart devices.
It is important to realise just what Apple’s latest AI move, with Apple Intelligence, means, because Apple has a long-established drive to be at the cutting edge of designing new technologies capable of running in the background of our lives to make life easier and more productive.
Apple has always moved the limits of the possible, combining advanced technology and innovative design. And with Apple Intelligence, the company’s long-time philosophy of creating products and services that enhance lives without compromising privacy and security continues.
With technology and the space right next to our own always becoming more indistinguishable from one another, Apple’s work towards building an AI that speaks the language of the individual becomes an ambitious vision for the future of technology. By ensuring a ‘right to privacy’ for its users as well as providing intelligence that actually helps, Apple pioneers not only a new kind of technology, but a new way to interact with AI – one that is respectful and user-friendly.
And with Apple Intelligence, Apple is opening a new phase of its long history of innovation: rather than steer away from the issues that other companies have faced in developing an AI that obeys users’ privacy preferences, personalises assistance and learns from the mistakes of all prior initiatives, Apple leaned into the shortcomings. The experience with Siri can serve as a reminder that both the question of the nature of intelligence and the ethical matter of how soon and to what extent we rely on machine intelligence are fundamental questions that will be answered in due time. We can hope that Apple will steer the company that has put the power of information technology into so many people’s hands in a new direction of responsibility.
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