I'm not sure if I want to touch anything Anthropic anymore.
Apple Foundation Models
101–110 of 244 posts
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#102Is this Apple encouraging developers to go through their api abstraction layer to use LLMs so that when they launch their own (which I think we’ve heard they’ve been spending lots of money on training and might be somehow involved with Siri or current Apple AI?) that they can easily help devs make a seamless transition? Or is it just a developer nicety or something else?
The cynic (or realist?) in my thinks this abstraction layer is Apple's way of making sure that users give their own Apple Intelligence credit for the underlying LLM functionality, even if another company is actually providing the LLM.
This is clearly because they plan to monetise AI in the future, and they don't want competition.
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#103I think Apple has a fairly good plan for supplying a common API and default on device models.
What confuses me about this article is: The code examples Python, Ruby, etc.) look to me like the original Anthropic APIs, not Apple’s abstraction. Did I miss something?
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does “the best machine for AI use” apply here considering these models are still server-side?
I would think so, as “use” doesn’t specify implementation. If you use a word processor it may be running locally or remotely. From a user’s perspective, it doesn’t matter.
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Re: Apple Foundation Models
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The users won't know if you used Foundation Models API or integrated with OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini SDK directly. That's the point! That's the whole "white-labeling" part, and what the commentator earlier is talking about. You're very close in understanding the context here!
I’m sorry, so your position now is that “being completely invisible to the users” is “controlling the UX”?
I can't reply to your child comment for whatever reason, but Siri is part of the Apple Foundation Models framework. The idea is that no matter what backend the developer uses, the end user will always say "Hey Siri." This is analogous to controlling the UX. Siri is independent of whichever model the app developer uses.
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
In spite of their deeper pockets, massive datacenters, colosal amounts of user data, and hundreds of thousands of top developers, even Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google are well behind. I think Evans is completely wrong. There are only 2 truly frontier models. (at least for now). And Anthropic seems to be leaving OpenAI behind so there might be only 1 in the near future. (which is scary/dangerous)
Maybe I’m alone in thinking this but I think the long term victor will be the one that works out pricing best. Fable might well be a better model but it’s too expensive for everyday AI use. Definitely if we’re talking about the kind of stuff you’re going to want to do on your phone. Even for coding, I’m not going to reach for Fable (well, when I can…) for 95% of the work I do. I don’t believe a mature AI industry is…
Yes, and pricing is one of the features of a commodity, because users can jump back and forth between services, it becomes a pricing race to the bottom. Agree also that you don’t need the best model all the time. You could have the most powerful model draft the design, requirements, guidelines, policies or whatnot then get the lower tier models execute it. Then again you can have the most powerful model do the testing and review, and give back feedback, rinse and repeat. Just like in the real world you don’t need an entire staff of lead engineers.
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Benedict Evans may be right after all; frontier models look more and more like telecom companies in the 90s. Billions and billions of investment in infrastructure while others further up the stack captured all the value.
There will be frontier models that are non-commoditized, but they'll be kept guarded and hidden away, and you'll only get the final result, so that they can't be distilled and their harness can't be reverse engineered. They'll be billed like employees, rather than like a tool.
Everything can be distilled, it will just become more painful
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#108This is Apple commoditizing LLMs while keeping control of the UX. They are a hardware company and will keep selling the best machine for AI use. Well done.
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Re: Apple Foundation Models
#109How can you practically use this in software if you're to deploy this to users? Asking a user to create and enter their own API key is a bar too high for good UX.
The even bigger hurdle is selling token based pricing to normal (non-dev) users.
"You pay an indeterminant amount of money to ask a question and you might not even get the response you want without spending even more money" doesn't appeal to most people who aren't gamblers and explaining how "thank you" at the end of a long exchange can be expensive due to context is an even harder thing for an average person to swallow.
Token cost going up/down like a yo-yo also doesn't help. Normal users NEED fixed costs and don't want to expend energy constantly keeping up with the AI meta. "My subscription lasted much longer last month" isn't a winning problem either.
I think Apple is correct that Local LLM for most things is the future.
Re: Apple Foundation Models
#110This is Apple commoditizing LLMs while keeping control of the UX. They are a hardware company and will keep selling the best machine for AI use. Well done.
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