All of this is interesting, but how easy is this to circumvent? When Apple changes their mind for whatever reason, don't they just return a key to a fake PCC node, which would bypass all of their listed protections? Furthermore, what prevents Apple from doing this for specific users?
Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
121–130 of 393 posts
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#122A lot of this sounds like Apple has been 10-20 years behind the state of the art and now wants to tell you that they partially caught up. Verifiable hardware roots of trust and end-to-end software supply chain integrity are things that have existed for a while. The interesting part doesn't come until the end where they promise to publish system images for inspection.
Perhaps one of these days we'll get a 'jeffbee that realizes that Google is not actually ahead of everyone in everything all the time. But not today, I guess.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#123Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#124Some good comments on this from cryptographer Matt Green here: https://x.com/matthew_d_green/status/1800291897245835616?t=C... (I wonder if Matt realizes nobody can read his tweets without a X account? Use BlueSky or Masto man) Edit: here's his thread combined https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1800291897245835616.html?...
Threads also is popular. Probably the mainstream Twitter alternative at this point?
Threads is far from mainstream and just filled with spam and OnlyFans spammers at this point.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#125I have a big question here. Who is this for? Dont get me wrong I think it's a great effort. This is some A+ nerd stuff right here. It's speaking my languge. But Im just going to figure out how to turn off "calls home". Cause I dont want it doing this at all. Is this speaking to me so I tell others "apple is the most secure option"? I don't want to tell others "linux" because I don't want to do tech support for that.…
Apple needs to differentiate itself, and they have chosen privacy as a way to do that, which I'm all for. The headlines around Microsoft's AI efforts have largely been a nightmare, with a ton of bad press. If the press around Apple's AI is all about how over the top they went with security and privacy, that will likely make people feel a little better about using it. I'm not a big user of OpenAI's stuff, but if I was…
I actually thought one notable thing in the presentation was that they spent all this time talking about their new private cloud compute architecture.
And then showed that they have a prompt asking if you're ok sending the data to OpenAI. Presumably because despite OpenAI promising not to use your data (a promise apple relayed) OpenAI didn't buy into this new architecture.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
PCC node execution should be per-transaction, i.e. relatively short lived.
The server can't afford to do one transaction then reboot.
Intel and AMD server processors can use DRTM late launch for fast attested restart, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/An-Execution-Infrastru.... If future Apple Silicon processors can support late launch, then PCC nodes can reduce intermingling of data from multiple customer transactions.
> The server can't afford
What reboot frequency is affordable for PCC nodes?
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#127It is not possible for this to be fully private in the United States because the government not only can force Apple to open up the kimono, it can also forbid it to talk about it. There’s not really anything Apple can do to work around this “limitation”. Thank your “representative” for extending the PATRIOT Act when you get a chance.
What Apple can do (and appears to be doing throughout its products) is not have the data requested. Or not have it in cleartext. NSLs can't request data that doesn't exist anymore.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#128What are the longer term implications that Apple is doing this on their own hardware and not Nvidia? This seems like a big thing to me, an idiot.
Apple doesn't want to pay the Jensen Leather Jacket Fee and has $200 billion in cash it is sitting on to make it happen. If anyone can create an Nvidia substitute for AI chips its Apple and their cash hoard combined with their world-class design team and exclusive access to all of TSMC 3nm and next year 2nm production they could possibly want.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#129Read through it all, it still comes down to "trust us". Apple can sign and authorise an update at any time that will backdoor it, and the government is the stroke of a pen away from forcing them to, all completely silently.
I get that there's benefit to what they are doing. But the problem of selling a message of trust is you absolutely have to be 100% truthful about it, and them failing to be transparent that people's data is still subject to access like this poisons the larger message they are selling.
Re: Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
#130It is not possible for this to be fully private in the United States because the government not only can force Apple to open up the kimono, it can also forbid it to talk about it. There’s not really anything Apple can do to work around this “limitation”. Thank your “representative” for extending the PATRIOT Act when you get a chance.
Slightly off-topic, "open up the kimono" sounds disturbing and creepy to me as an Asian. I suspect I'm not alone in this.