What Apple CEO Tim Cook told us about Apple Intelligence today
The perception that Apple was somehow “late” to get into AI is destined to echo for some time yet, but this may not be entirely the case, and we may one day find the company’s deliberate approach to deployment is more justified than not.
AI for the rest of us
That’s certainly what I see reading between the lines of Apple CEO, Tim Cook’s Wired interview today, in which he lets lip a few golden nuggets concerning the company’s approach.
He argues that Apple has been working away at AI for many, many years – and is focused on where the technology can make the most significant difference to people’s lives. And while OpenAI may want to replace human intelligence, Apple wants to augment humans with tools they can use.
“There’s so much extraordinary benefit for humanity,” Cooks said, though he thinks some elements of AI need to be handled very delicately. “We’re very deeply considerate about things that we do and don’t do. I hope that others are as well,” he said.
Focus on what people need
Artificial General Intelligence (full human level intelligence – AGI) will take more time. “We’ll sort out along the way what the guardrails need to be in such an environment,” he said.
Cook also seems to suggest that Apple will not charge for use of Apple Intelligence as the company sees it as a fundamental feature, “like multitouch”. In this model, AI is the UI for computational help.
He also hints that part of the purpose may be to give people what they need to do their lives better, while freeing them from the temptation of doom scrolling. “My fundamental belief is, if you’re looking at your phone more than you’re looking in somebody’s eyes, that’s a problem.
Health and the environment
Cook also confirmed that one strand of Apple’s AI work is around health and biometrics.
“I’m not going to announce anything today. But we have research going on. We’re pouring all of ourselves in here, and we work on things that are years in the making. We were working on hearing a long time before we got it dialled in to where we felt comfortable shipping it,” he told Wired.
He also stressed that despite the additional demand for energy imposed by GenAI servers, Apple remains on track to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Read the whole thing here. It is very interesting.
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