gatorguy

danox said:

nubus said:

apple4thewin said:

Now the question is, will the next person be better? And beneficial for Apple

Likely not. Vestager recently tried to hire an American for a senior position but got blocked by France. Her focus was on antitrust to keep the market open and privacy protection. The replacement will be forced to deliver protectionism and go further.

Too bad about France Mistral is in the top 10 of AI models today but I think they the French will burn down even their own countryman’s creations in spite.

Mistral became a pariah in some circles when they agreed to partner with Microsoft earlier this year.

The issue any company not American or Chinese will have is that the private investment money needed to compete with those AI models isn't there. But accepting money from American Big Tech isn't acceptable to many of them either. Rock meet Hard Place. 

Cesar Battistini Maziero said:

New York times is Amazon, and Meta has a competing service.

I bet Meta, Open AI and google haven't asked permission to train on everyones data.

I'm not as familiar with Meta and OpenAI, but as for Google you would likely lose that bet.

Besides actually paying for particularly valuable training data, Google offers exactly the same mechanisms as Apple does for publishers to opt-out. If you believe Google is doing the wrong thing, then so is Apple. The opposite is also true of course. If you're proud of the way Apple is approaching it, then you're OK with Google too.  

That said, unlike the $multi-million deals Google has made to license data from private sites, I'm not aware of Apple paying for any private site data for AI training. But they are free-scraping them for it if not blocked from doing so, just like OpenAI and Google will in the absence of a licensing agreement. 

EDIT: After Google and Meta signed deals with Shutterstock for training data, I see Apple followed in their wake and came to an agreement with them as well. So that's one. 

AppleInsider said:

Apple has been offering publishers millions of dollars for the right to scrape their sites, as opposed to Google which believes all data should be freely available to train AI large language modules. As part of this, Apple honors a system where a site can just say in a particular file that it does not want to be scraped.

That file is a simple text one called robots.txt, and according to Wired, very many major publishers are choosing to use this to block Apple's AI training.

From this article's link to a previous AppleInsider article:

"According to The Guardian, Google has presented a case to Australian regulators that it be allowed to do what it wants and, okay, maybe publishers should be able to say no. But that's on the publishers, not Google."

Now substitute Apple for Google in that quote. Isn't that what Apple is doing too, scraping unless the publisher says no?
As for paying, both companies have shown a willingness to if the data is important enough. For instance, Google this year alone has signed multi-million deals for access to training data with both Reddit and Stack Overflow.

Apple on the other hand appears to be low-balling potential training data partners, offering less in total than Google is paying Reddit alone, with no evidence yet that any sites are biting. 

quakerotis said:

the smart home is a myth 

There's plenty of room for improvement, but it's hardly still at the point of a myth. 

I currently have dozens of smart devices that in general all work together: Smartphones, Chromebook, security cameras both indoor and out, several smoke and monoxide detectors, HDTV's, multiroom sound system, multiple thermostats, multiple lights, "Find My" trackers, mesh internet system, earbuds, display hubs, temperature sensors, smartwatch, media streaming devices, pod speakers, security system, power outlets....

My smart home is pretty well stocked at the moment. My biggest complaint is the reliability still isn't where it needs to be. Turning on/off the kitchen lights should be nearly as consistent as walking over to the switchplate, but it isn't. Failures happen as much as 10% of the time or thereabouts ( I don't actually keep a record), which is enough for many consumers to decide it's not yet worth the investment. 

apple4thewin said:

This was a rumor at least a year or two ago for the 2nd or 3rd gen VP. Nice to see an actual Patent

 Agreed. I think I remember some AppleInsider article, back maybe a year or more ago, that hinted it being part of the Vision Pro. 

EDIT:
So this must be a different patent application from the one reported here about a year ago?
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/08/17/future-apple-vision-pro-may-use-liquid-for-lenses-instead-of-glass

Is the author aware of any of the multiple patent applications being approved for patent protection, or are all still "pending'?