Apple will give us Generative AI for the many, not the few

Sure, it’s great that Generative AI can put the majority of the human race out of work while reflecting the prejudices of the people who own it. That’s real progress. But AI can also help real people get real things done. That’s Apple’s approach, and here’s the evidence.

Apple seeks AI for that helps people

Apple this week announced its new iPhone and published three vast lists explaining some of the improvements within its operating systems for iPhones, iPad, and Macs. These new systems ship later this month, but it is noteworthy just how many improvements in these make use of artificial intelligence to help you get things done, while also protecting your privacy.

Take Data Detector quick actions, for example.

Now when you type phone numbers, emails, dates, or times in the Spotlight search bar the device will automatically offer quick actions it thinks you might want to take calling people, adding them to contacts, creating events and more.

Intelligent machinery

Machine vision intelligence has become a hallmark of Apple’s approach.

That is inevitable as the company works on projects such as cars that need to be able to swiftly understand what’s around them from images and sound. It’s obvious these systems are improving – you can now search through the videos on your device by scene, people, and activities.

That’s neat, but that facility also means Apple’s vision teams have figured out how to make these systems more broadly contextually aware. Think how the ability to know what is happening in camera may be helpful when wandering in the real world while immersed in a virtual adventure with Vision Pro or sitting in a partially autonomous vehicle.

Visual Lookup has always been a fantastic example of this kind of AI.

In iOS 17, it gains actually useful feature such as the capacity to find you recipes based on images of food or translating the meaning of signs, symbols – even laundry tags.

That’s right.

While OpenAI is allegedly plagiarizing every piece of creative work on the internet and putting people out of work, AppleAI helps ensure you don’t ruin your clothes. Which one of those helps ordinary people most?

OpenAI will not give you a medication reminder, let you know if you are getting enough daylight, or provide you with the ability to automatically identify specific pets or people in your Contacts/Photos album. It doesn’t give you a daily crossword puzzle in News+, either.

Everywhere you look there’s smart ideas inside

There are many newer AI-driven improvements in these operating systems: Instant streaming translations, including the translation of text in the Camera view, the AI-supported Studio Light tool which should make you easier to see during video calls, and much-improved PDF handling tools, including intelligent form detection and better handling of PDF AutoFill.

And, if child safety is your thing, Apple’s approach to child protection in the form of sensitive content warnings and protection against visual abuse has the advantage of both being technically possible without also opening the floodgates to an even more authoritarian dystopia, “for your protection”. Who watches the watchmen, after all?

Again and again, we’re told Apple is behind on AI.

We’ve heard it all before

It reminds me very much of how people once described Apple as being behind when it came to productivity software and the internet, or how people once moaned that iOS was behind because Apple prioritized privacy above profits.

Again and again, I’ve seen this story play out – and the results in the long-term are pretty much always the same.

These days, people seem to be developing a bigger grasp on the need for privacy above convenience as represented by Android’s slowly shrinking market share and Apple’s growing dominance. T

his is exactly what will happen with AI, while other companies fling Promethean flames against civilization’s walls, Apple will try to maintain a conscious approach to artificial intelligence as it attempts to find ways to use these systems to help support the people who use its products.

Because it’s a human world with computers in it, not a computer world with a few inconvenient organic life forms to navigate. AI should work for humanity, not against it, and Apple’s approach is to find ways in which it can augment the kind of tasks we all do every day.

I can’t wait until it reveals its approach to Generative AI, which we can already tell will be GAI for the rest of us, rather than the consolidation of power for the few.

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