Actually, really liked the Apple Intelligence announcement. It must be a very exciting time at Apple as they layer AI on top of the entire OS. A few of the major themes.
Step 1 Multimodal I/O. Enable text/audio/image/video capability, both read and write. These are the native human APIs, so to speak.
Step 2 Agentic. Allow all parts of the OS and apps to inter-operate via “function calling”; kernel process LLM that can schedule and coordinate work across them given user queries.
Step 3 Frictionless. Fully integrate these features in a highly frictionless, fast, “always on”, and contextual way. No going around copy pasting information, prompt engineering, or etc. Adapt the UI accordingly.
Step 4 Initiative. Don’t perform a task given a prompt, anticipate the prompt, suggest, initiate.
Step 5 Delegation hierarchy. Move as much intelligence as you can on device (Apple Silicon very helpful and well-suited), but allow optional dispatch of work to cloud.
Step 6 Modularity. Allow the OS to access and support an entire and growing ecosystem of LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT announcement).
Step 7 Privacy. <3
We’re quickly heading into a world where you can open up your phone and just say stuff. It talks back and it knows you. And it just works. Super exciting and as a user, quite looking forward to it.
Yikes. Just hit em with the ol’ “<3” for privacy. Does not inspire confidence.
#trustmebro
<3
I thought the original post was satire - list all of the privacy issues, then throw in “Privacy <3” at the end. Seriously, almost every one of those points has a potential privacy issue.
Guess I was being too generous.
How so? Many people want to use AI in privacy, but it’s too hard for most people to set it up for themselves currently.
Having AI tools on the OS level so you can use it in almost any app and that is guaranteed to be processed on device in privacy will be very useful if done right.
You think your iPhone isn’t collecting data on you? Is that what you’re saying?
The phone is, Apple isn’t. They outline everything in the keynote if you are interested.
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Their keynotes are irrelevant, their official privacy policies and legal disclosures take precedence over marketing claims or statements made in keynotes or presentations. Apple’s privacy policy states that the company collects data necessary to provide and improve its products and services. The OS-level AI would fall under this category, allowing Apple to collect data processed by the AI for improving its functionality and models. Apple’s keynotes and marketing materials do not carry legal weight when it comes to their data practices. With the AI system operating at the OS level, it likely has access to a wide range of user data, including text inputs, conversations, and potentially other sensitive information.
Unless you are designing and creating your own chips for processing, networking etc, then privacy today is about trust, not technology. There’s no escaping it. I know iPhone and Apple is collecting data about me. I currently trust them the most on how they use it.
Running FOSS and taking control of your network will do a far better trick of privacy vs convenience than most people can imagine
There are degrees of trust though. You can trust the developers and people who audited the code if you have no skill/desire to audit it yourself, or you can trust just the developers.
And even closed systems’ behavior can be monitored and analyzed.
Yes definitely, Apple claimed that their privacy could be independently audited and verified; we will have to wait and see what’s actually behind that info.
How? The only way to truly be able to do that to a 100% verifiable degree is if it were open source, and I highly doubt Apple would do that, especially considering it’s OS level integration. At best, they’d probably only have a self-report mechanism which would also likely be proprietary and therefore not verifiable in itself.
They have designed a very extensive solution for Private Cloud Computing: https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
All I have seen from security persons reviewing this is that it will probably be one of the best solutions of its kind - they basically do almost everything correctly, and extensively so.
They could have provided even more source code and easier ways for third parties to verify their claims, but it is understandable that they didn’t, is the only critique I’ve seen.
As stated above, Private cloud compute has nothing to do with the OS level AI itself. ರ_ರ That’s in the cloud not on device.
As stated here, it still has the same issue of not being 100% verifiable, they only publish a few code snippets they deam “security-critical”, it doesn’t allow us to verify the handling of user data.
Adding to what it says here, if the on device AI is compromised in anyway, be it from an attacker or Apple themselves then PCC is rendered irrelevant regardless if PCC were open source or not.
Additionally, I’ll raise the issue that this entire blog is nothing but just that a blog, nothing stated here is legally binding, so any claims of how they handled user data is irrelevant and can easily be dismissed as marketing.
Yeah just like Microsoft Recall right? An AI that has access to every single thing you do (and would also be recording, otherwise how does it know “you”) can never be private by design. Its literal design is to know everything about you, your actions, and your habits. I wouldn’t trust anyone to be able to create an actually secure piece of software that does the above. It will always be able to be stolen/sold/abused.
But how can we best sell your data to advertisers otherwise?
macOS and Windows could already be doing this today behind your back regardless of any new AI technology. Don’t use an OS you don’t trust.
I don’t use either of those thankfully:).
That’s fair, but you are misunderstanding the technology if you’re bashing the AI from Apple for making macOS less secure. Most likely, it will be just as secure as for example their password functionality, although we don’t have details yet. You either trust the OS or not.
Microsoft Recall was designed so badly, there’s no hope for it.
I simply don’t, and wouldn’t trust Apple. They will tell you they are all about privacy, and happily sell your data behind your back. Just like any other company.
How are you going to be able to use it in “almost any app” in a way that is secure? How are you going to design it so that the apps don’t abuse the AI to get more information on the user out of it than intended? Seems pretty damn inherently insecure to me.
That’s why it’s on the OS-level. For example, for text, it seems to work in any text app that uses the standard text input api, which Apple controls.
User activates the “AI overlay” on the OS, not in the app, OS reads selected text from App and sends text suggestions back.
The App is (possibly) unaware that AI has been used / activated, and has not received any user information.
Of course, if you don’t trust the OS, don’t use this. And I’m 100% speculating here based on what we saw for the macOS demo.