Actually think that’s a good thing for Apple. Compare how much money companies have absolutely shoved into the AI race, and how much circular investment is happening. Apple is one of the few massive players which hasn’t massively extended themselves and taken on a ton of financial risk. How do you make money on frontier models? By selling it to software companies, I guess.

Apple just needs a capable personal AI that respects privacy. They could eventually get that by self-hosting open model inference on their private cloud compute. They don’t need to light billions upon billions of dollars on fire to build data centers and do training to make a frontier model that’s nearly already a commodity. If they’re not selling tokens (and why would I want them to), that approach seems financially stupid and risky.

> If they’re not selling tokens (and why would I want them to)

That’s one of the two things that has stood out most to me. Siri AI answers my questions. And that’s it. She stops.

Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic all constantly try and get you to answer follow-up questions. Because if you do that, you’ll use up more tokens and get more “addicted“ and end up buying a plan.

Apple doesn’t have one. I guess iCloud, but let’s face it, they already pushed that a ton anyway. They’re not trying to get you to use it for the sake of use. It’s not trying to be your friend.

And just like David Pogue says, it doesn’t lie. I just asked it an incredibly stupid question. Can you get pregnant from a picture?

“While I'm not a doctor, no, you cannot get pregnant from looking at a picture of someone. Pregnancy requires physical contact and the transfer of sperm to an egg. For accurate information regarding reproduction, consult a healthcare professional.”

Look at that! It immediately says it’s not a doctor. It gives a good answer, and then it says you need to seek out real advice to be sure things are accurate. Of the summer, I also got responses that ended with something along the lines of “I am an AI, please check information for accuracy.”

I’ve gotten incorrect answers, but they come with disclaimers and it doesn’t act like some omnipotent god that is desperate to be your friend.