It’s not a long term risk at all. Long term, models are going to be running on local hardware.

The AI data center is analogous to the mainframe.

If I can run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next on my DDR4 closet server with a $500 16GB GPU at 50 tok/s (which I can) then I just about guarantee you that in 2-3 years a pretty acceptable AI model is going to be running off of iPhones and M7/M8 Macs.

The other option that reduces Apple’s long-term risk is that they could just buy an AI company.

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CrimsonCape an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah I can kinda see why Altman is out there trying to shame the public for having compute. The longer they carry those massive debt obligations, the more the models are going to economize.

It would not be surprising that Apple just waits and snatches their compute up from insolvent companies sliding past.

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paxy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Models running locally doesn’t benefit Apple unless they have a competitive model of their own. Otherwise they’ll end up being dependent on Google, Meta etc the same way they are today for apps and services. And getting out of that hole won’t be as simple as building a maps app.

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GeekyBear 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

In return for Google getting a discount on how much they pay Apple to be the default search engine in Safari, Apple currently has the right to distill Google's Gemini server models to create their own models that fit on-device.

> Apple is cutting down Google Gemini's massive models into smaller and more secure parts through distillation, to create elements that are more suited to on-device Apple Intelligence processing.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/03/25/apple-is-distilli...

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Grombobulous an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it does if their chips are the only ones that run the models well on phones and competitors need to charge customers more money or give away less functionality for free.

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afavour an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Or open models become competitive as a base? Apple have an entire OS based on OpenStep and FreeBSD after all.

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paxy 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

There is exactly zero chance Apple lets open, unconstrained models run on iPhones when they get powerful enough. We are talking about a company that doesn’t allow apps that contain bad words. People holding out hope for this are delusional.

	▲	Grombobulous 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		How much would it cost to license one? Probably less than renting servers.