Apple’s Approach to AI Should Rewrite the Industry’s Expectations for the Technology
Apple’s recently-announced but belated embrace of AI is being called “boring” by some fans of ChatGPT. My perspective is somewhat different — because AI helped me learn how to bake pie.
Last Thanksgiving, I was looking forward to taking a break from my computer and being present with family while making a pumpkin pie. But I had questions about preparing it, so I turned to the web. As anyone who’s searched for a recipe online knows, I was instead overwhelmed by sites full of pop-up ads and long irrelevant stories by the recipe website’s author.
Within seconds, clear, concise instructions appeared. (And no “add glue” hallucinations — that’s a Google thing.) The final output was delicious. And because I didn’t have to trawl the web for instructions, I could focus on cooking while chatting with family; ironically, ChatGPT brought a more human experience back to making pie.
Apple’s approach to AI is pretty much like that, translated across its many apps and devices, and roughly follows the Calm Tech philosophy: Fitting the tool to the task, rather than the other way around.
