Tim Cook talks Apple's 50th anniversary, future of AI and privacy

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Cook also reiterated Apple’s stance on privacy as a fundamental right, emphasizing how the company handles user data.

“We do as much as possible on the device,” he explained. “And the device is encrypted, which means that even Apple doesn’t have access to it. And then when we can’t answer a question on your device, we send it to something called Private Cloud Compute, which is essentially, think of it as a big device in the sky that has the same kind of security and architecture as your phone.”

Source: Tim Cook talks Apple's 50th anniversary, future of AI and privacy - ABC News

I’m curious if you think this is just marketing speak, or if Apple will actually pivot (a bit) to become more privacy minded. From a pure business perspective they are less ad-revenue driven than Google or Facebook, so they could do this as a pure competitive move.

In principle, I like the idea of having a “private space” for running AI inference. AI is useful enough that I would be unhappy if I no longer had access to it but also concerning enough that I am reluctant towards companies like OpenAI. Still not sure if Apple is the right company to do this, or if there is generally a problem with “running AI on your data in the Cloud”.

Would love to hear other people’s takes on this.

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That’s true, though they are growing their ad business.

Overall, Apple is a bit like Google (1) . They push for privacy when it suits their interests. But they bail out on it when it doesn’t. For Apple, they want to sell in as much place as possible. Therefore, they cave to most (if not all) demands to remove certain privacy features in respective markets. The second interest of their is the App Store fee. This is the main reason they lock down iOS. The unwanted consequence of this is that Apple is dictators’ best friend (2) Those dictators can effectively block users from downloading some unwanted apps.

(1) Google has done a lot to protect users from thirs-party tracking, like with their (now dead) privacy-respecting cookie replacement, the Privacy vs. Profit: The Impact of Google’s Manifest Version 3 (MV3) Update on Ad Blocker Effectiveness and finally Android permission system.

(2) Even non-Apple Chinese-made phones sold for the Chinese market do not fully block sideloading of apps.