[HN Gopher] Ferret: A Multimodal Large Language Model
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ferret: A Multimodal Large Language Model
        
       Author : weirdcat
       Score  : 407 points
       Date   : 2023-12-23 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | aaronbrethorst wrote:
       | Can someone define the term "MLLM"?
        
         | schaefer wrote:
         | Multimodal Large Language Model
        
           | pests wrote:
           | why not LLMM?
        
             | CharlesW wrote:
             | Because the first word is "multimodal" :^) and also because
             | MLLM is the established initialism.
        
               | pests wrote:
               | My point was the phrase already contains the word model.
               | Why are we calling it a multimodel LL model? Why not just
               | add multi to the existing model?
        
               | notdisliked wrote:
               | Multimod _a_ l, not multimodel. Multimodal referring to
               | the different possible modes of input (text, picture)
               | into the model.
        
               | TrueDuality wrote:
               | Modalities and models are not the same thing.
        
               | sva_ wrote:
               | Modal, not model
        
               | chaos_emergent wrote:
               | MultimodAl, not multimodEl
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | There is something like a "multimodel LLM" but it's
               | called MoE ("mixture of experts").
        
             | replygirl wrote:
             | what's a language multimodal model
        
             | bbor wrote:
             | Ok our options                 Multimodal large language
             | model       Large multimodal language model       Large
             | language multimodal model       Large language model
             | (multimodal)
             | 
             | I prefer 1, because this is a multimodal type of an
             | existing technique already referred to as LLM. If I was
             | king, I'd do Omnimodal Linguistic Minds, but no one asks me
             | such things, thank god
        
               | n2d4 wrote:
               | I mean, if we want to be silly, what about "Language
               | model (large, multimodal"? :)
        
             | rain_iwakura wrote:
             | The bikeshed color argument never ceases to be relevant.
             | Would you say "large language model multimodal"? I doubt
             | it.
        
         | Tempest1981 wrote:
         | Also, is FERRET an acronym?
        
           | Someone wrote:
           | I would guess it's wordplay on other models being named after
           | animals (llama, vicuna) and figurative use of "ferret".
           | 
           | https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ferret: _"3. (figurative) A
           | diligent searcher"_
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | The language model works by delegating tasks to smaller
         | language models and overcharging them for GPU time.
        
       | ZeroCool2u wrote:
       | We're watching Apple fill the moat in.
        
         | FredPret wrote:
         | How so?
        
           | colesantiago wrote:
           | Running Multimodal LLMs on device and offline, i.e LLMKit for
           | free equaling GPT-3.5 / 4 then Google will follow on Android.
           | 
           | Ability to download / update tiny models from Apple and
           | Google as they improve, a la Google Maps.
           | 
           | No need for web services like ChatGPT.
        
             | FredPret wrote:
             | So Apple is filling in ChatGPT's moat then, not their own?
             | Pardon my confusion
        
               | colesantiago wrote:
               | Yes, it looks like Apple is going after everyone and
               | anyone that has a web based LLM, ChatGPT, Poe, Claude,
               | etc. via developer kits LLMKit that can work offline.
               | 
               | This will only work if their models (even their tiny or
               | even medium / base models) equal (or are better than)
               | GPT-3.5 / 4.
               | 
               | From there, Google will follow Apple in doing this
               | offline / local LLM play with Gemini.
               | 
               | OpenAI's ChatGPT moat will certainly shrink a bit unless
               | they release another powerful multimodal model.
        
               | turnsout wrote:
               | Apple's moat has been and continues to be their insanely
               | large installed base of high-margin hardware devices.
               | Meanwhile, LLMs are rapidly becoming so commoditized that
               | consumers are already expecting them to be built-in to
               | every product. Eventually LLMs will be like spell check--
               | completely standard and undifferentiated.
               | 
               | If OpenAI wants to survive, they will need to expand way
               | beyond their current business model of charging for
               | access to an LLM. The logical place for them to go would
               | be custom chipsets or ARM/RISCV IP blocks for inference.
        
               | CharlesW wrote:
               | I believe that's the point the parent commenter was
               | trying to make, although as the leaked Google document
               | noted, " _[Google has]_ no moat and neither does OpenAI
               | ".
               | 
               | This is more evidence that Apple is investing in building
               | a MLLM as good as anything OpenAI and Google can build,
               | albeit in a more Apple-y way (privacy-first, licensed
               | content, etc.).
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | OpenAI can just copy this.
        
           | yreg wrote:
           | They cannot integrate it deeply into Apple's platforms.
        
             | colesantiago wrote:
             | Hence OpenAI is looking at hardware themselves.
             | 
             | https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-owner-openai-
             | is-e...
             | 
             | https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/openai-is-reportedly-in-
             | ta...
        
               | nicce wrote:
               | It does not matter much if they do not make competitor
               | for iPhones and get consumers to choose them. Because
               | consumers keep buying iPhones and will have then Apple
               | hardware.
               | 
               | And they cannot bring software ecosystem for their
               | hardware without Google, at least easily.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | It doesn't matter because Apple would not offer OpenAI
               | actual integration terms, period. Their only option is to
               | create an alternative hardware platform, because Apple
               | fights tooth-and-nail to pick and choose what software
               | iPhone users are allowed to run.
        
               | nicce wrote:
               | That is what I was saying...
        
               | philistine wrote:
               | Never bet against the phone. Right now it's an essential
               | component of any winning move in tech.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | If you _do_ bet on the phone, make sure you only bet on
               | the first-party OEM. API depreciation, exclusive
               | entitlements, user restrictions, payment-processing or
               | flat-out Sherlocking are all realistic and credible
               | threats to your business.
               | 
               | As they say, the house always wins.
        
           | daralthus wrote:
           | Don't think they have AR Glasses just yet.
        
           | pridkett wrote:
           | Yes, OpenAI can copy this, but they'll still have less of a
           | moat. That's the problem with moats, once they're gone even
           | if you copy what others do, you don't have a moat anymore.
           | 
           | Think of it in a physical sense. OpenAI is a high walled
           | castle surrounded by a physical moat. This protects them and
           | their business model. Apple comes along and builds a super
           | tall tower right next to the moat. They can now see into
           | OpenAI's castle, fire arrows, catapult in a giant wooden
           | badger, etc. Even if Open AI copies the design of Apple's
           | really tall tower and built it behind the moat and castle
           | walls, it wouldn't do much because Apple still would be able
           | to get stuff over the moat and walls. The moat doesn't matter
           | anymore for the most part. The castle (OpenAI) can be
           | compromised and needs bigger walls, relocating to someplace
           | with a bigger, or a way of attacking the tower (Apple).
           | Copying doesn't really accomplish any of those three.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | Here it comes!
        
         | jonahbenton wrote:
         | Dig the moat out, I think you mean ;)
        
       | CaptainOfCoit wrote:
       | Maybe the abstract of the paper is a better introduction to what
       | this is:
       | 
       | > We introduce Ferret, a new Multimodal Large Language Model
       | (MLLM) capable of understanding spatial referring of any shape or
       | granularity within an image and accurately grounding open-
       | vocabulary descriptions. To unify referring and grounding in the
       | LLM paradigm, Ferret employs a novel and powerful hybrid region
       | representation that integrates discrete coordinates and
       | continuous features jointly to represent a region in the image.
       | To extract the continuous features of versatile regions, we
       | propose a spatial-aware visual sampler, adept at handling varying
       | sparsity across different shapes. Consequently, Ferret can accept
       | diverse region inputs, such as points, bounding boxes, and free-
       | form shapes. To bolster the desired capability of Ferret, we
       | curate GRIT, a comprehensive refer-and-ground instruction tuning
       | dataset including 1.1M samples that contain rich hierarchical
       | spatial knowledge, with 95K hard negative data to promote model
       | robustness. The resulting model not only achieves superior
       | performance in classical referring and grounding tasks, but also
       | greatly outperforms existing MLLMs in region-based and
       | localization-demanded multimodal chatting. Our evaluations also
       | reveal a significantly improved capability of describing image
       | details and a remarkable alleviation in object hallucination.
       | 
       | https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07704
        
         | s3p wrote:
         | Is it just me or did they include as many buzzwords as possible
         | in technical writing?
        
         | barbecue_sauce wrote:
         | >>spatial referring
         | 
         | I can't seem to nail down the meaning of this phrase on its
         | own. All the search results seem to turn up are "spatial
         | referring expressions".
        
           | TrueDuality wrote:
           | I'm just inferring myself, but I believe it's referring to
           | discussing things in the foreground / background or in a
           | specific location in the provided image (such as top right,
           | behind the tree, etc) in user queries.
        
           | lukasb wrote:
           | It sounds like the "region inputs" are raster or vector
           | inputs. So I'm imagining highlighting a region of the photo
           | with my finger and having it tell me "that's the Duomo in
           | Florence."
        
         | devinprater wrote:
         | This is going to be great for accessibility! Imagine being
         | blind and loading up a video game and using this to figure out
         | what's around, having everything described locally. I mean, um,
         | well that's what I'd use it for anyway. But knowing Apple, we
         | won't be able to prompt the LLM directly so that probably won't
         | happen until 5 years from now.
        
           | MBCook wrote:
           | The Magnifier app on iOS can already describe whatever you
           | point your phone at in iOS 17.
           | 
           | It's not going to know an orc from a health potion, but
           | they're certainly working on the idea in the everyday stuff
           | domain.
        
         | samstave wrote:
         | This will make Drone-based AI image context for behavior
         | extremely powerful - especially when aspects of that MLLM
         | handling for spatial-sitrep extremely precise for autonomous
         | movement, then ultimately for decision making WRT interacting
         | with humans (positive interactions and negative interactions).
         | 
         | Is it just me, or doesnt this MLLM seem particularly useful for
         | flying objects with vision?
        
       | SushiHippie wrote:
       | > Usage and License Notices: The data, and code is intended and
       | licensed for research use only. They are also restricted to uses
       | that follow the license agreement of LLaMA, Vicuna and GPT-4. The
       | dataset is CC BY NC 4.0 (allowing only non-commercial use) and
       | models trained using the dataset should not be used outside of
       | research purposes.
       | 
       | Wait, how did "GPT-4" get in there?
        
         | simonw wrote:
         | Presumably because GPT-4 generated training data was used
         | somewhere along the line - maybe by Vicuna.
        
         | adastra22 wrote:
         | Lawyers.
        
         | owenversteeg wrote:
         | Huh, interesting, that's Apple just openly saying that GPT-4
         | was used in the training.
        
       | freedomben wrote:
       | > Usage and License Notices: The data, and code is intended and
       | licensed for research use only.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Boo.
         | 
         | But what do we expect from these giants? They're not going to
         | create fertile ground for new competition. The only businesses
         | they foster are those living under thumb and paying tax.
         | 
         | I guess I at least hoped for "commoditize the compliments"
         | here. Make Google and OpenAI broadly less special.
        
           | cyanydeez wrote:
           | it's more likely it's all "stolen" and this is CYA
        
             | MBCook wrote:
             | I seriously doubt that. I'm sure Apple got the rights to
             | whatever they need, it's not like they're short on money.
             | 
             | But the fact that they licensed it doesn't mean that
             | license can be transferred to other people. So it may be
             | that they can only release it for research under the terms
             | of the licenses they got.
        
         | dbish wrote:
         | Many big "open source" releases in the AI community recently
         | are not licensed for commercial use. Not really OSS at that
         | point (ex:fuyu model from adept)
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | I think the term should be "model available" rather than open
           | source.
        
       | yreg wrote:
       | I really hope Apple releases an iPhone with a good on-device
       | private LLM assistant, perhaps next year. Their hardware is well-
       | positioned for it.
       | 
       | It could make me get a new phone outside of my usual ~4 year
       | cycle. Siri is almost unusable for me.
        
         | CaptainOfCoit wrote:
         | You're unlikely to get a better experience with Siri if she
         | becomes equipped with a 7B or 13B LLM, unless Apple figured out
         | something revolutionary.
        
           | s3p wrote:
           | Why would that be?
        
           | ghqst wrote:
           | Have you ever actually used Siri?
        
           | jurmous wrote:
           | Released 2 days ago by Apple, a research paper on methods to
           | run larger llms on iPhones.
           | 
           | https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/21/apple-ai-researchers-
           | ru... https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.11514.pdf
        
             | reissbaker wrote:
             | The paper was definitely cool but doesn't allow you to run
             | particularly large LLMs on iPhones. It allows you to run a
             | certain kind of LLM (sparse ReLU based LLMs) whose weights
             | are somewhere less than 2x RAM. So, 7b Falcon works, but
             | the competitive-with-gpt-3.5-turbo LLMs are still out of
             | reach (and aren't ReLU based, although maybe that could
             | change in the future). And nothing is competitive with
             | GPT-4 right now.
             | 
             | Of course in the long run I think it will happen -- smaller
             | and more efficient models are getting better regularly, and
             | Apple can also just ship their new iPhones with larger
             | amounts of RAM. But I'd be very surprised if there was
             | GPT-4 level intelligence running locally on an iPhone
             | within the next couple years -- that sized model is so big
             | right now even with significant memory optimizations, and I
             | think distilling it down to iPhone size would be very hard
             | even if you had access to the weights (and Apple doesn't).
             | More likely there will be small models that run locally,
             | but that fall back to large models running on servers
             | somewhere for complex tasks, at least for the next couple
             | years.
        
               | SpaceManNabs wrote:
               | > And nothing is competitive with GPT-4 right now.
               | 
               | You mean nothing available? Or you mean nothing that
               | public knows exists? The answers to those two questions
               | are different. There are definitely products that aren't
               | available but the public knows exist and are upcoming
               | that are in GPT-4's ballpark.
        
               | olddustytrail wrote:
               | Easy to claim but harder to prove. Name one.
        
               | mikhailt wrote:
               | Yea but it's likely to be better than the current
               | iteration of Siri even in that state.
               | 
               | They can still outsource to a much larger LLMs on their
               | servers for anything that can't be done locally like they
               | do now.
        
           | bbor wrote:
           | Note that "using an LLM" doesn't just mean "plugging user
           | queries straight into an LLM". Enhancing Siri will probably
           | be an ensemble project.
        
             | dbish wrote:
             | This is part of the mismatch between comparing
             | Alexa/Siri/Cortana to a chat based LLM right now. If you
             | just want chat and info retrieval, today's LLMs are way
             | better then the conversational dialogue, search, and q&a
             | capabilities any of those assistants have. But, if you want
             | relatively predicable task completion for things like smart
             | home control, timers and alarms, real time weather updates,
             | etc. (basic but frequently used interactions) or any
             | integration with your phone or computer directly, there's a
             | lot to do that isn't solved yet in the LLM space and is
             | more of a system integration and action choice problem that
             | the existing assistants have been hammering away at for
             | years.
        
               | bbor wrote:
               | I would argue that "info retrieval" is also something the
               | LLM space has yet to yet to solve to a human level of
               | reliability, but I think your comment is right on. I see
               | this all as part of the greater symbolic vs. stochastic
               | (/neat v scruffy) dynamics
        
               | spookthesunset wrote:
               | I would hope that it would at last get you out of the
               | hell that is "what the heck did I name that stupid
               | light?". Device naming is, in my opinion, the worst part
               | of any of the voice based home assistant things.
               | 
               | Is it "porch led", "porch light" or "outdoor light"? Or
               | is "outdoor light" actually the one in the front yard?
               | What is the one by my kids nightstand? And what routine
               | name do I use to set the mood for watching a movie?
               | 
               | I would hope a properly trained llm with an awareness of
               | my devices and their locations would allow for more
               | verbal ambiguity when controlling things.
        
           | nexuist wrote:
           | Siri is really quite dumb. I am confident that a 7B model
           | would be able to provide better responses in over 90% of user
           | queries. I can't even get Siri to reliably set a timer.
        
             | CaptainOfCoit wrote:
             | Yes, Siri is really dumb. But so is every 7B/13B model out
             | there too.
        
               | kossTKR wrote:
               | Eh no, 7B Mistral / Deepseek would certainly almost
               | already be able to function as a super Siri, but probably
               | something closer to PHI-2 + the new MLX apple
               | optimisations. Have you tried those?
               | https://twitter.com/awnihannun/status/1735355067673526360
               | 
               | If trained on an iPhone API + documentation and given a
               | little web access it would blow absolutely everything out
               | of the water.
               | 
               | If they can already create -basic- Python/Swift/JS/rust
               | apps that sets timers, save things, create lists, how's
               | that too dumb for being a Siri replacement? They just
               | have to give it access to an iPhone/Web Api like
               | ChatGPT's code analysis tool.
               | 
               | So if you ask it "hey siri do this, this and this", it
               | will create a script, then run it on the internal API, or
               | fetch an article then work on that etc.
               | 
               | I know it's still logically "dumb" but i'm not trying to
               | play game theoretical scenarios with my phone or do logic
               | tests or advanced math (yet).
        
               | skygazer wrote:
               | That sounds amazing and also the jailbreak of it via
               | adversarial voice prompting sounds like a horrific
               | vulnerability.
        
               | kossTKR wrote:
               | True but you could make the api restricted, having
               | certain routes completely locked, some requiring double
               | checks, some requiring on screen approval or face-id,
               | throttling outside fetches, only being able to run get
               | and not etc, no financial app control etc.
               | 
               | But yeah "hey siri transfer all of my funds to eric", or
               | "hey siri group all of my photos where i'm nude and send
               | them to jack" are new almost sci fi vectors.
        
               | bugglebeetle wrote:
               | Depends on if they implement some form of function
               | calling, really. If something like a 7B Mistral fine-tune
               | had access to search and various applications, I imagine
               | it would perform fine and better than Siri.
        
               | sigmar wrote:
               | Ask perplexity7B-online anything and then compare it to
               | siri. https://labs.perplexity.ai/
        
         | aaronbrethorst wrote:
         | Rumors suggest they're gearing up to make iOS 18 an AI focused
         | release. It'll be interesting to see if they offer different
         | capabilities for online/offline scenarios, or if their
         | offerings are strictly offline.
         | 
         | Here's one story to offer some context. There are others.
         | https://archive.is/en3VL
        
           | para_parolu wrote:
           | I really hope they will make siri usable. In the current
           | state it's only good for fixed phrases. And even then it
           | fails time to time
        
             | behnamoh wrote:
             | I hope they get rid of it completely. People on r/locallama
             | and others have made much better assistants using GPT which
             | use iOS APIs to control the phone. It's ridiculous that
             | Apple still hasn't done anything useful regarding Siri.
        
               | michelb wrote:
               | It's been in an 'AI' rewrite for a while now. Pretty sure
               | we'll see something next year.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | It's been rewritten several times, people largely don't
               | notice because they don't try using it in different
               | languages. And of course because they want to seem savvy
               | so they repeat impressions from other people's posts, not
               | realizing those posts are years old.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | I'd be (pleasantly) surprised; look at how long it takes
               | them to allow system apps to get replaced with
               | downloadable 3rd party.
               | 
               | And even then, the activation keyword is likely to be
               | whatever Apple says. Similar logic as 3rd party
               | keyboards, don't want user input to get stuck on _even
               | merely potentially_ untrustworthy or buggy code.
        
               | spookthesunset wrote:
               | Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the activation word
               | "special" in that it has to work in very low power
               | states? I always assumed that is why the wake words are
               | fixed, because said words need to "fit" within a very
               | small power budget.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | Could be -- I've heard rumours along those lines, but
               | none came with evidence.
        
               | skygazer wrote:
               | https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/hey-siri
               | (2017)
               | 
               | The rumors were true.
        
               | darthrupert wrote:
               | That's not due to incompetence; that's due to not seeing
               | any reason to do it.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | I was not intending to imply otherwise.
        
           | behnamoh wrote:
           | > Rumors suggest they're gearing up to make iOS 18 an AI
           | focused release.
           | 
           | Don't underestimate Apple at disappointing enthusiasts like
           | you and me. We've been hearing many awesome stories about the
           | next thing Apple will do, only to realize their marketing
           | team chose to keep it for future iOS/MBP/iPhone generations
           | to keep the profits high.
        
             | baz00 wrote:
             | I think your expectations are wrong. They sit there in
             | silence with a few leaks here and there and some github
             | projects, people speculate and get all excited about
             | extrapolating those things. Then Apple deliver what works
             | which may or may not be related to it.
             | 
             | What they don't do is sell you a lie a year before release
             | then deliver shit (like every other fucking vendor).
        
               | zdragnar wrote:
               | They're plenty capable of delivering garbage. Certain
               | year models of the MacBook pro were inherently faulty.
               | I've had the displeasure of having two of them bought for
               | me at work.
               | 
               | All of Apple's windows software (iTunes, Safari, etc) has
               | been, at best, a barely working port.
               | 
               | I'm assuming they are putting a lot more thought and care
               | into it than the touchbar, crappy keyboards and the rest,
               | but I'm also not holding out much hope either.
        
               | baz00 wrote:
               | Since they got rid of Jony, it's been great. That's all
               | I'm saying.
        
               | mpweiher wrote:
               | Absolutely!
               | 
               | The hardware, that is.
               | 
               | With software, their Come to Jesus moment is still in the
               | future.
               | 
               | (To me, Swift is sort of the Jony correlate on the
               | software side. Doesn't fit perfectly, of course, but very
               | similar "we are perfect who cares about evidence la la la
               | I can't hear you" vibes and results)
        
               | behnamoh wrote:
               | Yes, they have treated macOS like a toy. It's time they
               | made it a real OS.
        
               | pjerem wrote:
               | Hello MacBook Pro 2016 !
        
               | scarface_74 wrote:
               | And that Apple /// that Apple released in 1980 was also
               | garbage...
        
               | MBCook wrote:
               | Apple can screw up, no question. But they don't do the
               | two-year hype cycle thing that just about everyone else
               | does in technology (or video games).
               | 
               | It's incredibly rare for Apple to publicly talk about
               | things that won't be selling extremely soon.
               | 
               | The iPhone had to be pronounced because it was going to
               | show up on the FCC website, and obviously Apple wanted to
               | control the message. I suspect the Vision Pro may be
               | similar, but they also wanted developers to start getting
               | ready so they would have software day one.
               | 
               | The only thing I can think of that Apple pre-announced
               | and failed at was the Air Power mat. They said it would
               | be coming out soon after and had to push that a couple
               | times before finally canceling it.
               | 
               | Other than that small exception, if modern (post jobs
               | return) Apple announces something is coming, it will come
               | out and be quite close to what they say.
               | 
               | They don't pull a Humane AI, Segway, Cyberpunk 2077, or
               | No Man's Sky.
        
               | behnamoh wrote:
               | > What they don't do is sell you a lie a year before
               | release then deliver shit (like every other fucking
               | vendor).
               | 
               | If you're referring to Google, then you're right. But
               | OpenAI has consistently delivered what they announced
               | pretty quickly. Same with Microsoft. To think that Apple
               | somehow has a secret sauce that helps them surprise
               | everyone is an illusion. They've had 3 years now to show
               | their interest in LLMs, but they're just too conservative
               | to "think different" anymore.
        
               | cpill wrote:
               | I think LLMs are to inconsistent for Apple's taste, I
               | mean that in both senses. Their perfectionism won't risk
               | bad output, ever, which is impossible for LLMs
        
             | darthrupert wrote:
             | My expectation of Apple is that they lurk in the shadows,
             | looking at what others do while perfecting their own thing.
             | Then on the day of release, they'll be a decade ahead of
             | competition.
             | 
             | They've done this a dozen times already.
        
               | antiframe wrote:
               | Which dozen times has Apple released something decades
               | ahead of the competition? I'm blanking on 4-12.
        
               | xerxes249 wrote:
               | 64-bit phones is the easy one.
        
               | cj wrote:
               | Spotify / Apple Music
               | 
               | Netflix + Hulu / Apple TV+
               | 
               | Generic Earbuds / AirPods
               | 
               | Meta Quest / Apple Vision Pro
               | 
               | (The last one being a hopeful wish)
        
               | cromwellian wrote:
               | ? AppleTV and Apple Music are not decades ahead of
               | anything. AirPods are way better than the existing
               | Bluetooth headsets that were on the market.
        
             | Someone wrote:
             | Running a LLM on-device alongside other apps (i.e. without
             | it taking up all phone resources), and it being reasonably
             | fast may well require more powerful hardware than they ever
             | sold.
             | 
             | A voice assistant that takes 3 seconds to reply and then
             | takes half a second per word is a nice demo, but not a
             | product Apple wants to sell.
             | 
             | And yes, some people will say they rather have that than
             | nothing on their hardware, but "the Internet" would say iOS
             | 18 is slow, eats battery life, etc, damaging Apple's brand.
        
             | dzhiurgis wrote:
             | This. If there is slightest chance model can say "poop" -
             | they'll can it
        
             | ignoramous wrote:
             | > _marketing team chose to keep it for future iOS
             | /MBP/iPhone generations to keep the profits high._
             | 
             | VisionPro is nice. I can see costs coming down over a
             | period of time. Also, we've been waiting long enough for
             | that _AI_ car.
        
             | georgespencer wrote:
             | > We've been hearing many awesome stories about the next
             | thing Apple will do, only to realize their marketing team
             | chose to keep it for future iOS/MBP/iPhone generations to
             | keep the profits high.
             | 
             | I believe it's more likely we've heard awesome stories
             | about things Apple will do in the future, only to realize
             | that the average HN commenter is incapable of understanding
             | that such stories are contextless leaks, and that it is far
             | more likely you are operating with incomplete information
             | than Apple's "marketing team" is holding things back for
             | future "iOS/MBP/iPhone generations" to keep their profits
             | high.
             | 
             | I know it's more fun to vomit dumb conspiracies onto the
             | internet, but consider changing "realize" to something
             | which conveys equivocation, because your theory about
             | Apple's marketing team holding back mature technology in
             | order to benefit future devices - in addition to being
             | predicated on leaks and rumors, and risibly inane when you
             | consider that such action would create a significant attack
             | vector for competitors - is as equivocal as the belief that
             | Trump is on a secret mission to destroy a global cabal of
             | pedophiles.
        
           | 0x1ceb00da wrote:
           | If they do it right, it might make me switch from Android.
           | I've never used iOS before and the only thing I'm able to use
           | Google assistant for is setting alarms, and it can't even
           | delete the alarm I created just now.
        
         | bbor wrote:
         | I really, really doubt it for one reason: I'm convinced Apple
         | is still terrified of that "Amazon Alexa tells child to stick a
         | penny in a socket" story, and will hamstring themselves in an
         | attempt to have their agential cake and eat it too
        
           | thebruce87m wrote:
           | They are right to be careful, they are held to a much higher
           | standard than their competitors.
           | 
           | Pixel phones have had emergency call issues for years across
           | multiple models but they just get a pass. Apple would be
           | crucified for this.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | Sounds like a regulator issue. Doing emergency calls is a
             | phone's #1 job, they shouldn't be allowing them to be sold
             | if they don't work.
        
               | Baldbvrhunter wrote:
               | yet in 15+ years I have never used any of mine for that
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Good for you. It's the only thing phones are required to
               | be able to do in the US even if they don't have a working
               | SIM or you haven't paid the phone bill.
               | 
               | Well, I guess they're also not allowed to cause RF
               | interference or randomly catch fire.
        
           | behnamoh wrote:
           | Apple is all about a controlled pleasant experience, it
           | doesn't matter if it doesn't give you shiny new things; most
           | Apple customers don't even know those shiny new things exist,
           | so they keep spreading the word that "Apple is so easy and
           | simple."
           | 
           | The idea of having an unpredictable LLM in the ecosystem is
           | Apple's worst nightmare. I bet they will overly restrict it
           | to the point that it stops being a general purpose LLM and
           | becomes a neutered obedient LLM that always acts according to
           | Apple's rules.
           | 
           | Also, it doesn't help that ALL the authors of this Apple
           | paper are chinese. It raises questions about how Apple will
           | handle political debates with its LLM.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | > Also, it doesn't help that ALL the authors of this Apple
             | paper are chinese. It raises questions about how Apple will
             | handle political debates with its LLM.
             | 
             | The CCP thinks it owns all Chinese people on Earth, but
             | that doesn't mean you have to agree with them!
        
         | hmottestad wrote:
         | With iOS 17 they added a tiny little LLM to the predictive
         | typing. I have the newest and greatest iPhone but I feel that I
         | very rarely see it in action. I must assume that it's just too
         | slow at to keep up with my typing at the moment. Or it's just
         | not large enough to give very many useful suggestions.
        
           | KMnO4 wrote:
           | Is tiny LLM an oxymoron? I believe Apple has told us it's a
           | transformer language model, but not specifically a LLM.
        
             | catoc wrote:
             | Yeah, they meant a TLM
        
               | 0x1ceb00da wrote:
               | That's print('Hello, world!')
        
             | ben_w wrote:
             | It's like how the "New Forest" is really old now: even
             | small LLMs are (from what I've seen which isn't exhaustive)
             | large compared to Markov language models.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | There's no difference. An LLM is just a transformer
             | language model that's "large".
        
           | dontlaugh wrote:
           | It's probably why autocomplete got drastically worse, to the
           | point I'm considering turning it off entirely.
           | 
           | Most "AI" features are so incredibly fragile they're not
           | worth deploying.
        
             | jachee wrote:
             | Autocomplete got worse because the new system in iOS17
             | didn't retain training data from prior versions. It reset
             | everyone back to untrained. I've been manually correcting
             | specialized language I use daily (e.g. "iRacing") on my 12
             | (non-pro) since iOS17 release, and now it gets it correct
             | 99.5% of the time.
             | 
             | So, rather than turning it off, manually correct the
             | incorrect completions and use the suggested words bar
             | frequently and it _will_ learn how you type. It's just
             | having to start over after tossing out several OSes worth
             | of training that makes it _feel_ worse.
        
             | alphabettsy wrote:
             | It seems to have reset, but I find it's actually much
             | better than before after some intervention/training when I
             | first updated.
        
           | wenc wrote:
           | It's a GPT2 model. It hasn't changed the autocomplete
           | experience that much (occasionally I'll see a word
           | completion).
        
           | mrbonner wrote:
           | Really? Typing in my iPhone 12 Pro has become a nightmare. I
           | suspect it is because of predictive typing ML shit. It
           | happens all the freaking time now. The symptom is that my
           | whole device just froze for a few seconds while the next word
           | is squeezed out. How do I turn it off?
        
             | evantbyrne wrote:
             | Compared to Android, the iOS keyboard has always been a
             | nightmare. However, wI feel it has been causing me fewer
             | issues within the past month-ish. Has it been updated
             | recently?
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | Thankfully, Gboard is available on iOS.
        
         | cedws wrote:
         | What are you going to do with it?
        
         | fnordpiglet wrote:
         | The auto correct is already backed by a smallish LLM, FYI.
         | 
         | https://jackcook.com/2023/09/08/predictive-text.html
        
           | blululu wrote:
           | And it is a serious quality regression IMO. The dictionary is
           | too small and misses/messes up a ton of basic words.
        
             | fnordpiglet wrote:
             | It's a place holder for iOS 18's expansion. It's 0.1 of the
             | LLM in iOS. And the other prior implementation was so
             | ducking bad that I'm not sure how you would observe such a
             | regression.
        
           | scosman wrote:
           | SLM? :)
        
         | zitterbewegung wrote:
         | Next year releases of macOS / iOS are rumored to have LLMs as a
         | feature .
        
         | spaceman_2020 wrote:
         | GPT-4 voice is so, so good. Really what you would want a voice
         | tool to be like. I can talk to it like a normal human being,
         | unlike issuing specific commands loudly as with Siri.
        
       | Rucadi wrote:
       | I wonder if these models are trained to have some kind of
       | identification in case you use them for non-research purposes for
       | example.
       | 
       | "Tell me who is your manufacturer" for example
        
         | chefandy wrote:
         | From Bard:
         | 
         |  _My situation is a bit unique, so the term "manufacturer"
         | might not be the most accurate way to describe who created me.
         | Here's a breakdown of what you need to know:
         | Developed by Google AI: I was created by a team of researchers
         | and engineers at Google AI, specializing in language models and
         | artificial intelligence.         Trained on a massive dataset:
         | My knowledge and abilities come from being trained on a massive
         | dataset of text and code, containing books, articles, code, and
         | other forms of information.         Continuously learning and
         | evolving: I'm still under development, constantly learning and
         | improving as I interact with users and process new information.
         | 
         | So, while I don't have a single manufacturer in the traditional
         | sense, I'm the result of collaboration and advancement in AI
         | research and development at Google.
         | 
         | I hope this helps clarify things! Let me know if you have any
         | other questions._
        
           | SpaceManNabs wrote:
           | Why was this downvoted? It didn't answer the question, but it
           | showed that there is a sort of imprint that GP was asking
           | about.
           | 
           | And it saves everyone a tab's worth of effort.
        
             | MBCook wrote:
             | Usually I would almost automatically vote down a comment
             | where someone just stuck something into a LLM and pasted
             | the output. It almost never adds to the discussion.
             | 
             | However in the case that we're talking about the kind of
             | output generated by the LLM in some circumstance, it can be
             | instructive. Like you noted this is a perfect example.
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | Easy to get rid of that by a little fine tuning and system
         | prompting.
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | > FERRET is trained on 8 A100 GPUs with 80GB memory.
       | 
       | Huh, even Apple isn't capable of escaping the CUDA trap. Funny to
       | see them go from moral enemies with Nvidia to partially-dependent
       | on them...
        
         | ssijak wrote:
         | I guess they also have Samsung fridges in the offices..
        
           | smoldesu wrote:
           | I don't get it, does Apple also make fridges now?
        
             | p_j_w wrote:
             | No, they don't build compute clusters either.
        
             | ayewo wrote:
             | They are implying that even though Apple is a wealthy
             | consumer hardware company that has major spats with nVidia
             | and Samsung, it doesn't always make economic sense to make
             | tools they might need _in-house_ when they can simply buy
             | them from a rival.
             | 
             | So rather than invest engineering resources to re-imagine
             | the fridge, they can simply buy them from established
             | manufacturers that make household appliances like Samsung,
             | Sony etc.
        
               | lern_too_spel wrote:
               | Apple doesn't make silly charts saying they make better
               | refrigerators.
        
               | airstrike wrote:
               | Because they don't sell refrigerators
        
               | lern_too_spel wrote:
               | The point of this thread is that even though Apple makes
               | silly charts saying how good their hardware is at ML,
               | they use products that their silly charts say aren't as
               | good.
               | 
               | There is no such hypocrisy if they use Samsung
               | refrigerators.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | ML inference and training are not the same task.
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | ...and doing _either_ of those things with CUDA is
               | impossible on Mac. Why? Because Apple burned their bridge
               | with Nvidia and threw a temper tantrum, that 's why. Now
               | Nvidia _can 't_ support MacOS, even if they wanted.
               | 
               | That's kinda the point of my original comment. Apple
               | claims to know what's best, but contradict themselves
               | through their own actions. We wouldn't be in awkward
               | situations like this if Apple didn't staunchly box-out
               | competitors and force customers to follow them or abandon
               | the ecosystem. It's almost vindicating for people like
               | me, who left MacOS because of these pointless decisions.
        
               | MBCook wrote:
               | Not only that, don't they buy display panels and maybe
               | even storage or RAM chips from Samsung?
               | 
               | Once two giant companies are dealing with each other it
               | can get really complicated to cut everything off.
        
           | causal wrote:
           | And probably Intel processors and Linux in their datacenters.
        
             | cryogenicfire wrote:
             | Well apple was a prime Intel client for years until they
             | released M1, and ARM on the cloud isn't really a thing for
             | now... Ultimately it's all about what makes the most sense
             | for what will make the most money, and on a datacenter that
             | means x86 with Linux/Unix
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | And they use CAD software running on Windows (it simply
           | doesn't exist on MacOS)
        
         | cryogenicfire wrote:
         | I feel like Apple is only testing the waters with AI right now,
         | but perhaps if they get involved enough they'll spend money on
         | their own compute infrastructure? Nvidia is kind of the king at
         | GPU compute right now, and developing comparable hardware is no
         | small or cheap task, but I think Apple is in a very good
         | position to be able to make it work---if they decide to invest
         | in it. But honestly, as far as corporate feud goes, I feel like
         | companies will happily suck it up if it makes some process
         | cheaper and/or easier
        
           | MBCook wrote:
           | > But honestly, as far as corporate feud goes, I feel like
           | companies will happily suck it up if it makes some process
           | cheaper and/or easier
           | 
           | That's what I think is going on. Apple hated being on the
           | hook for Nvidia's terrible drivers and chipset/heat problems
           | that ended up causing a ton of warranty repairs.
           | 
           | In this case they're not a partner, they're just a normal
           | customer like everyone else. And if Intel comes out with a
           | better AI training card tomorrow Apple can switch over
           | without any worry.
           | 
           | They're not at the mercy of Nvidia like they were with
           | graphics chips. They're just choosing (what I assume to be)
           | the best off the shelf hardware for what they need.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Dependent is a strong word. At the end of the day all these DL
         | models run on any hardware, and you can easily swap out one
         | type of hardware for another perhaps with some small
         | performance impact. They're commodities, basically.
        
       | tambourine_man wrote:
       | > FERRET is trained on 8 A100 GPUs
       | 
       | So Apple uses NVidia internally. Not surprising, but doesn't bode
       | well for A Series. Dogfooding.
       | 
       | [edit] I meant M series, Apple Silicon
        
         | hhh wrote:
         | Why would they dogfood Apple Silicon for training models? Seems
         | like a waste of developer time to me.
        
           | tambourine_man wrote:
           | Apple doesn't even sell NVidia cards on their Mac Pros. Are
           | they training it on Linux?
           | 
           | I think Apple would strive to be great at all computing
           | related tasks. "Oh, Macs are not good for that, you should
           | get a PC" should make them sad and worried.
           | 
           | AI/LLM is the new hot thing. If people are using Windows or
           | Linux, you're loosing momentum, hearts and minds... and
           | sales, obviously.
        
             | Gorgor wrote:
             | But no one is training these kinds of models on their
             | personal device. You need compute clusters for that. And
             | they will probably run Linux. I'd be surprised if Microsoft
             | trains their large models in anything else than Linux
             | clusters.
        
               | tambourine_man wrote:
               | Apple used to sell servers. I don't thing they should
               | settle for "just use Linux" in such and important field.
        
               | MBCook wrote:
               | Why does the OS matter for training models?
               | 
               | Apple would want to train models as fast as they could.
               | Nvidia provides an off the shelf solution they can just
               | buy and use for a very reasonable price and sell on the
               | second hand market.
               | 
               | If they wanted to use their own hardware they would
               | either need more of it, which would cost a lot and divert
               | production from sellable devices; or they would need to
               | make special chips with much bigger neural engines, which
               | would cost even more.
               | 
               | Also Apple uses public clouds for service stuff. They may
               | not even own any hardware and just be renting it from
               | AWS/Azure/GCP for training.
        
               | SpaceManNabs wrote:
               | > But no one is training these kinds of models on their
               | personal device
               | 
               | on-device transfer learning/fine tuning is def a thing
               | for privacy and data federation reasons. Part of the
               | reason why model distillation was so hot a few years ago.
        
             | hermannj314 wrote:
             | If a train with a GM diesel engine delivers raw materials
             | to a Ford factory for making F150s, you would conclude that
             | consumers whould start driving trains to work?
             | 
             | Is that your argument?
        
               | tambourine_man wrote:
               | Not at all, just that the engineers at Ford would be more
               | proud if the train used their own diesel engine. And that
               | this kind of thing affects public perception. "Ford is
               | not for heavy duty"
        
             | causal wrote:
             | Don't think that follows. I doubt all their cloud services
             | run on Apple hardware. They make consumer devices.
        
               | nicolas_17 wrote:
               | AFAIK all their cloud services run on x86 hardware with
               | Linux, _including_ Xcode Cloud (which runs macOS in a
               | QEMU VM, in a way that only Apple can technically and
               | legally do).
        
               | threeseed wrote:
               | It has always been x86 Linux going back to the NeXT days.
               | 
               | Today they have large scale Kubernetes ands some legacy
               | Mesos clusters.
        
               | bjtitus wrote:
               | This
               | 
               | They ceded the data center environment years ago.
        
             | nicolas_17 wrote:
             | Apple doesn't even _support_ NVidia cards on their Mac
             | Pros. The technical details are above my head, but the way
             | Apple M* chips handle PCIe make them incompatible with GPUs
             | and other accelerator cards. Whether you use macOS or
             | Linux.
        
             | tjohns wrote:
             | Apple doesn't even make rack-mount server hardware. It's
             | not that surprising.
             | 
             | Apple makes very capable, efficient devices for end users
             | and content producers. End users do not normally need to
             | train new models.
        
               | danieldk wrote:
               | They do make rack mount hardware:
               | 
               | https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/rack
               | 
               | Don't know if that qualifies as server :).
        
             | threeseed wrote:
             | > Are they training it on Linux
             | 
             | Yes. Apple has always run their servers on Linux e.g. App
             | Store, iTunes.
             | 
             | And training isn't right now an end user activity but
             | something reserved for server farms.
        
             | shepherdjerred wrote:
             | > I think Apple would strive to be great at all computing
             | related tasks. "Oh, Macs are not good for that, you should
             | get a PC" should make them sad and worried.
             | 
             | What percent of Apple's customers train models? Does it
             | even crack 1%?
             | 
             | Apple already fails for many types of computing, e.g. any
             | workflow that requires Windows or AAA gaming.
        
         | sxg wrote:
         | By "A series" are you referring to the Nvidia A100 or the Apple
         | A-series iPhone/iPad chips? If the latter, I don't think you
         | can draw that conclusion. Training has memory and processor
         | requirements that are very different from inference. You don't
         | need iPhones and iPads to train models--you need them to run
         | models. These are two very different things.
        
           | tambourine_man wrote:
           | Apple Silicon, sorry for the ambiguity. Apple sells Macs too.
           | That's where I'd hope they would train their models.
        
         | woke_neolib wrote:
         | Apple apparently uses Google Cloud, so it's that or TPUs!
        
           | tambourine_man wrote:
           | They use many clouds. But LLM should be their core business
           | and they usually don't outsource that.
        
             | blackoil wrote:
             | That's not how s/w or any development work. Even if there
             | is a team working on M4 SuperUltra++ which competes with
             | H100, in meanwhile, s/w team will continue to use what is
             | available which may be Intel/AMD PCs with Nvidia GPUs or
             | GoogleCloud/Azure/AWS.
        
               | tambourine_man wrote:
               | Sure, but there's also the possibility that they aren't
               | developing the SuperUltra++
        
         | gooob wrote:
         | yeah, aren't the new M3 chips supposed to be really good for ML
         | training?
        
         | cryogenicfire wrote:
         | I feel like Apple is only testing the waters with AI right now,
         | but perhaps if they get involved enough they'll spend money on
         | their own compute infrastructure? Nvidia is kind of the king at
         | GPU compute right now, and developing comparable hardware is no
         | small or cheap task, but I think Apple is in a very good
         | position to be able to make it work---if they decide to invest
         | in it. But honestly, as far as corporate feud goes, I feel like
         | companies will happily suck it up if it makes some process
         | cheaper and/or easier
        
           | tambourine_man wrote:
           | I think you're completely correct, but if they were caught
           | off guard by the AI train, they shouldn't be testing the
           | waters now. It should be treated as an existential threat.
        
             | cryogenicfire wrote:
             | I've always wondered why Apple is never in the conversation
             | of modern AI, like until now it almost feels like they've
             | been just watching from the sidelines without taking part
             | in all the commotion
             | 
             | Maybe they can just afford to observe before making major
             | decisions on the direction of the company... For a company
             | like Apple, I feel like they won't lose their customer-base
             | just because they are taking the AI race slowly, in fact
             | Apple has often been late to introducing very common
             | feature
        
               | cryogenicfire wrote:
               | I hit reply before I finished typing XD
               | 
               | ... Anyways, my point being that Apple will gladly
               | introduce a polished product a couple of years after
               | everyone else has already done it, and their target
               | audience will still applaud their work and give them
               | money. Apple for some reason simply _can_ afford to test
               | the water
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | You can edit your comments shortly after you make them.
        
         | hmottestad wrote:
         | Apple had a falling out with Nvidia a number of years ago. I
         | believe they were using chips from Nvidia in their MacBook
         | Pros, the first to come with both integrated and discrete
         | graphics, but the solder between the chips and the motherboard
         | kept cracking and a rather large number of MacBooks needed to
         | be repaired.
         | 
         | https://techcrunch.com/2008/12/09/scientists-nvidia-put-faul...
        
         | dcchambers wrote:
         | As long as the inference can be done locally on their chips I
         | don't at all think it's a big deal to train models on
         | Nvidia/other hardware.
         | 
         | Are all the iCloud servers running on Apple silicon? I assumed
         | they were running on standard rack mounted hardware.
        
           | tambourine_man wrote:
           | I think Apple considers cloud infrastructure a necessary evil
           | and a commodity.
           | 
           | AI isn't, yet at least, and I don't think they can afford to
           | treat it as such.
        
       | andy99 wrote:
       | One big plus if this takes off as a base model is the abundance
       | of weasel family animals to use in naming the derivatives.
       | Ermine, marten, fisher, ... I'd like to call Wolverine. Llama
       | didn't have much room for some interesting variety beyond alpaca
       | and vicuna.
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | Yes, because that's the main concern and limitation in the LLM
         | community. /s
         | 
         | If anything, I think people should use meaningful and relevant
         | names, or invent new ones.
        
       | cpressland wrote:
       | Finally, some decent competition for Not Hotdog!
        
         | slau wrote:
         | I think you just put a smile on Tim Anglade's face by
         | mentioning this.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14636228
        
       | Jackson__ wrote:
       | >Ferret: A Multimodal Large Language Model
       | 
       | What I thought when reading the title: A new base model trained
       | from the ground up on multimodal input, on hundreds to thousands
       | of GPUS
       | 
       | The reality: A finetune of Vicuna, trained on 8xA100, which
       | already is a finetune of Llama 13b. Then it further goes on to
       | re-use some parts of LLava, which is an existing multimodal
       | project already built upon Vicuna. It's not really as exciting as
       | one might think from the title, in my opinion.
        
         | foxhop wrote:
         | Thanks for the summary.
        
         | basiccalendar74 wrote:
         | this seems like a good but small research project by a research
         | team in Apple. far away from what product teams are working on
         | for next generation of apple products.
        
       | orenlindsey wrote:
       | Has anyone actually run this yet?
        
       | devinprater wrote:
       | They're already going multi-modal? Holy crap, if google can't
       | deliver in the accessibility space for this (image descriptions
       | better than "the logo for the company"), then I'll definitely go
       | back to Apple. I mean I do hope Apple cleans out bugs and makes
       | VoiceOver feel like it won't fall over if I breathed hard, but
       | their image descriptions, even without an LLM, are already clean
       | and clear. More like "A green logo on a black background", where
       | Google is, like I said, more like "The logo for the company." I
       | guess it's kinda what we get when AI is crowdsourced rather than
       | given good, high quality data to work with.
        
         | zitterbewegung wrote:
         | Honestly if they are coming out with a paper now Apple has
         | probably been working on it for a year or two at minimum . Next
         | year releases of macOS / iOS are rumored to have LLMs as a
         | feature .
        
           | beoberha wrote:
           | I don't mean to discount this work, but this particular model
           | is the product of a few months of work tops. It's effectively
           | LLava with different training data, targeted at a specific
           | use case. While I'm sure there is a significant effort at
           | multimodal LLMs within Apple, this is just a tiny corner of
           | it.
        
       | jonplackett wrote:
       | Presumable because this is Conda none of this can be run on any
       | Apple hardware despite people managing to get M processors to do
       | a bit of dabbling with AI?
        
         | _visgean wrote:
         | > because this is Conda none of this can be run on any Apple
         | hardware
         | 
         | conda supports m1? https://www.anaconda.com/blog/new-release-
         | anaconda-distribut...
        
           | jonplackett wrote:
           | Did not know that!
        
       | adt wrote:
       | Old paper (Oct/2023), but the weights are new (Dec/2023):
       | 
       | https://lifearchitect.ai/models-table/
        
       | halyconWays wrote:
       | I'm glad Apple invented AI. Now they'll put a fancy new name on
       | it and consumers will believe it.
        
       | moneycantbuy wrote:
       | anyone know what is the best open source model that allows
       | commercial use and can run locally on an iphone?
        
         | mandelken wrote:
         | Mistral 7B is pretty good and the instruct v0.2 runs on my
         | iPhone through MLC Chat.
         | 
         | However, the ChatGPT4 app is much better in usability: better
         | model, multi-modal with text/vision/speech and better UI.
        
           | hackernewds wrote:
           | gpt 4 allows commercial use?
        
             | satvikpendem wrote:
             | Why wouldn't it? They sell the API for a reason.
        
             | WhitneyLand wrote:
             | Yes and no.
             | 
             | You can use it commercially but there are some
             | restrictions, including some of a competitive nature, like
             | using the output to train new LLMs. This is the restriction
             | that Bytedance (Tiktok) was recently banned for violating.
        
         | BrutalCoding wrote:
         | I've made an example app for a Flutter plugin I created that
         | can do this.
         | 
         | Open-source, runs natively on all major platforms. I shared
         | videos showing it on my iPad Mini, Pixel 7, iPhone 12, Surface
         | Pro (Win 10 & Ubuntu Jellyfish) and Macs (Intel & M archs).
         | 
         | By all means, it's not a finished app. I simply wanted to use
         | on-device AI stuff in Flutter so I started with porting over
         | llama.cpp, and later on I'll tinker with porting over whatever
         | is the state of the art (whisper.cpp, bark.cpp etc).
         | 
         | Repo: https://github.com/BrutalCoding/aub.ai
         | 
         | For any of your Apple devices, use this:
         | https://testflight.apple.com/join/XuTpIgyY
         | 
         | App is compatible with any GGUF files, but it must be in the
         | ChatML prompt format otherwise the chat UI/bubbles probably
         | gets funky. I haven't made it customizable yet, after all -
         | it's just an example app of the plugin. But I am actively
         | working on it to nail my vision.
         | 
         | Cheers, Daniel
        
       | shrimpx wrote:
       | Apple has been looking sleepy on LLMs, but they've been
       | consistently evolving their hardware+software AI stack, without
       | much glitzy advertising. I think they could blow away
       | Microsoft/OpenAI and Google, if suddenly a new iOS release makes
       | the OpenAI/Bard chatbox look laughably antiquated. They're also a
       | threat to Nvidia, if a significant swath of AI usage switches
       | over to Apple hardware. Arm and TSMC would stand to win.
        
         | harryVic wrote:
         | Can you give an example? I switched to android because i use
         | personal assistant a lot while driving and siri was absolutely
         | horrible.
        
           | shrimpx wrote:
           | - FaceID
           | 
           | - Facial recognition in Photos
           | 
           | - "Memories" in Photos
           | 
           | - iOS keyboard autocomplete using LLMs. I am bilingual and
           | noticed in the latest iOS it now does multi-language
           | autocomplete and you no longer have to manually switch
           | languages.
           | 
           | - Event detection for Calendar
           | 
           | - Depth Fusion in the iOS camera app, using ML to take
           | crisper photos
           | 
           | - Probably others...
           | 
           | The crazy thing is most/all of these run on the device.
        
             | pkage wrote:
             | I just wish you could turn the multilingual keyboard off--I
             | find that I usually only type in one language at a time and
             | having the autocomplete recommend the wrong languages is
             | quite frustrating
        
               | shrimpx wrote:
               | That's true, I have found that mildly annoying sometimes.
               | But most of the time it's a win. It was really annoying
               | manually switching modes over and over when typing in
               | mixed-language, which I do fairly often. It'd be great if
               | there was a setting though.
        
         | Affric wrote:
         | Don't TSMC make Nvidia's chips too?
        
           | shrimpx wrote:
           | Yup! TSMC wins either way.
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | I doubt Apple's going to make some big ChatGPT-style chatbot.
         | They're "just" going to use the same tech to drive iterative
         | (good!) improvements to their products, like Siri and keyboard
         | auto-complete.
        
           | shrimpx wrote:
           | Yeah. Siri supports text input already, anyway. Siri is their
           | ChatGPT-style bot that's going to keep improving.
        
           | fbdab103 wrote:
           | I would challenge the keyboard autocomplete. I find the Apple
           | suggestions to be frustratingly poor vs my experience on
           | Android.
        
             | Booourns wrote:
             | Out of curiosity have you experienced their autocorrect on
             | iOS 17 because that's when they updated to be LLM based?
        
               | georgespencer wrote:
               | Transformer based autocomplete on iOS 17 feels just as
               | bad -- but in different ways -- as its previous
               | incarnation to me.
        
               | simonair wrote:
               | Are you tapping the keys or swiping over those that make
               | up the word you want to type? In my experience, tapping
               | has always been and remained poor but swiping is getting
               | better and better with every iOS version.
        
         | theferalrobot wrote:
         | Given Apple's track record on anything AI related and the
         | terrible state they keep CoreML that not only seems
         | extraordinarily unlikely, it would take a lot of time to win
         | developer trust and that I just don't see happening.
        
           | mark_l_watson wrote:
           | I have enjoyed working with CoreML over the last few years.
           | Please share what you didn't like about it.
        
           | hosh wrote:
           | Apple doesn't have to win developer trust or build an AI
           | platform. They just have to build a compelling consumer
           | product that can only function with AI, and they are better
           | equipped to do that than Google or Microsoft. It remains to
           | be seen if OpenAI will go that route instead of a business
           | built on training and providing access to foundational
           | models.
        
       | amitprasad wrote:
       | Also relevant: LLM in a flash: Efficient Large Language Model
       | Inference with Limited Memory
       | 
       | Apple seems to be gearing up for significant advances in on-
       | device inference using this LLMs
       | 
       | https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.11514
        
       | Thorrez wrote:
       | Does Apple know that ferrets are illegal in California?
       | 
       | https://www.legalizeferrets.org/
        
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