Comment on My new laptop chip has an 'AI' processor in it, and it's a complete waste of space
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days agoMicrosoft, Google, and Apple are all quietly integrating NPUs into their devices, and implementing the software infrastructure in their operating systems to do on-device classification of content:
Too late. Apple has had an NPU in their phones since 2017. It’s been standard on flagship android devices since 2020 with various amd and intel processors starting around the same time.
I’m not here to defend LLMs or AI feature but for a comment to start with such a misinformed assessment of the state of reality reminds me of someone spouting off about chemtrails and weather machines.
At least NPUs actually exist.
If someone wants to avoid this stuff they are going to need to pick an open source platform that does not use these processor features.
wuffah@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You’re right, it appears that NPU hardware was introduced in the iPhone 8, in 2017, and I say this typing away from an Apple device. Sounds like I’ll be busy this weekend with that rusty spork.
However, it’s the recent generation of NPUs that provide the processing power needed to run the expanded scanning services implemented by these OS’s. That’s why Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15, and Microsoft is hawking Recall laptops.
While I admit the pins-and-string-on-a-corkboard tone, I don’t think we actually disagree on anything here. Eventually, an open source platform will become the only way to avoid this kind of hardware enabled surveillance.