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Google Research published a paper yesterday on a new compression algorithm that makes massive AI models much smaller and faster, with no loss whatsoever in performance.
Google’s TurboQuant algorithm is being hailed as a major breakthrough, and could lead to enormous AI models running on regular Macs, instead of data centers, and even on iPhones.
Today, Silicon Valley analyst Max Weinbach fed a PDF of Google’s paper to Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent.
With a bit of babysitting, he had Google’s new algorithm up and running inside Apple’s MLX machine learning framework within 25 minutes.
“Sorta insane this is where we are now,” he wrote on X.
Weinbach is wrong.
It’s not sorta insane — it’s utterly mind-boggling.
It is truly incredible that you can point a computer at a technical research paper and the machine will perfectly implement the paper’s findings in executable code in less than an hour.
Previously, this might have taken a small team of expert programmers days or even weeks to do.
We are in the midst of a radical revolution in computing — undoubtedly the biggest ever. Truly smart and competent computers, the kind portrayed in Star Trek and Blake’s 7, are clearly realizable, not some far-off sci-fi dream.
It’s beyond thrilling — and a bit terrifying, too (cough 2001: A Space Odyssey cough).
And despite the doom about Apple and AI, Cupertino is very, very much in the game.
A new report about Apple’s plans paints a very exciting picture of this kind of agentic AI coming to our devices this year in the form of a vastly improved Siri.
I couldn’t be more excited about it.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Apple’s potential next CEO, John Ternus, is a big fan of the iPad, which is good news for iPad aficionados.
Here’s another longstanding iPhone feature that finally made it to the Mac. It’s super-handy, and makes you wonder why it took so long. Maybe Apple should be using Codex a bit more!
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This is an interesting tale from Apple’s past, and might help explain why the Newton MessagePad was a bust.
The X posts below feature a couple of explainers about TurboQuant, but don’t miss the last one about a fake laptop for cats to sit on. What a genius idea!
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
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