The best AI computer?

How Apple accidentally made the finest machine for artificial intelligence.

Author

Leander Kahney
March 25, 2025

I think Apple is taking a wise and careful approach to AI.

The technology is insanely powerful — and still largely a black box.

Even though generative AIs routinely spit out remarkable results, their neural net inner workings can’t be plumbed, even by their makers.

There’s an emerging field known as “mechanistic interpretability” devoted to reverse-engineering the billions of parameters in LLMs into human-understandable algorithms. But so far, it’s yielded very few breakthroughs.

The fear is that AIs might develop their own motivations or goals, and no one would be any the wiser — until it was too late.

So Apple’s slow-and-steady approach is sage, but it’s earned the company the unfair label of being behind.

Actually, in many areas, Apple is way ahead — especially when it comes to hardware. Even though Apple has been building Neural Engines into its chips for years, it’s largely by accident that Apple silicon is currently the best consumer platform for AI.

Also in today’s newsletter:

  • Apple just announced the dates and format for this year’s eagerly awaited Worldwide Developers Conference — why is it online-only again?

  • My culture vulture son is getting into opera and classical, and it’s always a treat when he orders up something on our kitchen HomePods: He has great taste (runs in the family obvs!). He’s gonna love the new features in Apple Music Classical — the biggest updates since the platform’s launch.

  • This iPhone gimbal looks insane — and like a must-have, all-in-one tool for any iPhone filmmaker.

  • This is a crazy story: An iPad mini tossed into London’s River Thames five years ago helped police crack a violent ring of international museum thieves.

  • Bluetooth transmitter/receivers like Twelve South’s AirFly Pro are a modern-day travel essential, and the latest version is even better than its predecessor. See our hands-on review.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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One more thing ...

❝

Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

— Steve Jobs, 2005.

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