Apple appear to be going above and beyond the call of duty:
For China residents : Apple Intelligence will not currently work for supported devices purchased in China mainland. For supported devices purchased outside of China mainland, Apple Intelligence will not currently work if you are in China mainland and if your Apple Account Country/Region is also in China mainland. — How to get Apple Intelligence - Apple Support
It seems they are using the purchase location of a device (i.e. VPN ineffective) as a first block, then location for any Apple devices bought outside of China. My M2 Air was bought in Shanghai, as was my iPhone…
As someone who trains AI, yeah it’s very true, but not all AI are built the same. Some can hardly make an ordered list, while others are seriously smart and difficult to stump. Gemini is insanely smart right now, the newest version of it. Ask it to find all the adverbs in your writing and it will. Ask it to rewrite your opening with a better hook, it will do that too. The key with AI is being very very specific. You’re probably putting in a longer prompt than it spits back out. But the key is in conversations. It learns the rules the more you correct it and keep the conversation going. A lot of people misunderstand this. If the AI fails the first time, that is good. Keep the convo going and it’ll give you what you need.
If a writer needs “AI” to improve a text, that writer is likely not skilled enough to understand what needs to be improved and how (and thus unable to be specific enough).
If I know what I want well enough to be specific enough, probably it would be a better use of my time to just go ahead and write the hook (or whatever) myself.
Major warning: Do not feed AI any portion of your novel. Ask questions, but do not give it your story! It will be used to train the AI.
Yes, when I train AI often I screams at myself because the things people ask are just so silly. They could have easily googled it, it’s sexual, genuinely concerning, asking for relationship advice, or just people cheating on tests. I see things real people ask AI. Those chats are not private, so whatever you get from it is being used. The horrible thing is it cannot decipher a good source from a bad one because it’s nuanced. It’ll take tweets as fact and use Wiki as a good source. Imagine an AI giving you life advice from a Tweet.
The only thing it’s good for is maybe math, dumbing down science stuff, logic puzzles, and travel itinerary for some reason. All of them are bad unless you prompt them at least ten times, then it’s good. However, when I say good, I don’t mean the writing is good from an artist’s standard. I only mean it will do what you asked. I probably should have clarified that before.
At that point, yeah, why bother? But if you just don’t have the skill or money to hire a writer, I see the appeal. Don’t get me wrong, I hate my job because I’m training it to do what I want to do for a living, but it does pay the bills right now.
The hardware is almost certainly identical, a macbook is a macbook and an LLM is just software like any other (unless Apple put some sort of secret apple silicon backdoor limit for some sort of maths used by LLM in place only for China, this seems highly unlikely though not inconceivable, Apple do bend over backwards to keep China happy and its consumers buying Apple products). My M2 macbook has no other limitations I am aware of, I can run any tool whether it is blocked by China’s firewall or not or not (I run multiple local LLMs without issue). But each macbook has a hardware UUID with numbers that do link to known distributions so Apple can easily partition off different software features based on the UUID. I am fairly certain this is a software-based control triggered by the UUID. Chinese consumers will get Apple Intelligence next year if we assume their Chinese language support claims are true.
I do know from my time at Apple when I was responsible for support sites throughout JAPAC, a non Chinese market phone was not allowed to be replaced or repaired in China - Chinese government requirement.
I had to sort out a major SNAFU that crossed Tim Cook’s desk. Some senior advisor in Guam telling an American in China he could go to any ARS in China for a free replacement (which he shouldn’t have got for accidental damage) of his US phone. When it didn’t get replaced - complaint to TC and crossed my desk with an ‘action and respond within 48hrs.’
Phone are specific to some markets due to the different frequencies used, but don’t recall that being a China issue.
Blockquote
If a writer needs “AI” to improve a text, that writer is likely not skilled enough to understand what needs to be improved and how (and thus unable to be specific enough).
A real bestseller author and writing couch, like you, can judge that, of course.
Major answer: Do not worry about that. It already has been trained by billion text lines, text paragraphs, even by simple words and word syllables. My fiction novels would be like adding a drop of fresh water to the ocean. It is irrelevant. However, AIs have deserved a touch of SciFi, don’t you think?
There will always be people who see progress as a threat. I guess there’s nothing we can do about that. However, there is a fitting Japanese saying for this: ‘The reed that does not bend in the wind will break.’
