The study argues that the advanced reasoning models, heralded by some as a new frontier for how AI "thinks", fall well short of expectations. When a problem becomes sufficiently complex, the team of six researchers wrote, the models suffered a "complete accuracy collapse". It examined top efforts from OpenAI, Google and and Anthropic - three AI makers considered several furlongs ahead of Apple in the AI race.
As I say - perhaps it's just a coincidence. And the debate around the paper's conclusions are only just starting. But it's certainly useful that it arrived just as the iPhone maker's perceived failing to build competitive AI capabilities comes back into sharp focus as third-party Apple developers descend on San Jose, California for the annual pilgrimage, with many more joining remotely.
WWDC isn't typically the venue for Apple's biggest product launches. But it is a chance for Apple to get developers hyped on some experimental ideas. The Vision Pro mixed-reality headset was unveiled at WWDC in 2023, and last year's event was about the long-awaited reveal of Apple's answer to ChatGPT and the rest: Apple Intelligence.
Apple's muted WWDC stands in stark contrast to the buzz created around the recent announcement that ex-Apple design guru Jony Ive was working on a device with OpenAI. That will take time to materialise, if it ever does. More urgent is the threat from Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which all seem closer to creating the breakthrough AI personal assistant that science-fiction has promised us for so long.
So it serves a useful purpose, then, to put out a research paper diminishing others' AI progress. Apple doesn't seem able to speed up, so it might as well take a shot at slowing others down. And indeed, we might look back in five or 10 years and concede Apple was entirely correct in its reservations.