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screyetoday at 12:31 AM3 repliesview on HN

Amazon and Apple have never had fundamental research groups. Even before LLMs, the top big-tech fundamental labs were FAIR, Google Research and MSR.

It has never been in Amazon or Apple's DNA to chase a product that doesn't have clear revenue outcomes (as long as adoption lands). AI is no different.

IMO, it's the right decision for Amazon and wrong decision for Apple.


Replies

DrewADesigntoday at 1:31 AM

They got burned by over-promising Apple Intelligence and then embarking on a so-far failed, rudderless journey to land features regular people actually gave a shit about. I’m no expert, but I reckon the exact right move is concentrating on their actual deliverable products and features and letting everyone else blow their cash on a maybe months-long moat for dubiously useful advances in categories most of their customers wish everyone would stop talking about.

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stingraycharlestoday at 12:40 AM

Didn’t Amazon invest a total of $8 billion in Anthropic? Seems like a much better choice than trying to do things in-house.

Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t even invested in any of the players.

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bionhowardtoday at 1:33 AM

What about Amazon’s work in formal verification research and Apple’s machine learning research?

[1] https://www.amazon.science/tag/formal-verification

[2] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research