alt.hn

3/26/2026 at 3:32:22 PM

On-Device AI Models Might Be the Next Reason to Upgrade Your iPhone

https://philippdubach.com/posts/on-device-ai-models-will-be-the-new-reason-to-upgrade-your-phone/

by 7777777phil

3/26/2026 at 5:49:58 PM

>Knowledge distillation works like this: you take a large model, have it perform tasks with detailed reasoning, then feed those reasoning traces to a smaller model until the student learns to mimic the teacher. The smaller model ends up far more capable than if you’d trained it from scratch on the same data. Apple can now do this with the full Gemini, not just their own in-house models, and the distilled output runs locally. No internet required.

No freaking way. AI companies see this as tantamount to pirating their models. There is no way that Google is not explicitly banning this in their agreement to allow Apple use their models.

by NewsaHackO

3/26/2026 at 6:40:18 PM

Here is a technical comparison to show how Knowledge Distillation works for on-device AI. It has visual maps for the Teacher vs Student models and explains things like 'Dark Knowledge' - https://vectree.io/compare/apple-intelligence-vs-knowledge-d...

by functional_dev

3/26/2026 at 4:22:18 PM

> Obviously, the average consumer has no idea what that sentence means, and Apple hasn’t figured out how to make them care.

the article also does nothing to show how or why consumers should care.

> Gartner projects GenAI smartphone spending will reach $393 billion in 2026, up 32% from $298 billion in 2025.

is this because consumers are interested in "GenAI" smartphones, or because every smartphone manufacturer has decided to tack "AI" onto every piece of their branding and there's just no way around it?

by Pwntastic

3/26/2026 at 4:25:03 PM

Good point there, I totally forgot to think why anyone should care about local models. It's something I've been wishing for while trying to build local first apps and I didn't think why my customers would care in the first place.

by skyberrys

3/26/2026 at 4:23:04 PM

I am looking forward to more capable phones able to run on device AI models. I prefer my phone to be still useful even without internet. Since Apple is using Gemini models to do this, do you think there is a chance Pixel phones will be part of the able to run models on devices, in their next updates?

by skyberrys

3/26/2026 at 5:39:34 PM

We're literally less than 10 years from satellite based cell service. Not to mention that the market interest in this is artificially propped up by the industry. They're just trying (and failing) to find more market lines for AI.

by alphawhisky

3/26/2026 at 6:43:27 PM

But then I'm even more reliant on some cloud to stay up.

by skyberrys

3/26/2026 at 5:29:05 PM

I have been craving for a small, extremely accurate voice model for a year. Having that would be an absolute game changer because I think that's the inflection point where people start interacting with their devices primarily through audio.

by antiresonant