The same iPhone, in Hong Kong and in London, will soon think differently
Reuters reported on Friday that Apple has trained a separate AI model for the Chinese market with Alibaba's help, reportedly the first foreign company approved by Beijing to run its own model there. Apple hasn't commented, so treat it as a report rather than fact. But the fact that even Apple has to keep a second brain for one market already tells you something.
Same icon. Different mind inside.
What interests me isn't Apple. It's how we talk to our children about AI. We tell them "just ask AI if you're stuck", as though it were a dictionary that reads the same everywhere. This story says otherwise: an AI assistant isn't one uniform global thing. It's shaped by where the handset was sold and which rules apply there, and the phone won't tell you which version you're talking to.
Ask the same question on the same model of phone, and before long you may get two different answers.
Half my family is in Hong Kong, half in the UK. Ask the same question on the same model of phone, and before long you may get two different answers.
So the skill to teach isn't "how to use AI". It's knowing who you're actually asking.
Schools have always taught this, just with a different subject, we were told to ask which paper printed it, and where it stood. Now the subject is an assistant that is unfailingly polite and unfailingly confident. The hard part is that a newspaper prints its name on the front. An assistant doesn't.
Do you talk about this at home yet, or is it a conversation you're saving for when they're older?
