• Rabbit R1 AI box is actually an Android app in a limited $200 box, running on AOSP without Google Play.
  • Rabbit Inc. is unhappy about details of its tech stack being public, threatening action against unauthorized emulators.
  • AOSP is a logical choice for mobile hardware as it provides essential functionalities without the need for Google Play.
  • WanderingCat@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Without thinking into it I would have expected some more custom hardware, some on device AI acceleration happening. For one to go and purchase the device it should have been more than just an android app

    • deafboy@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The best way to do on-device AI would still be a standard SoC. We tend to forget that these mass produced mobile SoCs are modern miracles for the price, despite the crapy software and firmware support from the vendors.

      No small startup is going to revolutionize this space unless some kind of new physics is discovered.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think the plausibility comes from the fact that a specialized AI chip could theoretically outperform a general purpose chip by several orders of magnitude, at least for inference. And I don’t even think it would be difficult to convert a NN design into a chip or that it would need to be made on a bleeding edge node to get that much more performance. The trade off would be that it can only do a single NN (or any NNs that single one could be adjusted to behave identically to, eg to remove a node you could just adjust the weights so that it never triggers).

        So I’d say it’s more accurate to put it as “the easiest/cheapest way to do an AI device is to use a standard SoC”, but the best way would be to design a custom chip for it.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The hardware seems very custom to me. The problem is that the device everyone carries is a massive superset of their custom hardware making it completely wasteful.