Welcome to 's Innovation Index, which identifies the most innovative developments in tech from the past week and ranks the top four, based on votes from our panel of editors and experts. Our mission is to help you identify the trends that will have the biggest impact on the future.

It was another big week for AI, with Apple's coming releases taking over -- but not without Nvidia squeaking through to remind everyone of its dominance in neural network training.

While WWDC stole the show this week with several innovative releases, the standout for our team was Apple Intelligence. The company's cleverly named brand of AI emphasizes what Apple calls "personal intelligence" -- mostly on-device, convenient AI features that are hyper-personalized for a user's activity.

It isn't the features themselves that are especially interesting (that was kind of the point). As Contributor David Gewirtz put it, it's that AI is "now being added at the OS level and made accessible to developers across platforms. That moves AI out of its fairly walled chat garden and into becoming much more of a system component."

Coming in second is Nvidia, which reportedly maintained its lead as the fastest chip when it comes to training neural networks. According to several benchmarks, the company continues to massively outperform competitors like AMD, Intel, and Google. Considering benchmarks for AI testing are still in flux, Nvidia's demonstrated advantage here bodes well for its future in the space.

In third place is Apple's forthcoming iOS 18, which looks to upgrade the iPhone in ways that are revolutionary for Apple loyalists, but almost standard for Android users. Beyond updates to customizability, Siri, and certain apps, the refresh brings long-desired functionality to Photos and Messages, including schedule-send. The new OS version should make the most of Apple Intelligence on the iPhone with subtle but crucial improvements for everyday use -- an impactful, if quiet, move for the best-selling smartphone of 2023.

Closing out the week at#4 is Apple's Private Cloud Compute, the equally on-brand and impressive counterpart to Apple Intelligence. In keeping with the company's historical commitment to user privacy, Private Cloud Compute aims to solve server security concerns with bespoke Apple silicon. Scaling computation without sacrificing privacy, the custom chips add a layer of trust when Apple Intelligence moves commands off-device and into the cloud. That Apple won't gather user data to train its models -- the tricky price we're used to paying for generative AI -- is a massive security win. If Apple delivers, the service could set a new standard for consumer AI that may be hard to beat.

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• What is a Chief AI Officer, and how do you become one?
• How Adobe manages AI ethics concerns while fostering creativity
• 6 ways OpenAI just supercharged ChatGPT for free users