Apple and AI / LLMs [MERGED]

[ipedro]

As much as people hate on it, Siri is critical to Apple’s future. It’s frustrating that so little is said about Siri from senior executives at Apple.

Artificial Intelligence is hard but a company of Apple’s resources should be pouring not just millions but billions into developing Siri.

Like the transition from a cursor based UI to multi-touch, a transition from touch to voice UI is imminent. That’s not to say that touch will go away, only that voice UI will become effortless and very prominent. When multi touch appeared, people still continued to use cursor based UIs on Mac for example, but it’s inarguable that a vast majority of ”computer” users today use multi-touch devices.

The same will happen with voice UI. All three of Apple’s newest categories: Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePod use voice primarily with the latter devices using it incrementally more than the first. Reality Glasses are likely going to use voice UI in some capacity.

With chatGPT and now Google Bard, the era of conversational AI is here and there’s no indication (yet?) that Apple has a response. Apple poached AI expert John Giannandrea from Google over 4 years ago. It’s about time that he shows his work.

What comes next can’t just be an evolution of Siri but an entire new platform that’s scalable and that can compete with the best of the AIs.

No exaggeration, if Tim Cook underestimated Siri’s importance to the future of the company and drops the ball on this, it could be his Steve Balmer vs iPhone moment.

 

[AustinIllini]

I get what you're saying, but I can also see the logic of holding back and buying what they need to buy to catch up. It has worked for Apple more times than not (Chips, macOS, headphone brands)

 

[ipedro]

I get what you're saying, but I can also see the logic of holding back and buying what they need to buy to catch up. It has worked for Apple more times than not (Chips, macOS, headphone brands)

I guess they could license OpenAI but it’s essentially owned by Microsoft through its investments. Would Google license its AI to Apple without a catch? They’re direct competitors.

Can you imagine the leap Android is about to take over iPhone when Google’s AI makes full conversations possible with an Android phone when Siri can barely answer simple straightforward questions without fumbling?

This would be a massive strategic mistake if Apple didn’t anticipate this rapid evolution of AI.

 

[AustinIllini]

I guess they could license OpenAI but it’s essentially owned by Microsoft through its investments. Would Google license its AI to Apple without a catch? They’re direct competitors.

Can you imagine the leap Android is about to take over iPhone when Google’s AI makes full conversations possible with an Android phone when Siri can barely answer simple straightforward questions without fumbling?

This would be a massive strategic mistake if Apple didn’t anticipate this rapid evolution of AI.

It's hard to speculate because we're not actually aware of the goings on, but like any technology the entry barrier to conversational AI will drop significantly.

Not excusing Siri, but I expect Apple wants to wait for the legal/privacy considerations of ChatGPT and Google Bard to pan out before they jump in too heavily.

 

[Mousse]

ChatGPT, Google Bard and Siri. This reminds me of the Three-Headed Dragon meme.

Guess which head represents Siri?🤣🤣🤣

 

[GMShadow]

Like the transition from a cursor based UI to multi-touch, a transition from touch to voice UI is imminent. That’s not to say that touch will go away, only that voice UI will become effortless and very prominent.

I'm gonna guess you bought into the hype about smart speakers several years ago, and how Alexa was going to replace the iPhone and such nonsense.

 

[kitKAC]

Can you imagine the leap Android is about to take over iPhone when Google’s AI makes full conversations possible with an Android phone when Siri can barely answer simple straightforward questions without fumbling?

Actually, no I can’t. Because while I’m engaging with some AI, I now can‘t listen to the music I might have been enjoying before or whatever I might have been watching because now I have to concentrate on listening to that. Also, if I’m asking for information then I just want it given to me, I don’t want to have a conversation. Hell, Apple just made Siri LESS chatty when completing Apple Home tasks removing the voice feedback.

 

[vinegarshots]

I've thought about this a lot lately, and I think your concerns are spot-on.

The fact is that we've essentially hit peak-hardware on phones. Going forward, the thing that's going to sell phones is the software. And the best software is going to be defined by how well and how deeply AI is integrated into it.

Apple really doesn't have any excuse for being so far behind in the AI space, and if they don't turn around QUICK, they are going to be crushed. It's obvious that AI is the next frontier.

 

[vinegarshots]

Actually, no I can’t. Because while I’m engaging with some AI, I now can‘t listen to the music I might have been enjoying before or whatever I might have been watching because now I have to concentrate on listening to that. Also, if I’m asking for information then I just want it given to me, I don’t want to have a conversation. Hell, Apple just made Siri LESS chatty when completing Apple Home tasks removing the voice feedback.

Cant tell if serious or sarcastic.

 

[ipedro]

I'm gonna guess you bought into the hype about smart speakers several years ago, and how Alexa was going to replace the iPhone and such nonsense.

I didn't buy into anything. If you don't understand that natural communication in the way that humans communicate with one another is the future of interactions with computers, then sit back and wait – you'll eventually get it when it's commonplace. Open AI and Google just fast forwarded to that part.

Actually, no I can’t. Because while I’m engaging with some AI, I now can‘t listen to the music I might have been enjoying before or whatever I might have been watching because now I have to concentrate on listening to that. Also, if I’m asking for information then I just want it given to me, I don’t want to have a conversation. Hell, Apple just made Siri LESS chatty when completing Apple Home tasks removing the voice feedback.

Conversational UI doesn't mean chatty. It means communicating with a computer in the same way humans naturally communicate with one another without having to use strict voice commands. It's like having someone in the room that knows everything and can give you a quick answer to virtually any question you ask it any way you want to ask it. If typing is your thing, then you can type, but most humans communicate by verbally asking questions to other people. The same will be with an AI assistant.

Cant tell if serious or sarcastic.

Exactly. People who don't understand what's coming are exactly what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said:

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” – Steve Jobs

The bad news is that Steve Jobs has been dead for a decade and I'm not sure if Tim Cook is that visionary. I hope the remaining Jobs era VPs in the company have carried his mantra forward and have been working on something to match what OpenAI and Google have achieved.

 

[GMShadow]

If you don't understand that natural communication in the way that humans communicate with one another is the future of interactions with computers, then sit back and wait – you'll eventually get it when it's commonplace. Open AI and Google just fast forwarded to that part.

I'm sure they did. Soon Apple will be Doomed and we'll be told Steve Jobs Would Never.


Your entire mindset is focused on the technology, not the customer experience. The exact opposite of Jobs's philosophy, in fact.

 

[ipedro]

Your entire mindset is focused on the technology, not the customer experience. The exact opposite of Jobs's philosophy, in fact.

So you're saying that typing a question into a box and getting a bunch of websites where you might find an answer related to not your actual question but the keywords you typed in, is a better user experience than simply asking an AI a question, whether spoken or typed, and getting a complete answer without having to dig through websites? Are you listening to yourself?

Natural language is the definitive user interface, the easiest form of communication for humans. Being able to ask questions without needing to memorize rigid terms and getting a direct answer, also communicated in natural language, is the what openAI and Google Bard can do.

Like @vinegarshots said, hardware advancements are getting hard to distinguish phones. Having capabilities like OpenAI or Google Bard is what'll set the competition apart. OpenAI is considered an existential crisis to Google, acknowledged by Google insiders who said that the company was on red alert, and then hastily announced Bard and integrated it into their search engine in a matter of weeks after chatGPT launched. If Apple doesn't have an answer to this ready to go, then yes, the iPhone is going to look poorly in comparison to the capabilities Google will bring natively to Android.

It's hard to speculate because we're not actually aware of the goings on, but like any technology the entry barrier to conversational AI will drop significantly.

Not excusing Siri, but I expect Apple wants to wait for the legal/privacy considerations of ChatGPT and Google Bard to pan out before they jump in too heavily.

I did believe they took it seriously when poaching John Giannandrea from Google – he was a key player responsible for Google's machine learning – but since then, we haven't seen any meaningful evolution to Siri. Apple's ML has definitely taken a step forward, seen most recently in text and object/people detection and cutouts, but Siri itself seems to be stuck in an outdated model.

I've been hoping that Apple has given up on the existing Siri and that separately they've been building a new one from the ground up led by Giannandrea. But it's been 4 years. Maybe they have something up their sleeve, let's see.

 

[vinegarshots]

Your entire mindset is focused on the technology, not the customer experience. The exact opposite of Jobs's philosophy, in fact.

AI technology is fully about improving the customer/user experience. And we're talking about a MASSIVE improvement, too. We're talking about search engines where you ask one question and get the exact answer rather than scrolling through pages of search results. We're talking about an assistant that understand what you're saying the way a human does, without you needing to specially phrase your commands to get it to do what you want.

 

[vinegarshots]

So you're saying that typing a question into a box and getting a bunch of websites where you might find an answer related to not your actual question but the keywords you typed in, is a better user experience than simply asking an AI a question, whether spoken or typed, and getting a complete answer without having to dig through websites? Are you listening to yourself?

Natural language is the definitive user interface, the easiest form of communication for humans. Being able to ask questions without needing to memorize rigid terms and getting a direct answer, also communicated in natural language, is the what openAI and Google Bard can do.

Like @vinegarshots said, hardware advancements are getting hard to distinguish phones. Having capabilities like OpenAI or Google Bard is what'll set the competition apart. OpenAI is considered an existential crisis to Google, acknowledged by Google insiders who said that the company was on red alert, and then hastily announced Bard and integrated it into their search engine in a matter of weeks after chatGPT launched. If Apple doesn't have an answer to this ready to go, then yes, the iPhone is going to look poorly in comparison to the capabilities Google will bring natively to Android.



I did believe they took it seriously when poaching John Giannandrea from Google – he was a key player responsible for Google's machine learning – but since then, we haven't seen any meaningful evolution to Siri. Apple's ML has definitely taken a step forward, seen most recently in text and object/people detection and cutouts, but Siri itself seems to be stuck in an outdated model.

I've been hoping that Apple has given up on the existing Siri and that separately they've been building a new one from the ground up led by Giannandrea. But it's been 4 years. Maybe they have something up their sleeve, let's see.

I was typing my reply at the same time as you were, but it seems you read my mind

 

[diddl14]

I‘m meanwhile using ChatGPT to seriously shortcut software development. It‘s not yet perfekt but clearly a game changer.

It also makes clear how absolutely dumm and unreliable Siri is. Can only hope Apple has something in their sleeves but at the moment it looks like they seriously missed the boat.

Own silicon, XR and cars sound nice but not even close to the relevance of what GPT and co will deliver the coming years.

 

[ipedro]

I get what you're saying, but I can also see the logic of holding back and buying what they need to buy to catch up. It has worked for Apple more times than not (Chips, macOS, headphone brands)

As things start to flesh out, I'm more inclined to agree with your opinion. openAI is getting licensed and integrated into many third party developers outside of Microsoft. Quora's implementation is astoundingly good. I can now see Tim Cook meeting with Satya Nadella and working out an agreement to go up against Google's search dominance. Unlikely allies but they've worked together in the past to meet common interests. openAI integrated into Siri could hold up well against Android with Bard.

I'm still hoping that Apple hasn't been sitting on their hands on AI all this time. It would show poor visionary competence by Tim Cook which wouldn't bode well for the future of the company if he remains at the helm.

 

[vinegarshots]

I was just reading that on Apple’s latest earnings call, Tim Cook said that AI was a horizontal technology that would soon spread across all of their services, and then mentioned that crash detection and EKG in Apple Watch are good examples of it already being used.
🧐
Not sure that inspires much confidence, Tim.

 

[ipedro]

I was just reading that on Apple’s latest earnings call, Tim Cook said that AI was a horizontal technology that would soon spread across all of their services, and then mentioned that crash detection and EKG in Apple Watch are good examples of it already being used.
🧐
Not sure that inspires much confidence, Tim.

For now, I'm still giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here. AI and ML don't just mean a conversational Siri. The advancements Apple has made in recent years are encouraging.

Search results that surface more direct answers rather than sending you to a search engine, excellent computational photography, object and people recognition (iOS and macOS' incredibly good people/object cut out that rivals Photoshop's) and lately a system wide text recognition (including in video!). These are all noticeable advancements in AI and ML from Apple that have been weaved in seamlessly into the user experience and they're commendable.

But Siri continues to be terrible and it absolutely has no reason to. As it is now, Google's technologies integrated into Android are going to threaten the iPhone if there isn't a major leap in Siri this year. That has me both concerned and excited. Competition is good, openAI and Google may finally be forcing Apple's hand.

 

[vinegarshots]

For now, I'm still giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here. AI and ML don't just mean a conversational Siri. The advancements Apple has made in recent years are encouraging.

Search results that surface more direct answers rather than sending you to a search engine, excellent computational photography, object and people recognition (iOS and macOS' incredibly good people/object cut out that rivals Photoshop's) and lately a system wide text recognition (including in video!). These are all noticeable advancements in AI and ML from Apple that have been weaved in seamlessly into the user experience and they're commendable.

But Siri continues to be terrible and it absolutely has no reason to. As it is now, Google's technologies integrated into Android are going to threaten the iPhone if there isn't a major leap in Siri this year. That has me both concerned and excited. Competition is good, openAI and Google may finally be forcing Apple's hand.

The object/people recognition in the iOS photos app is indeed impressive, which is why I'm a little concerned about how deeply Tim Cook is involved in all this if he thinks crash detection is worth mentioning while the former is not.

Or maybe they just have a lot of secret projects that they don't want to risk exposing, so they are down-playing things a bit for now. We will see!

 

[Pakaku]

Like the transition from a cursor based UI to multi-touch, a transition from touch to voice UI is imminent. That’s not to say that touch will go away, only that voice UI will become effortless and very prominent. When multi touch appeared, people still continued to use cursor based UIs on Mac for example, but it’s inarguable that a vast majority of ”computer” users today use multi-touch devices.

Ew, no. Both interfaces have their uses, but one does not replace the other. Fingers are not as precise as a mouse cursor, but a mouse cursor doesn't give you gestures. Same for voice vs. manual input, hands are more reliable than trying to have a machine interpret what you're trying to say (i.e. Siri), but voice doesn't have to steal your hands, at least. Both have different uses but cannot replace each other.

 

[KindJamz]

I hope I’m dead before this is everyday tech. Having a conversion with you house or phone sounds terrible

 

[chown33]

Ouch.

Google shares drop $100 billion after its new AI chatbot makes a mistake

text.npr.org

 

[vinegarshots]

Same for voice vs. manual input, hands are more reliable than trying to have a machine interpret what you're trying to say (i.e. Siri), but voice doesn't have to steal your hands, at least. Both have different uses but cannot replace each other.

That's not really true, though. If you are having coffee with your friend, would you prefer using your voice to talk to them or would you rather sit at the table and send them text messages? If a waiter comes to take your order, would you rather just tell them what you want, or would you rather send them a text message while they stand there and wait?

You're looking at this through the lens of pre-AI technology, where the machine does a bad job of interpreting what you say/want. Imagine that the machine is indistinguishable from a human, and does just as good of a job.

 

[Abazigal]

As much as people hate on it, Siri is critical to Apple’s future. It’s frustrating that so little is said about Siri from senior executives at Apple.

Artificial Intelligence is hard but a company of Apple’s resources should be pouring not just millions but billions into developing Siri.

Like the transition from a cursor based UI to multi-touch, a transition from touch to voice UI is imminent. That’s not to say that touch will go away, only that voice UI will become effortless and very prominent. When multi touch appeared, people still continued to use cursor based UIs on Mac for example, but it’s inarguable that a vast majority of ”computer” users today use multi-touch devices.

The same will happen with voice UI. All three of Apple’s newest categories: Apple Watch, AirPods and HomePod use voice primarily with the latter devices using it incrementally more than the first. Reality Glasses are likely going to use voice UI in some capacity.

With chatGPT and now Google Bard, the era of conversational AI is here and there’s no indication (yet?) that Apple has a response. Apple poached AI expert John Giannandrea from Google over 4 years ago. It’s about time that he shows his work.

What comes next can’t just be an evolution of Siri but an entire new platform that’s scalable and that can compete with the best of the AIs.

No exaggeration, if Tim Cook underestimated Siri’s importance to the future of the company and drops the ball on this, it could be his Steve Balmer vs iPhone moment.

Option C - There’s a lot more to AI than chatGPT, and it may well go down the same way as Amazon’s smart speaker push. Makes for a cool tech demo, limited real world benefits, and ends up costing then more money than it’s worth.

Plus, knowing Google’s track record, there’s a non-zero chance they end up shuttering the service within two years.

Not forgetting that Apple makes the hardware that Siri runs on. It doesn’t matter how good alternatives are when they are not the default on devices like the iPhone or Apple Watch.

The more people claim that Apple is doomed if they don’t ape the competition, without considering if it even makes sense for Apple to compete directly, the more they tend to end up being dead wrong in the long run, I find.

 

[vinegarshots]

Not forgetting that Apple makes the hardware that Siri runs on. It doesn’t matter how good alternatives are when they are not the default on devices like the iPhone or Apple Watch.

The more people claim that Apple is doomed if they don’t ape the competition, without considering if it even makes sense for Apple to compete directly, the more they tend to end up being dead wrong in the long run, I find.

chatGPT isn't a Google product. Google has its own in-house AI solution.

If the "alternatives" are TOO good, and Apple doesn't have any, it makes Apple hardware a lot less appealing and not competitive. AI has the potential to make devices like the iPhone or Apple Watch obsolete if they can't take advantage of it.