You can already make Siri ChatGPT-like by hooking into the ChatGPT API through Siri Shortcuts. Here's a good one I found on reddit to play around with. It's pretty fun to actually have a "smart" Siri haha 
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Apple Engineers Reportedly Working on ChatGPT-Like AI Despite Siri Design Flaws
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Siri was one of the first of these AI assistants and it has limited data to work with because of Apple's privacy policies. Apple is probably the best poised to leap frog the rest of them.
Also, the company that invented Siri was not Apple, Siri was a purchase.
Lol why? they can't even get english right.
This isn't an Apple only thing here...and they're probably one of the least of them. Google has about one product per decade that survives.
I'm sure there are a few people inside Apple that have that opinion too...only they're in a position to actually have such an opinion.
Bugs and a flawed design are two different things.
Beautiful code can be buggy, and super overly complex code can run perfectly.
The problem highlighted in this article is that the code itself is overly complex, not necessarily buggy. But because it's so complex, the chances of bugs being introduced is greatly increased. Therefore, development and evolution of Siri is greatly hindered.
As a developer myself, I'm always flabbergasted by how complex some third-party open-source software is. It's almost like developers search for a way to make code more complex, for very little benefit. I've maintained my own web applications platform for 20 years now, and good, clean design should always be the goal! I've been able to advanced my software month after month (every month for 20 years, yikes!) smoothly because of its clean design.
I'm surprised to hear about the Siri database corundum. Apple now owns FoundationDB, a key-value database solution that should make Siri work exceptional well, and fast.
I honestly think Apple is "buying into the hype" here, the LLMs have the same limitations and same problems they have had for decades now.
Siri is still built on the same ML model-based system, capable of learning, but from what this article says, the original engineers (pre-Apple?) created a poor design for the software and database, and Apple has had a hard time maintaining that.
Any lack of learning is due to artificial constraints put into place. Siri is not some non-AI system of exact "request-response" lookups.
Have you ever tried ChatGPT? It is a completely different league to Siri. It actually understands your questions instead of just reacting to predefined commands.
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Apple needs to fix Siri first before moving toward ChatGPT.
Apple had a 4 year head start on Siri. Lost ground, failed. And it continues to fail harder 10 years later.
I'd be much more optimistic and encouraging if Apple was a small company, just starting out or working on that one breakthrough product. But no, we continue to pay a hefty premium on thousands of dollars of Apple products, only to get a subpar service in return.
It's about time Google and Microsoft slapped them around a bit so that Apple can get a reality check.
I'd be much more optimistic and encouraging if Apple was a small company, just starting out or working on that one breakthrough product. But no, we continue to pay a hefty premium on thousands of dollars of Apple products, only to get a subpar service in return.
It's about time Google and Microsoft slapped them around a bit so that Apple can get a reality check.
According to that NYTimes article, "Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are essentially what are known as command-and-control systems. These can understand a finite list of questions and requests like “What’s the weather in New York City?” or “Turn on the bedroom lights.” If a user asks the virtual assistant to do something that is not in its code, the bot simply says it can’t help."
In contrast, "A.I. Chatbots are powered by what are known as large language models."
Apple doesn't have that, so they have a lot of work to do to catch up.
In contrast, "A.I. Chatbots are powered by what are known as large language models."
Apple doesn't have that, so they have a lot of work to do to catch up.
I guess they are going to enhance Siri with OpenAI APIs so it can get better at delivering me the newest scores for some sports game I give zero damns about.
I suspect the database issue is more about that they have to recompute audio hashes and build up a new lookup data index whose structure is specific to Siri's audio recognition technology.
Siri as absolute trash. To quote the article:
> Apple engineer John Burkey, who worked on Siri and was made responsible for improving it in 2014, explained that the voice assistant is built on "clunky code that took weeks to update with basic features."
They need to scrap it replace it with a new ChatGPT model from the ground up.
Voice assistants would be incredibly useful if they were actually powered by all the text on the web and the ability to respond to complex conversations.
> Apple engineer John Burkey, who worked on Siri and was made responsible for improving it in 2014, explained that the voice assistant is built on "clunky code that took weeks to update with basic features."
They need to scrap it replace it with a new ChatGPT model from the ground up.
Voice assistants would be incredibly useful if they were actually powered by all the text on the web and the ability to respond to complex conversations.
Yes, I have tried it, I have seen what it's capable of, and that is why I've said that it's still suffering from the same known flaws and limitations of the LLMs. It looks impressive due to amount of data it's been fed and processing power dedicated to it, but it seems like more data and more processing power will not solve that.
Assistants like Siri also have to know how to work with real time data, and LLMs like GPT are still incapable of doing that. Picture related:
I knew the bar in tech journalism was already low, but come on. ChatGPT is a language model, it is not a repository of knowledge.
*Everyone* and their mother seems to think because it can output proper language, that the meaning of that output is correct…that’s not how any of this works.
Also, regarding Siri. I could have sworn that a few years ago at WWDC it was discussed how the entire Siri project was overhauled from its original base. So why are we seeing quotes from a guy who worked on it in 2014? If he’s describing the state of Siri when he was working on it, that was 9 years ago inserted into a story that would give readers the impression that’s how it works today.
Edit: This guy left Apple in 2016 to start his own AI business…come on.
Now this entire thread is going to be the usual whiners, whining based on the idea that Siri is the same heap of code it was in 2014…
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This is great. I think we all have been waiting for a new Siri with thinner bezels.. maybe Tim can throw in some dynamic island as a cherry on the top.
Yeah. I don't use Siri because it doesn't work well. But the concept COULD be amazing. If I felt like I was talking to an AI that was truly intelligent, that always understood me and had context about prior conversations it could be a total game changer.