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Is siri useful now?
- Thread starter LiquidGlassfan
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zarmanto
macrumors 65816
While the cynicism is well warranted, technically speaking, that's not all that these things do; it's just the first thing that they were designed to do, and what they (ostensibly) are able to do the best. For whatever that's worth.
That said... I've commented previously (more than once) on my opinions about the misleading promise of LLM-based "AI".
That’s like saying all a rocket is doing is burning fuel to accelerate… Or all a programmer is doing is pressing his fingers on a keyboard.
capamac
macrumors 6502a
Some people have unrealistic expectations of what these so-called "AI" systems can do. These LLMs are all sizzle and no steak. That's why Apple has been "slow" to improve Siri. Because no one in the world can make Siri or any other LLM work as desired. Not Apple, not anybody. It's just a bunch of flim flam.
Maybe this video will help you understand how powerful LLMs are and will be in the future:
There also is a paper by Edward Witten in which he cites Claude’s Opus as a helper for generalizing some calculation. LLMs are incredibly useful. Their potency will only increase from here. Of course they are not “real intelligence”. But what even is “real intelligence”? Have you ever met someone who uses a certain word in the wrong context because he doesn’t know the meaning of that word but thinks it just fits? One could argue that such a person is not any smarter than a LLM…
It’s downright awful with playlist playback, or something as simple as play songs by Boston from my library. Both of these worked all the time before, and now never work.
I even asked Siri how can I get you to play songs by a certain artist that I’ve downloaded, and she responded with two different prompts I should be able to use, and neither of them work.
I even asked Siri how can I get you to play songs by a certain artist that I’ve downloaded, and she responded with two different prompts I should be able to use, and neither of them work.
Language is a tool invented by (and used by) intelligent beings. It not the base framework upon which our intelligence is built. Humans possess innate intelligence, even prior to developing language. Take our language away from LLMs and absolutely nothing remains. Take language away from humans and they'll just eventually create another.
I think the new Siri becomes most useful when you use it to perform multi-step tasks in one step.
For example, someone gave me a list of dates and times for like 8 meetings. Typically, inputting all of those into calendar would be annoying and time-consuming. Instead I just pasted them into Siri and said "Add these to calendar."
Or a couple of days ago I needed to grab something from the supermarket near my house, but it was later at night and I couldn't remember what time it was open until. I was doing other stuff at the time but was able to say "Hey Siri, what time is the supermarket closest to my house open until?" It was able to identify it and give me the correct time.
The issue is, that it's hard to really get a feel for what it can and can't do until you try it. That leaves the possibility of being annoyed when it can't do it or gets it wrong, or pleasantly surprised. But I will say that I've been more pleasantly surprised than annoyed by it.
For example, someone gave me a list of dates and times for like 8 meetings. Typically, inputting all of those into calendar would be annoying and time-consuming. Instead I just pasted them into Siri and said "Add these to calendar."
Or a couple of days ago I needed to grab something from the supermarket near my house, but it was later at night and I couldn't remember what time it was open until. I was doing other stuff at the time but was able to say "Hey Siri, what time is the supermarket closest to my house open until?" It was able to identify it and give me the correct time.
The issue is, that it's hard to really get a feel for what it can and can't do until you try it. That leaves the possibility of being annoyed when it can't do it or gets it wrong, or pleasantly surprised. But I will say that I've been more pleasantly surprised than annoyed by it.