Tests of the New AI Siri

Tests of the New AI Siri(pogueman.substack.com)

12 points by MBCook 2 hours ago | 6 comments

MBCook 1 hour ago |

I’ve been using it off and on since DB2.

David Pogue is right, it’s very impressive. He and basically everyone else make the same comment, and I fully agree: it’s hard to remember to even use it.

I used Siri a ton before, but always for basically the same four commands. Create reminder, call X, send a text to Y, set a timer for Z minutes.

And after years of that, it’s hard to remember to do more. But when I do it can often shock me.

It’s not fast. Which is quite annoying for those quick actions I used to do. But I’m OK with that on my phone. Not happy with it on my watch.

It’s not ChatGPT 5.6. And I’m sure they’ll get it faster over time. But in my mind they finally delivered.

bigyabai 2 hours ago |

> Also, this is ethical AI: It deceives nobody, puts nobody out of work, and draws 100% of its power from renewable sources.

I like how this is cast as a selling point instead of tacit admission that Apple is not on the frontier.

AIiscoming 1 hour ago | |

I think this is good and not just whatever.

But hey perhaps i still don't understand your point properly

bigyabai 17 minutes ago | | |

Here's a better example. Compare these two marketing tones:

Low confidence: "Our engineers work tirelessly to ensure that frontier research doesn't step on the toes of users. It's a deliberate touch to keep people in the drivers seat, emphasizing the importance of human coexistence with technology. Apple Intelligence can never replace our users or the personal touch they bring, and that's what makes Apple products so special to us all."

High confidence: https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/why-apple-ipad-ad-cont...

MBCook 2 hours ago | |

I don’t see what those two have to do with each other. Could you explain?

bigyabai 2 hours ago | | |

If Apple was a frontier lab, this article would not begin with "This is unethical AI, it deceives people, puts people out of work, and draws 100% of its power from coal and LNG."

It's the same flavor of ethics-washing that we saw with Mac LLM inference. Many people rushed to call Mac inference "efficient" when it put up worse per-watt performance than cheap GPUs. It was a marketing platitude to make people accept subpar performance. Same for calling Siri "ethical AI" too.