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Can someone explain how Apple is full-tilt on ML and yet still has the worst personal assistant (Siri)?
by fastball 6y ago
Can someone explain how Apple is full-tilt on ML and yet still has the worst personal assistant (Siri)?
- reader_mode 6y agoSiri isn't the best but it's far from the worst - Bixby owns that category by a mile.
- M4v3R 6y agoI would say one of the main reasons is data - Google just has a lot more of it.
- fastball 6y agoMy experience with Alexa has been more positive than with Siri, and I'm a full-bore Apple user.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vlozko 6y agoThere’s a lot more to ML than just Siri. Photos, for example, utilizes it pretty heavily. Here’s an interview with their AI chief to give you an idea of the scope: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apple-explains-how-it-uses-machine-learning-across-ios-and-soon-macos/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apple-explains-how-i...
- fastball 6y agoNo that's my point. They seem fairly competent at doing ML in basically every other application they're using it for. But Siri still sucks. If they were generally bad at ML I'd understand. But they're not. They make their own TPU-type things FFS.
- vlozko 6y agoAll I have are second-hand accounts as to why. They have a sizable Siri team in Boston and a good friend of mine interviewed there. This friend asked a number of questions regarding tech stack and their SCM only to discover what a complete mess it was. It was enough so that he was turned off by it. Again, second-hand account. It leads me to suspect that the struggle has always been to technical issues rather than product. It also might be that Apple hasn’t seen voice control as an area of growth or enhancement to experiences long term. Maybe those who have Alexas and all of its processing capabilities end up just using it for timers and dictionary definition lookups.
- whoisburbansky 6y agoThe only hits I get for SCM are Supply Chain Management, which doesn't make a ton of sense to me in this context. What do you mean by that acronym?
- fossuser 6y agoMy guess would be not collecting data on users. Google's entire model is collecting massive user data which they can then use to train their models. It's a lot harder to do that kind of thing when privacy is a big part of your brand (thankfully). I prefer the tradeoff of Siri being behind the others if that's what it takes.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoSorry what data they don’t collect? Audio is being sent to servers, videos on icloud, etc. It’s either they suck at it or pretend to suck so people think their data isn’t “collected”...
- izacus 6y agoWhat you wrote makes no sense - Siri sends all of the data to servers (including audio). Apple even gave external contractors audio to train their models [0]. Not sure where do you see the difference here - are you sure you didn't mix up any marketing? [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...
- dkonofalski 6y agoI don't think Siri is the worst if you're familiar with ways that you can work with it. Google is probably the best at discerning intent from abstract speech but Siri has never not worked for me when I've told it to do something, even going as far as HomeKit and trivia which, I would imagine, would have a lot of ways to misinterpret.
- fastball 6y agoFrom my experience, Siri is only good at the things we've never needed ML for (beyond MLs role in speech recognition). "Set me a timer" or "call my brother" both work great, but you can make something like that with off-the-shelf software and libraries in like an hour of hacking. They've integrated Siri in speakers, computers, phones, and more, and yet somehow it's worse than Alexa, where most of the exposure to that is just through echo devices.
- dkonofalski 6y agoCan you give an example of something that you can do with Alexa that you've had trouble with on Siri? I'd like to test that. I don't ever have issues with Siri and I'm struggling to think of something that Alexa would be that much better with.
- fastball 6y agoI have personally found that Alexa is much better at general info questions (what is the capital of Djibouti?) and is much more responsive as a Smart Home orchestrator. Here's a face-off article[1] that might help. [1] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/alexa-vs-siri-vs-google,review-4772.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/alexa-vs-siri-vs-google,review-...
- dkonofalski 6y agoInteresting. I just tried that question and got the correct response and I use Siri for all my home automation stuff. I even have triggers that go off when my Apple Watch connects to certain things and I use my "Hey Siri, let's watch a movie" and "Hey, Siri, let's watch TV" scenes nearly every day. Edit: For reference, her answer was "Djibouti is the capital of Djibouti"