5 ms·

I spent half a day watching multiple Jobs interviews on YouTube and there is an interesting effect across these interviews: the interviewers sound dated in thei

I spent half a day watching multiple Jobs interviews on YouTube and there is an interesting effect across these interviews: the interviewers sound dated in their assumptions, while Jobs sounds fresh and contemporary. Even though these interviews were 20-30 years ago. One example is when Steve is being grilled about buying a “search engine company” called “Siri” and the surrounding rumors being certain that Apple obviously bought this search company to go to war with Google. Steve laughed and said “that’s not a search company, it’s an AI company.”

justapassenger 5y ago
TBH, I wouldn't call Siri a search company nor an AI company. They were (and still are, a decade later) mediocre at both.
- cruano 5y ago
  Ah yes, I also don't think of walmart as a retailer because I don't like it
  - justapassenger 5y ago
    It's not about liking it. It's about having abilities to support your value proposition.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    In my experience, Siri has basically only provided my results from another search engine, WolframAlpha, or an API I'm not allowed to see/use. If that's artificial intelligence, then I'm Issac Asimov.
- addicted 5y ago
  They were ahead of the pack when Apple bought them. Then Apple spent a year or so making them remove and reduce their functionality and then release a gimped version that was nonetheless integrated into the OS.
  - lozaning 5y ago
    Then the siri founders started another company, which was then bought by samsung and eventually released as Bixby.
    - deanCommie 5y ago
      Oof, that's not a good look.
- mountainb 5y ago
  It's barely acceptable voice recognition product hooked into a shitty Ask Jeeves that has barely improved since it was introduced.
- fortran77 5y ago
  Amazon's Alex is way ahead of Siri and Cortana. It's as if Apple doesn't really care about Siri anymore. I don't know if they see the market for this as dead and they're purposely not putting more resources in it, or if they just can't compete here.
  - aikinai 5y ago
    They hired Google’s head of Search and AI to run Siri and are investing a lot, so they care. It seems to be taking time for the impact to show, but his fingerprints are all over iOS 15 with on-device Siri, contextual awareness, Google Lens features, etc.
  - dkonofalski 5y ago
    It's also far more invasive in nearly every case. It's not that Apple doesn't care about Siri, it's just that Apple is working under the unbreakable rule that Siri can't send private info to Apple in order to function and so all processing needs to be done on the device. Amazon hasn't given itself this limitation so it sends data and recordings to itself every time Alexa is invoked. Apple knows it's in a worse position now but they're betting that it's the better position to be in for the long term.
    - rmorey 5y ago
      While your sentiment that Apple operates under far stricter privacy protections is totally correct (in my estimation) in fact until the latest version of iOS Siri absolutely did rely on sending audio data over the network for dictation and processing. Case in point, it has always been possible to use Siri to turn on Airplane Mode, but until iOS 15 it was not possible to use it to turn it off (which they included in a demo at WWDC this year to somewhat humorous effect if you were paying attention)
      - dkonofalski 5y ago
        That's not entirely accurate. You have the option of sending that audio data to Apple for processing (which is set during the setup for new iPhones and was a preference set when the update was released). It's completely optional and does affect what options are available through Siri and which ones aren't. Additionally, you have the option to change this setting after the fact and changing it deletes all the voice data stored on Apple's servers. You do have to trust that Apple is doing what they say when you choose to do that but it's not a requirement.
aborsy 5y ago
Can you send the link?
- shrimpx 5y ago
  Sorry, I had to dig. The particular conversation is from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps Around the 30:15 mark. Apologies for my incorrect quoting, I was paraphrasing from memory.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Siira 5y ago
So the boss “predicted” his future employee’s jobs. Well done, Jobs!
- shrimpx 5y ago
  Good point. But Jobs "predicting" the future of his own company is fundamentally entangled to predicting the future of the industry. It's hard to predict markets 20 years out.

justapassenger 5y ago

TBH, I wouldn't call Siri a search company nor an AI company. They were (and still are, a decade later) mediocre at both.

cruano 5y ago
Ah yes, I also don't think of walmart as a retailer because I don't like it
- justapassenger 5y ago
  It's not about liking it. It's about having abilities to support your value proposition.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  In my experience, Siri has basically only provided my results from another search engine, WolframAlpha, or an API I'm not allowed to see/use. If that's artificial intelligence, then I'm Issac Asimov.
addicted 5y ago
They were ahead of the pack when Apple bought them. Then Apple spent a year or so making them remove and reduce their functionality and then release a gimped version that was nonetheless integrated into the OS.
- lozaning 5y ago
  Then the siri founders started another company, which was then bought by samsung and eventually released as Bixby.
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    Oof, that's not a good look.
mountainb 5y ago
It's barely acceptable voice recognition product hooked into a shitty Ask Jeeves that has barely improved since it was introduced.
fortran77 5y ago
Amazon's Alex is way ahead of Siri and Cortana. It's as if Apple doesn't really care about Siri anymore. I don't know if they see the market for this as dead and they're purposely not putting more resources in it, or if they just can't compete here.
- aikinai 5y ago
  They hired Google’s head of Search and AI to run Siri and are investing a lot, so they care. It seems to be taking time for the impact to show, but his fingerprints are all over iOS 15 with on-device Siri, contextual awareness, Google Lens features, etc.
- dkonofalski 5y ago
  It's also far more invasive in nearly every case. It's not that Apple doesn't care about Siri, it's just that Apple is working under the unbreakable rule that Siri can't send private info to Apple in order to function and so all processing needs to be done on the device. Amazon hasn't given itself this limitation so it sends data and recordings to itself every time Alexa is invoked. Apple knows it's in a worse position now but they're betting that it's the better position to be in for the long term.
  - rmorey 5y ago
    While your sentiment that Apple operates under far stricter privacy protections is totally correct (in my estimation) in fact until the latest version of iOS Siri absolutely did rely on sending audio data over the network for dictation and processing. Case in point, it has always been possible to use Siri to turn on Airplane Mode, but until iOS 15 it was not possible to use it to turn it off (which they included in a demo at WWDC this year to somewhat humorous effect if you were paying attention)
    - dkonofalski 5y ago
      That's not entirely accurate. You have the option of sending that audio data to Apple for processing (which is set during the setup for new iPhones and was a preference set when the update was released). It's completely optional and does affect what options are available through Siri and which ones aren't. Additionally, you have the option to change this setting after the fact and changing it deletes all the voice data stored on Apple's servers. You do have to trust that Apple is doing what they say when you choose to do that but it's not a requirement.

aborsy 5y ago

Can you send the link?

shrimpx 5y ago
Sorry, I had to dig. The particular conversation is from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps Around the 30:15 mark. Apologies for my incorrect quoting, I was paraphrasing from memory.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Siira 5y ago

So the boss “predicted” his future employee’s jobs. Well done, Jobs!

shrimpx 5y ago
Good point. But Jobs "predicting" the future of his own company is fundamentally entangled to predicting the future of the industry. It's hard to predict markets 20 years out.