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ChatGPT is impressive but it makes a lot of mistakes. Siri can't afford that rate of errors for PR and legal reasons, so they need to use a technology that's l

ChatGPT is impressive but it makes a lot of mistakes. Siri can't afford that rate of errors for PR and legal reasons, so they need to use a technology that's less flexible but more reliable / safer. This is similar to self-driving cars: it's relatively easy to come up with a proof-of-concept but making it into a safe mainstream product is a different story.

junofan 4y ago
Yeah IIRC they had an emphasis on disaster response and getting fixes pushed out across all 20+ languages.
rcarmo 4y ago
You're conflating technology with functionality. Surely Siri's core tech can be improved.
- tmalsburg2 4y ago
  Did I say that Siri's core tech cannot be improved?
jorvi 4y ago
> Siri can't afford that rate of errors for PR and legal reasons Have we been using the same Siri? The only thing I trust it with is starting a timer. Everything else is literally a coin flip if it’ll actually understand me or mangle my request into something ludicrous.
- Xeophon 4y ago
  But one timer and one timer only. Siri cannot start a second timer on your phone in 2023. Its ridiculous
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    That’s not Siri, but the Clock app. Siri’s “start a timer for …” just calls out to the Clock app.
- amrangaye 4y ago
  My experience as well - I now just disable it on new phones. I think they only thing worse - or a close second - is the Apple TV interface.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- alexr243 4y ago
  I don’t trust it for setting a timer fully. When I say “set a timer for 50 minutes” (laundry) it ends up setting a 15 minute timer >50% of the time
gnicholas 4y ago
IME Siri is much more limited than Alexa and Google Assistant. Have there been any lawsuits regarding those assistants? Or is Apple just being more conservative for other reasons?
pornel 4y ago
Siri makes a lot of mistakes. It keeps mishearing "a lamp" as "alarm", and goes into alarm setting mode even if the rest of the query makes no sense. When told to turn of specific lights, it sometimes ignores the room/qualifier, and turns all lights off in the whole house. Many other queries end up "I can't find <what you said> in your Music library". Siri is three regexes in a trench coat.
- jldugger 4y ago
  > It keeps mishearing "a lamp" as "alarm", Doesn't this Shortcut use the same voice recognition? Doesn't seem like a problem GPT solves.
  - pornel 4y ago
    You've missed the "even if the rest of the query makes no sense." part.
    - jldugger 4y ago
      ChatGPT will have the same problem, since it works on the text iOS gave it. It's not clear to me it would perform any better at reformulating your query.
      - pornel 4y ago
        1. I expect it to know it's not possible to increase brightness of an alarm and reject incongruent requests. 2. This particular implementation is limited to operating on an English text in its finalized form, but a different first-class LLM implementation of an AI assistant could work directly on some form of phonetic input. ChatGPT is pretty good at dealing with such ambiguities, e.g. it already understands questions written in IPA notation. It also understands Japanese written in romaji, which is a non-native phonetic spelling of a language with tons of homonyms.

junofan 4y ago

Yeah IIRC they had an emphasis on disaster response and getting fixes pushed out across all 20+ languages.

rcarmo 4y ago

You're conflating technology with functionality. Surely Siri's core tech can be improved.

tmalsburg2 4y ago
Did I say that Siri's core tech cannot be improved?

jorvi 4y ago

> Siri can't afford that rate of errors for PR and legal reasons Have we been using the same Siri? The only thing I trust it with is starting a timer. Everything else is literally a coin flip if it’ll actually understand me or mangle my request into something ludicrous.

Xeophon 4y ago
But one timer and one timer only. Siri cannot start a second timer on your phone in 2023. Its ridiculous
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  That’s not Siri, but the Clock app. Siri’s “start a timer for …” just calls out to the Clock app.
amrangaye 4y ago
My experience as well - I now just disable it on new phones. I think they only thing worse - or a close second - is the Apple TV interface.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
alexr243 4y ago
I don’t trust it for setting a timer fully. When I say “set a timer for 50 minutes” (laundry) it ends up setting a 15 minute timer >50% of the time

gnicholas 4y ago

IME Siri is much more limited than Alexa and Google Assistant. Have there been any lawsuits regarding those assistants? Or is Apple just being more conservative for other reasons?

pornel 4y ago

Siri makes a lot of mistakes. It keeps mishearing "a lamp" as "alarm", and goes into alarm setting mode even if the rest of the query makes no sense. When told to turn of specific lights, it sometimes ignores the room/qualifier, and turns all lights off in the whole house. Many other queries end up "I can't find <what you said> in your Music library". Siri is three regexes in a trench coat.

jldugger 4y ago
> It keeps mishearing "a lamp" as "alarm", Doesn't this Shortcut use the same voice recognition? Doesn't seem like a problem GPT solves.
- pornel 4y ago
  You've missed the "even if the rest of the query makes no sense." part.
  - jldugger 4y ago
    ChatGPT will have the same problem, since it works on the text iOS gave it. It's not clear to me it would perform any better at reformulating your query.
    - pornel 4y ago
      1. I expect it to know it's not possible to increase brightness of an alarm and reject incongruent requests. 2. This particular implementation is limited to operating on an English text in its finalized form, but a different first-class LLM implementation of an AI assistant could work directly on some form of phonetic input. ChatGPT is pretty good at dealing with such ambiguities, e.g. it already understands questions written in IPA notation. It also understands Japanese written in romaji, which is a non-native phonetic spelling of a language with tons of homonyms.