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The best thing about this whole event is that they didn't mention AI even once, all they're saying is ML. Which is what it is. AI is a hype word.
by chillbill 3y ago
The best thing about this whole event is that they didn't mention AI even once, all they're saying is ML. Which is what it is. AI is a hype word.
- jeffybefffy519 3y agoYet all of their other marketing is convoluted non sense. It just shows them being more tactical with marketing to knock some competition down a notch.
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoI agree. I was really impressed that even with regard to the Autocorrect update, they used technical terms like "transformer model" without using hype words. They very clearly labeled it as a predictive text engine rather than some magical pseudo-sentient enigma or something.
- dheera 3y agoMuch better than their previous marketing 15 years ago measuring hard drive capacities in "songs".
- neilalexander 3y agoHow dare they speak in a language their users might understand!
- safog 3y agoAnd yet somehow it's better to say transformer models and not AI?
- jkestner 3y agoSir, this is a developer conference.
- tedmiston 3y agoThe rest of the conference, sure. But the keynote has always been designed for a mainstream audience.
- copperx 3y agoThat wouldn't make sense. "Let's have a conference strictly for developers, but let's speak to a completely different audience in the keynote."
- tedmiston 3y agoThink of it by analogy as the keynote for the conference is like the back cover summary of a book. Despite technically being part of a developer conference, the intro keynote has always functioned more like a consumer-focused annual hardware and software update for Apple device users. Hence things like the ever-present use of things like impressive-sounding "marketing benchmarks" that wouldn't pass as up to snuff on slides in a room of developers. And also the very high level of abstraction so that non-technical users can understand the major updates — that's not exactly a trait one would use to describe a developer conference.
- tedmiston 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#%22One_more_thing...%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevenote#%22One_more_thing...... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_Inc._media_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_Inc._media_event... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Developers_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Developers_Conferenc...
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoThat is actually how it goes, though. The WWDC opening keynote is the typical Apple computer user's best look at what's coming up. It's not not technical, but it's very much deliberately made to be approachable to non-developers. Whether you agree with this choice or not, it's the way things have been for at least as long as I've been watching (which is over a decade).
- DonaldPShimoda 3y ago"AI" is a technically meaningless term. In contrast, a transformer model is a very specific technical thing.
- copperx 3y agoWhy were you impressed by that? WWDC is a developer's conference. I bet many developers would have been offended if they were told AI is some enigma.
- gpt5 3y agocough. Google I/O. cough
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoYeah, that's what I was thinking of too.
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoAlthough WWDC is a developers' conference, the keynote tends to be a popular event for regular Apple users as well, and over the last decade the keynote announcements have become significantly more user-facing while technical details are relegated to the Platforms State of the Union (or the specific sessions throughout the rest of the week). So I was impressed — or maybe "pleased" would be a better word. I was pleased that they chose not to hype this feature using the common buzz words of the year, and instead just stuck to technical terminology. Some other companies would not have done the same, in my opinion.
- nottorp 3y ago> I bet many developers would have been offended if they were told AI is some enigma. You think? The "AI" enthusiasm i've seen everywhere online borders on religious fanaticism...
- ignoramous 3y agoApple marketing uses weasel words all the time.
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoAnd they didn't in this instance when I think other companies would have, so I was impressed.
- HaZeust 3y ago"logarithmic leaps" in their Welcome IBM Ad is my favorite industry example
- jlmorton 3y ago> magical pseudo-sentient enigma or Since when does artificial intelligence imply sentience? They're interdependent and neither are reliant on the other.
- sircastor 3y agoYes, but that’s not how “normal” people take it. People believe these are thinking machines and programs, capable of some amount of reasoning. It’s coming from somewhere between decades of terrifying sci-fi and a few months of impressive model results.
- Closi 3y agoWell they are programs capable of some amount of reasoning… Basic/moderate reasoning tasks are absolutely in the capability of GPT-4.
- GolDDranks 3y agoNote that reasoning is _another_ thing that doesn't require sentience. Plus, GPT-4 is capable of doing simple reasoning tasks.
- DonaldPShimoda 3y agoThe other response has my thoughts right. Although the two things are separate, laypeople (and a surprising number of others too) seem too easily duped by false claims of modern language models exhibiting "emergent properties" of potential sentience. It's absurd, to be sure, but that also means it would've been easy to tap into that to generate hype among such people.
- IOT_Apprentice 3y agoI've noticed the hype and the doomsayers implying both.
- jedberg 3y agoThey also mentioned transformers a few times, without saying AI.
- zbowling 3y agoML is subset of AI. AI that is inclusive of other concepts and it's not a buzzword. It's valid to call anything ML as AI. Sure there is a lot of AI hype but it's not some made up marketing jargon.
- valine 3y agoIt’s a chameleon of a term that can mean anything you want. That’s not a good thing.
- reaperducer 3y agoSee also: "Best practices."
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoEven better: "digital quality"
- ghaff 3y agoYou're technically right that AI is a superset. But, at least in a computational context, "AI" is hardly ever being used to refer to cognitive science and other AI subsets that are not directly related to ML. So ML is usually the more precise terminology. But I've pretty much given up on that one.
- adastra22 3y agoLarge language models are definitely AI.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> large language models are definitely AI The term “AI” is becoming over inclusive to the point of meaninglessness. Cupertino is smart enough to pick up on that. “Statistical linguistics” is the best general term for LLMs I’ve come across.
- dheera 3y agoIf it's written in Python, it's probably ML If it's written in PowerPoint, it's probably AI
- miohtama 3y agoThey need to leave some hype for the next year as well.
- wilg 3y agoThis is a very specific type of virtue signaling that I find very funny
- Solvency 3y agoGames have talked about "enemy AI" for 25+ years. Hell, Halo 1 was considered revolutionary for its advanced enemy AI. Was that a hype word? Was that an incorrect misnomer?
- chillbill 3y agoYes
- riceart 3y agoNo. In games AI is a jargon term for the behavior of an NPC. It has a long history in this use. When people talk about a game’s AI it is often clear what is being discussed regardless of the specific technology used. It is therefore useful for communicating an idea and that’s usually all that really matters. There’s even a distinct Wikipedia article on this use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_vid...
- pantalaimon 3y agoThe enemies didn’t learn though, so it definitely wasn’t machine learning.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoThe AI was pre-trained before the game shipped. Kinda like how you can have a conversation with ChatGPT and it will eventually forget what you've "taught" it
- halostatue 3y agoPre-programmed.
- voxelghost 3y agoWhich leads us to the question; in the biological world, are actions stemming from instinct, but that looks intelligent to the observer, also intelligence?
- gumby 3y agoYes, and it's shameful when people descibe a wrong or bogus answer as "hallucination". They are just stimulating unknowledgeable people's fears and/or fanboiism.
- throwaway675309 3y agoHallucination is a far better word than the recent verbiage I've seen around LLM's lying to you.
- musicale 3y agoBS and travesty generation are well attested.
- astrange 3y ago"Hallucination" comes from vision models, I think. "Confabulation" would be a better term for text.
- jameshart 3y agoI don't understand the distinction. Why is it okay to claim that a machine can learn, but not that the result is an artificial form of intelligence? Most AI systems we're interacting with today don't do any learning. They've been trained, and now they are being used to generate content or classify things, but they aren't doing 'machine learning' any more. They are being used to do tasks that require intelligence. But they are accomplishing them via artifice. Like a sort of artificial form of intelligence.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- segmondy 3y agoWhy would they mention their weakness? Have you heard of Siri lately? What do they have to offer in the AI space? Nothing. At best they can contribute to ML by hardware. With that said. ML != AI. ML is a means to AI. Google, Facebook can talk about AI. They have Bard, Llama to show off. I'm sure Apple is furiously working behind the scene trying to catch up and if they do, they will be sure to be noisy about it.
- mbrochh 3y agoThey only mentioned "transformer model" several times and one other type of model for generating our avatar (forgot which type that is).
- pjmlp 3y agoIndeed, BUILD 2023 was impossible, if we would be drinking shots by everytime AI was mentioned I wouldn't have survived the keynote.