4 ms·

If Apple is smart, they will just integrate LLMs into Siri and across the iOS, macOS, speakers and TV and own everybody in "personal assistant" space. We alread

by ssijak 3y ago

If Apple is smart, they will just integrate LLMs into Siri and across the iOS, macOS, speakers and TV and own everybody in "personal assistant" space. We already have very powerful devices in our hand (iPhone), on our desks (macs), around the house (speakers/tv), just integrate the latest AI tech into them in a smart and thoughtful way and it can be epic.

Swizec 3y ago
> they will just integrate LLMs into Siri and across the iOS, macOS Latest autocorrect is already based on LLMs. https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/14/ios-17-2-disable-inline-text-predictions/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/14/ios-17-2-disable-inline-text-... > just integrate the latest AI tech into them The Ultra 2 watch has a GPU (neural engine) that can run on-device Siri. Works great, I've been able to run basic commands like setting timers and local shortcuts in areas with no cell reception.
kweingar 3y ago
I hear lots of people saying this, but I’m not sure why we assume that Apple is the best positioned to take advantage of this. They have had powerful devices with best-in-class integration for many years now, and Siri is still a frustrating experience and lags significantly behind competing voice assistants. Competitors also have access to LLMs, and competing ecosystems are maturing (e.g. Samsung, Google). I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple makes waves with AI, but I also wouldn’t say they’re particularly more likely to do it than anybody else.
flatline 3y ago
I’m sure the big tech companies are working on exactly this and trimming resources from other areas, both from a simple logistics standpoint and from conversations I’ve had with folks who work (or worked) for these places doing AI. I personally don’t think LLMs are anywhere near ready for this type of rollout, so it will be a while before we see results. The cost of something like GPT 3.5 deployed at scale is tremendous. The censoring of responses will make it an obstreperous assistant, unless this has gotten considerably better in the last few months. And are we all just going to accept hallucinated results over something that is either vetted or clearly misunderstood? I don’t even know how far away we are from sufficiently powerful TPUs that fit a mobile case and power profile. But I do think this is likely to be the next big mobile advancement, however far off it may be.
s3r3nity 3y ago
Apple already made the smart “move” by moving very slowly in the “smart home” game, even though tech bloggers ripped them all the time whenever a new Echo or Google Assistant device was released. Now rather than deal with all this cruft, or deal with competing assistants (e.g. why the fuck does Google Assistant still exist if you have Bard???) Apple has the runway and the capital to make this type of LLM upgrade to Siri and the well-maintained ecosystem.
- kweingar 3y ago
  > why the fuck does Google Assistant still exist if you have Bard??? Because an integrated smart home assistant is a different problem domain than a general purpose chatbot. ChatGPT was a revolutionary technology that released less than a year ago and surprised the world with its capabilities. It’s going to take some time to integrate that technology into an ever-present integrated assistant that leverages your personal knowledge graph to take actions on your behalf, but they’re working on it. And Assistant imo has a huge leg up because of the investment in software integrations made in the pre-LLM world. Meanwhile when I ask Siri to show me photos of myself, it does an image search of the web and returns pictures of the word “myself”
garrickvanburen 3y ago
this is my assumption - Siri/Alexa/GoogleAssistant - will all have LLMs behind them and be able to hold a conversation thread / remember context.
JCharante 3y ago
The big benefit of LLMs is that speech to text isn't perfect, but Whisper is pretty good (still gets typos) but GPT 4 is able to understand what I meant to say even when they're multiple typos or completely the wrong word.
mrguyorama 3y ago
Why do you believe a machine designed to predict the next token of text would be good at turning a request into a set of actions to perform?

by ssijak 3y ago

Swizec 3y ago

> they will just integrate LLMs into Siri and across the iOS, macOS Latest autocorrect is already based on LLMs. https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/14/ios-17-2-disable-inline-text-predictions/ https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/14/ios-17-2-disable-inline-text-... > just integrate the latest AI tech into them The Ultra 2 watch has a GPU (neural engine) that can run on-device Siri. Works great, I've been able to run basic commands like setting timers and local shortcuts in areas with no cell reception.

kweingar 3y ago

I hear lots of people saying this, but I’m not sure why we assume that Apple is the best positioned to take advantage of this. They have had powerful devices with best-in-class integration for many years now, and Siri is still a frustrating experience and lags significantly behind competing voice assistants. Competitors also have access to LLMs, and competing ecosystems are maturing (e.g. Samsung, Google). I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple makes waves with AI, but I also wouldn’t say they’re particularly more likely to do it than anybody else.

flatline 3y ago

I’m sure the big tech companies are working on exactly this and trimming resources from other areas, both from a simple logistics standpoint and from conversations I’ve had with folks who work (or worked) for these places doing AI. I personally don’t think LLMs are anywhere near ready for this type of rollout, so it will be a while before we see results. The cost of something like GPT 3.5 deployed at scale is tremendous. The censoring of responses will make it an obstreperous assistant, unless this has gotten considerably better in the last few months. And are we all just going to accept hallucinated results over something that is either vetted or clearly misunderstood? I don’t even know how far away we are from sufficiently powerful TPUs that fit a mobile case and power profile. But I do think this is likely to be the next big mobile advancement, however far off it may be.

s3r3nity 3y ago

Apple already made the smart “move” by moving very slowly in the “smart home” game, even though tech bloggers ripped them all the time whenever a new Echo or Google Assistant device was released. Now rather than deal with all this cruft, or deal with competing assistants (e.g. why the fuck does Google Assistant still exist if you have Bard???) Apple has the runway and the capital to make this type of LLM upgrade to Siri and the well-maintained ecosystem.

kweingar 3y ago
> why the fuck does Google Assistant still exist if you have Bard??? Because an integrated smart home assistant is a different problem domain than a general purpose chatbot. ChatGPT was a revolutionary technology that released less than a year ago and surprised the world with its capabilities. It’s going to take some time to integrate that technology into an ever-present integrated assistant that leverages your personal knowledge graph to take actions on your behalf, but they’re working on it. And Assistant imo has a huge leg up because of the investment in software integrations made in the pre-LLM world. Meanwhile when I ask Siri to show me photos of myself, it does an image search of the web and returns pictures of the word “myself”

garrickvanburen 3y ago

this is my assumption - Siri/Alexa/GoogleAssistant - will all have LLMs behind them and be able to hold a conversation thread / remember context.

JCharante 3y ago

The big benefit of LLMs is that speech to text isn't perfect, but Whisper is pretty good (still gets typos) but GPT 4 is able to understand what I meant to say even when they're multiple typos or completely the wrong word.

mrguyorama 3y ago

Why do you believe a machine designed to predict the next token of text would be good at turning a request into a set of actions to perform?