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Apple's famously-squandered first-mover advantage with Siri is so entrenched at this point, it feels (at least to an outside observer) like it must simply be cu

Apple's famously-squandered first-mover advantage with Siri is so entrenched at this point, it feels (at least to an outside observer) like it must simply be culturally and organizationally impossible for Apple to innovate in that space. I’d love to be surprised at WWDC this year, but it intuitively seems exceedingly unlikely.

jiggawatts 3y ago
The original Siri was more capable than it is now, which blows my mind. Apparently there's a senior exec in Apple that is even more of a puritan than the "AI safety" nuts and forced Siri to be dumbed down to prevent even the slightest risk of any impropriety. With people like that in charge, innovation can't occur.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  No I hate when I make these posts when I know something, and have to eat down votes for it. Believe what you will, but it's not true, not even close to true, or in the same ballpark as truth, and it's not some contentious half truth. It's a bizarre wholly new rumor that should strike everyone reasonably acquainted with AI as trivially wrong, given timelines. 14 years here, I at least had come to expect common courtesy on what is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    Evidence: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri-getting-dumber-wolfram-alpha-integration-removed-in-ios-7.1597610/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri-getting-dumber-wol... Siri could answer questions it no longer can. When I ask it to play a specific song in the car, it plays a song at random. This has been a known issue for 3+ years: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253216090?sortBy=best https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253216090?sortBy=best Literally the only two things I can successfully use it for is setting timers and reminders. Nothing else works robustly. You say you've worked in the Siri team for 14 years? Print this out, roll it up, and bop your managers on the nose with it: YOU'RE MISSING THE BOAT. You haven't bought a ticket, and you're not even at the pier! While you guys are still "thinking" about generative AI integration, millions of your users like me have switched to using the Open AI app because it actually understands what I'm saying and can answer usefully. Just the voice recognition part of Siri alone is being absolutely blown out of the water by demos thrown together by individuals, not entire teams of people working at what is soon to be the former biggest company in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfvLIEHwiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfvLIEHwiyo If I get a message from my Mum that's not in English, Siri used to say some hilarious verbatim English pronunciation of the words. Total gibberish. The big improvement now is that she'll just say: "A message in a foreign language" or something to that effect. Simply refusing to do anything useful. The Open AI app can read the same text out loud to me, no problems. How is that "improving over time"!? What are you guys doing over there? All I see is regressions. PS: It seems that there aren't even that many people in the Siri team: https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/03/apple-siri-amazon-alexa-hiring-data/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/03/apple-siri-amazon-alexa-hirin... PPS: Zuckerberg bought 350,000 NVIDIA H100 accelerators. https://www.pcmag.com/news/zuckerbergs-meta-is-spending-billions-to-buy-350000-nvidia-h100-gpus https://www.pcmag.com/news/zuckerbergs-meta-is-spending-bill... Does the Siri team even have access to a single H100 card? A few dozen maybe? I haven't heard a peep about Apple buying anything from NVIDIA in the last year...
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      Siri's bad, that's not the same thing as the claim (there's an Apple executive who is so worried about AI becoming super intelligent that they hold it back)
      - anonzzzies 3y ago
        I am not sure that was the intended reference; we know this behaviour now very well from neutering AIs, but I read the statement of gp as, like some of the AI neutering, but even more extreme, this Siri manager is trying to not offend anyone to such extreme that it makes a basically worthless product. Not to save the world from AI. I hope someone, in my lifetime, will make on-device LLMs which allow that type of neutering to be switched off. I don’t get offended and LLMs are getting far worse by trying to ‘protect the children’, not humanity.
        jiggawatts 3y ago
        That's a fairly accurate summary of position. Apple doesn't have the right kind of "vision" for what they could achieve with Siri, and they don't have the stomach for the type of risk-taking that it would take to get there even if they did. If they did, we'd be hearing about Apple buying hundreds of thousands of GPUs, not Facebook.
        refulgentis 3y ago
        Yes we are, and yes you are. It's right in the post. "Apparently there's a senior exec in Apple that is even more of a puritan than the "AI safety" nuts and forced Siri to be dumbed down to prevent even the slightest risk of any impropriety. With people like that in charge, innovation can't occur."
      - whycome 3y ago
        "slightest risk of any impropriety" isn't "super intelligent" And it seemed to be a facetious comments. It's how "apparently" is used in colloquial speech nowadays.
    - tiltowait 3y ago
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  Alternatively phrased: Despite it potentially being a competitive disadvantage, Apple still prioritizes user safety and privacy.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    It's not just a competitive disadvantage. It's a disadvantage to the user too because Siri works so poorly.
    - mulderc 3y ago
      I have consistently found Siri works better than Alexa for what I use a voice assistant for. Google assistant beats them both though. At this point I feel like I rarely have any Siri issues and use it all the time so I am confused when people mention how bad it is.
      - crooked-v 3y ago
        I think a lot of it has to do with constant changes that suddenly break phrases people are used to using. For a personal example, I had a six-month period where Siri stopped understanding the word 'half' (as in, 'Hey Siri, volume to half'), and either ignored or misinterpreted any command that included it.
        mulderc 3y ago
        Never had that experience.
      - jinushaun 3y ago
        What? Siri catches what I say correctly probably less than 50% of the time. Nevermind its ability to actually do useful things. You ask it for trivia, it returns a “here’s what I found on the web” response. Google gives me the answer.
        mulderc 3y ago
- davely 3y ago
  Aye! What a flash in the pan that was! I remember being at SXSW in 2010 and people showing off this cool assistant app. A month later, Apple acquired it and then crickets. When it was finally integrated into iOS, it could just barely set timers. What a waste of an amazing team.
  - BonoboIO 3y ago
    I found this on the web for you
- prepend 3y ago
  Yet I expect that Siri is still the most widely used voice assistant just because people don’t really use many complicated commands or queries. People I know just create appointments, do hands free calling and simple stuff that Siri is pretty good at.
alwillis 3y ago
I think you should prepare to be surprised.
- jondwillis 3y ago
  Why do you say that, distant relative?
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    The Apple Maps 1.0 release was a complete shitshow but it has quietly gotten better than Google Maps by this point. But the average google maps user is still mentally living back in 2012 and still thinks that Apple Maps sucks as hard as it did at launch. Apple does improve its products over time. In this case though due to the problems with AI and everything from racist Tay bot to "DEI" google gemini issues they're going to be taking their time to avoid another Apple Maps launch. Institutionally they've learned from the Apple Maps launch and they aren't going to show you a half-baked product any more. If you misinterpret the lack of any visible progress to the consumer as lack of any progress you probably don't have a good mental model of how Apple operates. They also aren't likely to be dumb enough to just not even bother on working to improve their AI assistant with the last decade worth of improvements in DNNs/LLMs. And the "first mover advantage" usually isn't an actual advantage and its better to be second or third and copy what works and put a lot of polish on it. Siri itself is kind of proof of that (Friendster and MySpace are two other examples--there's lots of past HN topics on this). They don't need to leap into the LLM voice assistant space half baked in order to try to get ahead of everyone else--that is startup-which-will-eventually-get-bought/HN kind of logic, not actual market leadership logic.
    - Pulcinella 3y ago
      Nah Apple maps still sucks where I live. Lots of small streets and alleys that are on Google maps are absent on Apple's. Locations are slow to be updated. Driving directions that are illogical to locals. Maybe it's better in Cupertino/New York, but not where I live.

jiggawatts 3y ago

The original Siri was more capable than it is now, which blows my mind. Apparently there's a senior exec in Apple that is even more of a puritan than the "AI safety" nuts and forced Siri to be dumbed down to prevent even the slightest risk of any impropriety. With people like that in charge, innovation can't occur.

refulgentis 3y ago
No I hate when I make these posts when I know something, and have to eat down votes for it. Believe what you will, but it's not true, not even close to true, or in the same ballpark as truth, and it's not some contentious half truth. It's a bizarre wholly new rumor that should strike everyone reasonably acquainted with AI as trivially wrong, given timelines. 14 years here, I at least had come to expect common courtesy on what is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Evidence: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri-getting-dumber-wolfram-alpha-integration-removed-in-ios-7.1597610/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri-getting-dumber-wol... Siri could answer questions it no longer can. When I ask it to play a specific song in the car, it plays a song at random. This has been a known issue for 3+ years: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253216090?sortBy=best https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253216090?sortBy=best Literally the only two things I can successfully use it for is setting timers and reminders. Nothing else works robustly. You say you've worked in the Siri team for 14 years? Print this out, roll it up, and bop your managers on the nose with it: YOU'RE MISSING THE BOAT. You haven't bought a ticket, and you're not even at the pier! While you guys are still "thinking" about generative AI integration, millions of your users like me have switched to using the Open AI app because it actually understands what I'm saying and can answer usefully. Just the voice recognition part of Siri alone is being absolutely blown out of the water by demos thrown together by individuals, not entire teams of people working at what is soon to be the former biggest company in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfvLIEHwiyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfvLIEHwiyo If I get a message from my Mum that's not in English, Siri used to say some hilarious verbatim English pronunciation of the words. Total gibberish. The big improvement now is that she'll just say: "A message in a foreign language" or something to that effect. Simply refusing to do anything useful. The Open AI app can read the same text out loud to me, no problems. How is that "improving over time"!? What are you guys doing over there? All I see is regressions. PS: It seems that there aren't even that many people in the Siri team: https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/03/apple-siri-amazon-alexa-hiring-data/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/03/apple-siri-amazon-alexa-hirin... PPS: Zuckerberg bought 350,000 NVIDIA H100 accelerators. https://www.pcmag.com/news/zuckerbergs-meta-is-spending-billions-to-buy-350000-nvidia-h100-gpus https://www.pcmag.com/news/zuckerbergs-meta-is-spending-bill... Does the Siri team even have access to a single H100 card? A few dozen maybe? I haven't heard a peep about Apple buying anything from NVIDIA in the last year...
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    Siri's bad, that's not the same thing as the claim (there's an Apple executive who is so worried about AI becoming super intelligent that they hold it back)
    - anonzzzies 3y ago
      I am not sure that was the intended reference; we know this behaviour now very well from neutering AIs, but I read the statement of gp as, like some of the AI neutering, but even more extreme, this Siri manager is trying to not offend anyone to such extreme that it makes a basically worthless product. Not to save the world from AI. I hope someone, in my lifetime, will make on-device LLMs which allow that type of neutering to be switched off. I don’t get offended and LLMs are getting far worse by trying to ‘protect the children’, not humanity.
      - jiggawatts 3y ago
        That's a fairly accurate summary of position. Apple doesn't have the right kind of "vision" for what they could achieve with Siri, and they don't have the stomach for the type of risk-taking that it would take to get there even if they did. If they did, we'd be hearing about Apple buying hundreds of thousands of GPUs, not Facebook.
      - refulgentis 3y ago
        Yes we are, and yes you are. It's right in the post. "Apparently there's a senior exec in Apple that is even more of a puritan than the "AI safety" nuts and forced Siri to be dumbed down to prevent even the slightest risk of any impropriety. With people like that in charge, innovation can't occur."
    - whycome 3y ago
      "slightest risk of any impropriety" isn't "super intelligent" And it seemed to be a facetious comments. It's how "apparently" is used in colloquial speech nowadays.
  - tiltowait 3y ago
ribosometronome 3y ago
Alternatively phrased: Despite it potentially being a competitive disadvantage, Apple still prioritizes user safety and privacy.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It's not just a competitive disadvantage. It's a disadvantage to the user too because Siri works so poorly.
  - mulderc 3y ago
    I have consistently found Siri works better than Alexa for what I use a voice assistant for. Google assistant beats them both though. At this point I feel like I rarely have any Siri issues and use it all the time so I am confused when people mention how bad it is.
    - crooked-v 3y ago
      I think a lot of it has to do with constant changes that suddenly break phrases people are used to using. For a personal example, I had a six-month period where Siri stopped understanding the word 'half' (as in, 'Hey Siri, volume to half'), and either ignored or misinterpreted any command that included it.
      - mulderc 3y ago
        Never had that experience.
    - jinushaun 3y ago
      What? Siri catches what I say correctly probably less than 50% of the time. Nevermind its ability to actually do useful things. You ask it for trivia, it returns a “here’s what I found on the web” response. Google gives me the answer.
      - mulderc 3y ago
davely 3y ago
Aye! What a flash in the pan that was! I remember being at SXSW in 2010 and people showing off this cool assistant app. A month later, Apple acquired it and then crickets. When it was finally integrated into iOS, it could just barely set timers. What a waste of an amazing team.
- BonoboIO 3y ago
  I found this on the web for you
prepend 3y ago
Yet I expect that Siri is still the most widely used voice assistant just because people don’t really use many complicated commands or queries. People I know just create appointments, do hands free calling and simple stuff that Siri is pretty good at.

alwillis 3y ago

I think you should prepare to be surprised.

jondwillis 3y ago
Why do you say that, distant relative?
- lamontcg 3y ago
  The Apple Maps 1.0 release was a complete shitshow but it has quietly gotten better than Google Maps by this point. But the average google maps user is still mentally living back in 2012 and still thinks that Apple Maps sucks as hard as it did at launch. Apple does improve its products over time. In this case though due to the problems with AI and everything from racist Tay bot to "DEI" google gemini issues they're going to be taking their time to avoid another Apple Maps launch. Institutionally they've learned from the Apple Maps launch and they aren't going to show you a half-baked product any more. If you misinterpret the lack of any visible progress to the consumer as lack of any progress you probably don't have a good mental model of how Apple operates. They also aren't likely to be dumb enough to just not even bother on working to improve their AI assistant with the last decade worth of improvements in DNNs/LLMs. And the "first mover advantage" usually isn't an actual advantage and its better to be second or third and copy what works and put a lot of polish on it. Siri itself is kind of proof of that (Friendster and MySpace are two other examples--there's lots of past HN topics on this). They don't need to leap into the LLM voice assistant space half baked in order to try to get ahead of everyone else--that is startup-which-will-eventually-get-bought/HN kind of logic, not actual market leadership logic.
  - Pulcinella 3y ago
    Nah Apple maps still sucks where I live. Lots of small streets and alleys that are on Google maps are absent on Apple's. Locations are slow to be updated. Driving directions that are illogical to locals. Maybe it's better in Cupertino/New York, but not where I live.