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Evidence: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri-getting-dumber-wolfram-alpha-integration-removed-in-ios-7.1597610/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/siri

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
The forum post you linked doesn't even demonstrate what you claim, since users just a few posts in were showing Siri giving the correct answers. Testing just now, Siri still gives the correct answers. I think it was actually demonstrating a different problem: Siri's inconsistency of answers. Sometimes you will ask Siri a thing, and it will get it right. Other times, the exact same query will give something totally different (and totally wrong). Anecdotally, I've encountered this issue less and less over the year. IMO the public has a brain worm regarding Siri's badness that doesn't really match reality. I'm guilty of the same thing—and yet I constantly see people using Siri for things I would have bet money it couldn't do, successfully. Just recently I asked it a followup question, and it worked perfectly. I didn't think Siri could do that. I was stuck in ChatGPT mentality, or I wouldn't have even tried. I am not claiming Siri is perfect. I am not claiming it's as good as anyone else (largely because I haven't tried the other voice assistants in a long time). I'm not even saying it's particularly good, let alone "good enough". Apple has dropped the ball, no question. However, I am saying it's better than online sentiment would have you believe.

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

The forum post you linked doesn't even demonstrate what you claim, since users just a few posts in were showing Siri giving the correct answers. Testing just now, Siri still gives the correct answers. I think it was actually demonstrating a different problem: Siri's inconsistency of answers. Sometimes you will ask Siri a thing, and it will get it right. Other times, the exact same query will give something totally different (and totally wrong). Anecdotally, I've encountered this issue less and less over the year. IMO the public has a brain worm regarding Siri's badness that doesn't really match reality. I'm guilty of the same thing—and yet I constantly see people using Siri for things I would have bet money it couldn't do, successfully. Just recently I asked it a followup question, and it worked perfectly. I didn't think Siri could do that. I was stuck in ChatGPT mentality, or I wouldn't have even tried. I am not claiming Siri is perfect. I am not claiming it's as good as anyone else (largely because I haven't tried the other voice assistants in a long time). I'm not even saying it's particularly good, let alone "good enough". Apple has dropped the ball, no question. However, I am saying it's better than online sentiment would have you believe.