5 ms·
Maybe $500 billion will finally be enough to make Siri useful for more than just setting an alarm.
by jonplackett 2y ago
Maybe $500 billion will finally be enough to make Siri useful for more than just setting an alarm.
- joshstrange 2y agoWhoa, whoa, whoa, on occasion, if the planets align just right, I can also get Siri to set a reminder (and at least half the time Siri gets it 80% right). LLM Siri cannot come fast enough.
- nottorp 2y agoLLMs are there for generating/hallucinating text, not for understanding text. For natural language processing you need a different kind of neural network don't you?
- drodgers 2y agoWhat are you talking about? We've invented the Universal Translator already.
- joshstrange 2y agoI’m confident that LLM’s will not have hallucination problems in the type of requests that I send to Siri. I don’t ask Siri for facts (just like I don’t ask LLM’s for facts). As long as it can correctly, understand what and when I ask to be reminded about something, that would be a huge improvement for me. That and being able to map “Bedroom Fan”/“Bedroom Fan Light” to “Bedroom Fan Lights” without having to specify aliases (and even then it hearing me wrong). I’ve see Home Assistant working with LLMs and it can understand groupings that I never explicitly defined which is very nice. I can say “Turn off all overhead lights” and it will find all my overhead lights and turn them off. Siri/Alexa can’t handle those tasks currently.
- zzbzq 2y agoIt's the other way around. The model is impeccable at "understanding text." It's a gigantic mathematical spreadsheet that quantifies meaning. The model probably "understands" better than any human ever could. Running that backwards into producing new text is where it gets hand-wavy & it becomes unclear if the generative algorithms are really progressing on the same track that humans are on, or just some parallel track that diverges or even terminates early.
- nottorp 2y agoI thought it quantifies the probability that a certain word (their output) follows a given word sequence (their training corpus and the prompt)?
- ben_w 2y agoOnly if you wildly oversimply to the level of being misleading. The precise mechanism LLMs use for reaching their probability distributions is why they are able to pass most undergraduate level exams, whereas the Markov chain projects I made 15-20 years ago were not. Even as an intermediary, word2vec had to build a space in which the concept of "gender" exists such that "man" -> "woman" ~= "king" -> "queen".
- nottorp 2y ago> Only if you wildly oversimply to the level of being misleading. Maybe I'm asking for an explanation :) Since you seem to understand the mechanism, can you do a 3 line summary please?
- ben_w 2y ago3 lines? That's still going to be oversimplifed to the point of being wrong, but OK. Make a bunch of neural nets to recognise every concept, the same way you would make them to recognise numbers or letters in handwiting recognition. Glue them together with more neural nets. Put another on the end to turn concepts back into words. For a less wrong but still introductory summary that still glosses over stuff, about 1.5 hours of 3blue1brown videos, #4-#8 in this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_ZCJB-3pi&si=0EcPhIBdgIuAJQ-r https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNU6R1_67000Dx_...
- nottorp 2y agoThanks! ... Oh interesting. And those concepts are hand picked or generated automatically somehow? > For a less wrong but still introductory summary that still glosses over stuff, about 1.5 hours of 3blue1brown videos Sorry, my religion forbids me from watching talking heads. I'll have to live with your summary for now. Until I run into someone who condensed those 1.5 hours in text that takes at most 30 min to read...
- jonplackett 2y agoThey are AMAZING at understanding. I think even more reliably than generating. And with context, and back and forth. Try asking ChatGPT to remember some obscure film you can only remember very hazy details about - really random stuff - I bet it will identify it for you I a few tries. You can also totally miss spell words, use messed up grammar and it has no problems at all
- nessex 2y agoIf you haven't tried OpenAI's advanced voice mode, it's a mind blowing version of exactly what things like Siri really ought to become with a little more development. If that's what you mean by LLM Siri, I totally agree. Being able to chat casually with low latency, correct yourself, switch languages mid-sentence, incorporate context throughout a back-and-forth conversation etc. turns talking to these kinds of systems from a painful chore into something that can actually add value.
- skydhash 2y agoBut does it do actual stuff, like adding a meeting to your calendar, call people, or set a timer or a reminder?
- smallmancontrov 2y agoSiri already has LLM integration... ...that will grind your request to set email Vacation Mode through the world's worst speech-to-text, jam the text into Chat GPT, and spend the next three minutes reading you an uninterruptible 3 minute essay about violence.
- therealcamino 2y agoOver on Android it's the opposite situation. The voice interface to Google Assistant was very reliable for simple things like reminders and appointments, and even for general knowledge questions. It was part of why I didn't switch to an iPhone. Then Gemini came along, and that core functionality got a lot worse.
- madeofpalk 2y ago> LLM Siri cannot come fast enough. I don't think it's been demonstrated that Apple could make Siri better with an LLM.
- jonplackett 2y agoI tried this with the new ‘apple intelligence’ that I thought could see my screen. I had a birthday invite with clear date and time: so I asked it to add to my calendar. It just said, “add what?” repeatedly until finally deciding it needed to send it to chatGPT to help. Which it did, then just returned the text in the image without taking any action. Then I say “can you add the event now?” “Add what?” So I try copying the text from the image in photos and giving that to Siri to add as an event. Surly this can work?!? Nope. It’s just utterly pitiful.
- wrboyce 2y agoI think that feature has been delayed.
- cloogshicer 2y agoEven that seems to work only half the time. ~50% she just doesn't respond to a voice command "Siri" or "Hey Siri" for me.
- TMWNN 2y agoWhen Siri first debuted it would automatically beep, so I could immediately tell if the phone did not recognize recognize "Hey Siri" (just "Siri" didn't work). A couple of iOS updates later this went away, which means I can't tell without actually picking up the phone and looking at it whether the command was accepted. Even more annoyingly, sometimes there is a beep! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- cloogshicer 2y agoYup, the UX has gotten so much worse.
- checkyoursudo 2y agoI would pay $500bn to get siri to distinguish between a 13 minute timer and a 30 minute timer.
- brador 2y agoThe problem is AI current best use case is creative work, art, music, programming, but skilled creative professionals is a/the core userbase for Apple products. Apple is stuck and it’s AI will never be good enough until those creatives embrace it. Right now it’s disdain when mentioned.
- dartos 2y agoUhh > The problem is AI current best use case is creative work, art, music, programming By “best” do you mean “marketable?” Seems weird to see a bunch of creatives and creative professionals “disdain” a tool and still say it’s “best” for them…
- troupo 2y agoAn oft-cited quote goes something like this: "we wanted robots/AI to automate boring, routine, meaningless jobs to let people be free to pursue arts, music, creativity. It's a sad state of affairs that AI is taking over arts/music/creativity stranding people with boring, routine, meaningless jobs"
- amelius 2y ago
- grahamj 2y agoApple software is already largely written my Americans. Somehow I don't think fealty will change its quality.
- boringg 2y agoFunny I turned Siri off because i didn't want apple intelligence running amok. The follow-on problem --> lack of Siri killed my Carplay because Siri is required (also use itf for setting alarms/timers). The kicker? I can't seem to turn Siri back on after look through all the menus. I.e. My preference for apple CarPlay supersedes my concerns on GPT running over my contents. Though the UI/UX has made it next to impossible to turn it back on. What a world to live in.
- wpm 2y agoIf your phone is new enough for Apple Intelligence, Siri is now under that umbrella. There's no "just Siri" option anymore, unless you're rockin an iPhone 14 or older.
- rafram 2y agoOr a non-Pro iPhone 15.
- afro88 2y agoApple Intelligence and Siri are still separate (though Apple like to make it look like they are fundamentally intertwined). You can turn Apple Intelligence off and leave Siri on for CarPlay. How did you turn Siri off in the first place? That's where I'd start... Settings -> Apple Intelligence & Siri: Talk and Type to Siri -> turn all this back on Allow Siri When Locked -> turn this back on
- mossTechnician 2y agoThe part of Siri that causes the most trouble is the speech recognition - which uses a voice recognition model that we now colloquially refer to as "AI." The part that works reliably, the part that sets your alarm or sends the message, is an action that's hardcoded. IMO, moving towards AI just leads to increased uncertainty and undesirable outcomes, which is something several journalists reviewing Apple Intelligence have attested to.
- gosub100 2y agoI'm a formerly non-mac guy who finally bought a brand new iPad. I got bored with the wallpaper but couldn't figure out how to change it. "Hey Siri, how do I change the wallpaper?"..."Sorry, I can't help with that". Tried a couple more questions and all it did was Google it for me. This is the latest M4 that was around $2k. This is what our "AI accelerated" chips give us in return? What a disgrace
- apwell23 2y agohey thats what alexa is for
- coliveira 2y agoNo, Alexa is only good to interrupt you randomly when you're watching TV.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]