4 ms·

> It's not core to their business You're not thinking ahead. AI isn't just chat bots and image editing. I want to tell my phone: I'm road tripping to XYZ

by halapro 8mo ago

> It's not core to their business You're not thinking ahead. AI isn't just chat bots and image editing. I want to tell my phone: I'm road tripping to XYZ tomorrow, 10 am to 5 pm. and have my phone become a guide for the day, including stops it knows I like and hotel in my price range with the amenities it knows I need. If I get hungry it just slips in a stop wherever I ask. This can come as an "everything app" or it can be a "new OS". Either way it will change how people interact with their phone. If Android becomes this OS, which it may very well happen, iOS is toast. Apple's branding moat isn't that deep.

nottorp 8mo ago
Even if that worked, how do you know it will choose the stops you like and not the ones that paid Apple more to be featured? How much data about you does an application like that need to store? Do you really think it can be stored and processed locally or will it have to go to some server that's a secret court order away - or a bribe away - from leaking it? And last, why do you think a LLM - which is what "AI" means this year - can do that? Oh and last last thing, honest guv, do read the chapter in Accelerando where the main character loses his smart glasses and is basically crippled because he can't remember anything on his own. (Don't ask an "AI" for a summary because Stross books aren't as popular as React and it will make a mish mash of all he has ever published, I just checked.)
written-beyond 8mo ago
I saw a video of a Chinese phone that did something like that. Their implementation was a privacy and security nightmare but basically it shared a active feed of your screen with an LLM and would literally tap, type and swipe to achieve your objective. Like order these oodles from this app, it would only interrupt it's actions at payment processing screens. Looked really cool and like the AI I've always imagined.
- nandomrumber 8mo ago
  Maybe rising up against the machines will come to be what finally unites humanity. Then we can get on with exploring the galaxy. Butlerian jihad.
- halapro 8mo ago
  This is why Apple (and Google) is in a privileged position to tackle this issue at the OS level. If you currently trust your OS, then having a local agent use your apps wouldn't be terribly different (prompt injection risk aside)
onion2k 8mo ago
I think that sounds like an incredible feature, but like so many things my phone can already do I'd never actually use it. I just don't want to become someone who does what their phone suggests. Plus I have a partner and friends, so unless we all want to follow my phone's instructions it's not going to work.
- janalsncm 8mo ago
  Most people do not use most of the features in their phones. But those features exist because all of the features are used by some people.
  - onion2k 8mo ago
    I'm not arguing that the feature wouldn't be used at all, just that I believe I'm fairly typical in not using clever phone features. It'd be used by a small number of people but that wouldn't make a noticeable change in marketshare if Android had it and iOS didn't. To be honest, there probably isn't any feature of a phone OS would make a difference these days. People have decided which camp they're in and they're not going to change.
- ifwinterco 8mo ago
  You still have friends? You're going to be left behind mate, that's valuable time you could be spending talking to LLMs and vibe coding
- lxgr 8mo ago
  That's the neat thing about suggestions: You don't have to follow them.
  - nandomrumber 8mo ago
    Let’s not mince words. If my device is “suggesting” a hotel or restaurant, or wherever, that’s advertising. Advertising is largely self-praise. And self praise is no recommendation. Or perhaps I misunderstood, and you were suggesting ignoring the recommendations of one’s travel companions.
mitemte 8mo ago
Do you actually want that built into the OS? To me, this is an app but an invasion of privacy if it’s integrated into the OS.
- lxgr 8mo ago
  After having given Openclaw a try as my "personal assistant" for a day when traveling, I 100% want this to be one possible way I can interact with my computer going forward. Of course it's failed hilariously in many instances, is currently not private (I want local inference before giving it access to anything material, or it'll indeed be a privacy nightmare), and crashes all the time, but the fact that a (not yet) walking, talking CVE can do a better job at this than one of the most wealthy corporations in the world after several years of trying should give them some serious pause.
  - mingus88 8mo ago
    The “failing hilariously” bit is critical for this road-tripping use case. It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation to lose faith in simply handing over a whole day’s itinerary to an LLM. Honestly that can go so bad very easily. We are decades into the GPS navigation era and I still don’t trust the route my vehicle suggests. I have been burned so many times that we literally still compare routes from different providers for a new trip.
    - lxgr 8mo ago
      > It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation I feel like if one bad suggestion can leave somebody in a dangerous situation, many other things must have failed before, such as informing oneself of the general condition of roads in a given place and the current season, having a fallback plan in case digital navigation fails or a road is unexpectedly closed etc.
      - randallsquared 8mo ago
        You expect the human to do all the actual work of planning the trip, but leave the only interesting parts to the LLM?
kakacik 8mo ago
I get what you want, its pretty sophisticated and yes probably a huge added value if it works reliably. And there is no fucking way I want that in my life or my family's lives, ever. I will fight this very actively, with my wallet, voting and voice. Thats far beyond 1984 and at this point, in 2026, we know all that info will be weaponized against me, will try to manipulate me into decisions I would not do otherwise, for ads and other purposes. Also, it removes a lot of joy from one's life with discovering places and just being an adult and deciding for oneself, but that can be subjective. If I dare to speak out, if I dare to disagree with official opinions, if I dare to have higher morals than those at the power at given moment. Look at all the shit happening even former bastion of democracy - US. Do you really think this is the bottom? We/You are still far from that and who knows if you bounce back. Past performance doesnt indicate future and all that. Even when I am well shielded in proper bastion of true democracy and freedom - Switzerland in my case, nobody is immune. EU hates additional freedoms Swiss have and push hard for their dissolution, a reminder in their heart how better a very diverse European country can be run compared to mess EU is. US, at least current gov, hates this place too based on their moves.
- nandomrumber 8mo ago
  What is diverse about Switzerland? Isn’t it largely made up of Swiss, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese?
  - roryirvine 8mo ago
    Diversity of nationality isn't the only type of diversity.
    - nandomrumber 8mo ago
      It’s not real helpful to say that and also provide no examples as to what diversity could mean in this context.
      - kakacik 8mo ago
paganel 8mo ago
> and have my phone become a guide for the day, Why would you ever want to do that? Why wont' you stop and live life for a moment?, stop delegating stuff to your phone, especially when it comes to personal trips. Really bleak, this "always optimizing stuff" thing, really, really bleak. Tech-bro culture has done a good one to mainstream culture, because I see the same mindset seeping through to mainstream life.
- maest 8mo ago
  I don't know about you, but manually trawling trip advisor and comparing hotel pricing and quality doesn't constitute "living life" for me.
  - g947o 8mo ago
    It doesn't, but I'd rather book a hotel with full confidence and go to a restaurant that will be actually open, given all the information that is available to me at the time of planning, than having my trip ruined by a dumb bot because it cannot tell imagination from reality. All you get is "you're absolutely right".
    - wolvoleo 8mo ago
      Yeah what I do when I'm on a holiday is just walk out and see what's around, what places look good and have a good vibe. Maybe then check their rating but usually I don't bother do do even that. I'm not a minmaxer, I care more about living in the moment. I do have pretty bad ADHD though and as such I thrive on chaos and hate planning so there's that...
- halapro 8mo ago
  I travel a lot and it's extremely time consuming. I don't even do much research beforehand anymore. I really wish I got a notification like "I know you're heading that way, how about this waterfall? It only adds 15 minutes of driving." The reality is that I do not enjoy at all sorting through tickets and booking emails and apps, I just want to ask my phone "show me tonight's booking" and then hand the phone to the hotel's front desk. There's so much an assistant can do and Siri is just so far from it.
dgxyz 8mo ago
I do this by hand and always will. The moment this is automated and overseen by an AI implementation it'll turn into a marketing game like SEO did. You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up. It's bad enough already. But I do not want someone making decisions for me on that and booking things, which is the only uplift that an AI implementation can give over the current situation. It's a race to the bottom. Nothing more.
- wildrhythms 8mo ago
  >You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up ...and how does your "by hand" process solve this problem? You are influenced by the same SEO crap regardless of AI intervention.
  - dgxyz 8mo ago
    Because I can spot a turd a mile away.
  - yencabulator 8mo ago
    You are presented the SEO crap, but make your own decisions. It's the difference between buying the top sponsored result on an online marketplace vs. reading reviews and deciding between products.
Tarq0n 8mo ago
Disregarding for a moment whether that's what HN-greybeards want or not, being behind in this area doesn't necessarily preclude Apple from catching up later. There's enough of a market that they can buy it from one of Google's competitors if they have to.
nilkn 8mo ago
Can you not already do nearly that right now with Gemini on any device, iOS or not? I just gave a similar prompt to Gemini. It activated Gemini's "personal intelligence" feature and gave me the kind of highly personalized itinerary and advice you just suggested. It's not quite as seamless as being built directly into the OS, but I actually prefer it this way -- it's mildly sandboxed for safety while still giving me almost everything you just described if I want it. I certainly wouldn't switch away from my iPhone just to remove that sandboxing. It doesn't even need to be coming from a single AI vendor either. For instance, I can already use Grok's voice mode inside our Model Y to add stops along the route if we're hungry.

by halapro 8mo ago

nottorp 8mo ago

Even if that worked, how do you know it will choose the stops you like and not the ones that paid Apple more to be featured? How much data about you does an application like that need to store? Do you really think it can be stored and processed locally or will it have to go to some server that's a secret court order away - or a bribe away - from leaking it? And last, why do you think a LLM - which is what "AI" means this year - can do that? Oh and last last thing, honest guv, do read the chapter in Accelerando where the main character loses his smart glasses and is basically crippled because he can't remember anything on his own. (Don't ask an "AI" for a summary because Stross books aren't as popular as React and it will make a mish mash of all he has ever published, I just checked.)

written-beyond 8mo ago

I saw a video of a Chinese phone that did something like that. Their implementation was a privacy and security nightmare but basically it shared a active feed of your screen with an LLM and would literally tap, type and swipe to achieve your objective. Like order these oodles from this app, it would only interrupt it's actions at payment processing screens. Looked really cool and like the AI I've always imagined.

nandomrumber 8mo ago
Maybe rising up against the machines will come to be what finally unites humanity. Then we can get on with exploring the galaxy. Butlerian jihad.
halapro 8mo ago
This is why Apple (and Google) is in a privileged position to tackle this issue at the OS level. If you currently trust your OS, then having a local agent use your apps wouldn't be terribly different (prompt injection risk aside)

onion2k 8mo ago

I think that sounds like an incredible feature, but like so many things my phone can already do I'd never actually use it. I just don't want to become someone who does what their phone suggests. Plus I have a partner and friends, so unless we all want to follow my phone's instructions it's not going to work.

janalsncm 8mo ago
Most people do not use most of the features in their phones. But those features exist because all of the features are used by some people.
- onion2k 8mo ago
  I'm not arguing that the feature wouldn't be used at all, just that I believe I'm fairly typical in not using clever phone features. It'd be used by a small number of people but that wouldn't make a noticeable change in marketshare if Android had it and iOS didn't. To be honest, there probably isn't any feature of a phone OS would make a difference these days. People have decided which camp they're in and they're not going to change.
ifwinterco 8mo ago
You still have friends? You're going to be left behind mate, that's valuable time you could be spending talking to LLMs and vibe coding
lxgr 8mo ago
That's the neat thing about suggestions: You don't have to follow them.
- nandomrumber 8mo ago
  Let’s not mince words. If my device is “suggesting” a hotel or restaurant, or wherever, that’s advertising. Advertising is largely self-praise. And self praise is no recommendation. Or perhaps I misunderstood, and you were suggesting ignoring the recommendations of one’s travel companions.

mitemte 8mo ago

Do you actually want that built into the OS? To me, this is an app but an invasion of privacy if it’s integrated into the OS.

lxgr 8mo ago
After having given Openclaw a try as my "personal assistant" for a day when traveling, I 100% want this to be one possible way I can interact with my computer going forward. Of course it's failed hilariously in many instances, is currently not private (I want local inference before giving it access to anything material, or it'll indeed be a privacy nightmare), and crashes all the time, but the fact that a (not yet) walking, talking CVE can do a better job at this than one of the most wealthy corporations in the world after several years of trying should give them some serious pause.
- mingus88 8mo ago
  The “failing hilariously” bit is critical for this road-tripping use case. It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation to lose faith in simply handing over a whole day’s itinerary to an LLM. Honestly that can go so bad very easily. We are decades into the GPS navigation era and I still don’t trust the route my vehicle suggests. I have been burned so many times that we literally still compare routes from different providers for a new trip.
  - lxgr 8mo ago
    > It’s only going to take one bad suggestion that leaves someone in a dangerous situation I feel like if one bad suggestion can leave somebody in a dangerous situation, many other things must have failed before, such as informing oneself of the general condition of roads in a given place and the current season, having a fallback plan in case digital navigation fails or a road is unexpectedly closed etc.
    - randallsquared 8mo ago
      You expect the human to do all the actual work of planning the trip, but leave the only interesting parts to the LLM?

kakacik 8mo ago

I get what you want, its pretty sophisticated and yes probably a huge added value if it works reliably. And there is no fucking way I want that in my life or my family's lives, ever. I will fight this very actively, with my wallet, voting and voice. Thats far beyond 1984 and at this point, in 2026, we know all that info will be weaponized against me, will try to manipulate me into decisions I would not do otherwise, for ads and other purposes. Also, it removes a lot of joy from one's life with discovering places and just being an adult and deciding for oneself, but that can be subjective. If I dare to speak out, if I dare to disagree with official opinions, if I dare to have higher morals than those at the power at given moment. Look at all the shit happening even former bastion of democracy - US. Do you really think this is the bottom? We/You are still far from that and who knows if you bounce back. Past performance doesnt indicate future and all that. Even when I am well shielded in proper bastion of true democracy and freedom - Switzerland in my case, nobody is immune. EU hates additional freedoms Swiss have and push hard for their dissolution, a reminder in their heart how better a very diverse European country can be run compared to mess EU is. US, at least current gov, hates this place too based on their moves.

nandomrumber 8mo ago
What is diverse about Switzerland? Isn’t it largely made up of Swiss, Germans, Italians, and Portuguese?
- roryirvine 8mo ago
  Diversity of nationality isn't the only type of diversity.
  - nandomrumber 8mo ago
    It’s not real helpful to say that and also provide no examples as to what diversity could mean in this context.
    - kakacik 8mo ago

paganel 8mo ago

> and have my phone become a guide for the day, Why would you ever want to do that? Why wont' you stop and live life for a moment?, stop delegating stuff to your phone, especially when it comes to personal trips. Really bleak, this "always optimizing stuff" thing, really, really bleak. Tech-bro culture has done a good one to mainstream culture, because I see the same mindset seeping through to mainstream life.

maest 8mo ago
I don't know about you, but manually trawling trip advisor and comparing hotel pricing and quality doesn't constitute "living life" for me.
- g947o 8mo ago
  It doesn't, but I'd rather book a hotel with full confidence and go to a restaurant that will be actually open, given all the information that is available to me at the time of planning, than having my trip ruined by a dumb bot because it cannot tell imagination from reality. All you get is "you're absolutely right".
  - wolvoleo 8mo ago
    Yeah what I do when I'm on a holiday is just walk out and see what's around, what places look good and have a good vibe. Maybe then check their rating but usually I don't bother do do even that. I'm not a minmaxer, I care more about living in the moment. I do have pretty bad ADHD though and as such I thrive on chaos and hate planning so there's that...
halapro 8mo ago
I travel a lot and it's extremely time consuming. I don't even do much research beforehand anymore. I really wish I got a notification like "I know you're heading that way, how about this waterfall? It only adds 15 minutes of driving." The reality is that I do not enjoy at all sorting through tickets and booking emails and apps, I just want to ask my phone "show me tonight's booking" and then hand the phone to the hotel's front desk. There's so much an assistant can do and Siri is just so far from it.

dgxyz 8mo ago

I do this by hand and always will. The moment this is automated and overseen by an AI implementation it'll turn into a marketing game like SEO did. You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up. It's bad enough already. But I do not want someone making decisions for me on that and booking things, which is the only uplift that an AI implementation can give over the current situation. It's a race to the bottom. Nothing more.

wildrhythms 8mo ago
>You'll end up staying at the hotel which spends the most money on getting itself into the training data and forcing reviews on people immediately before the stay is up ...and how does your "by hand" process solve this problem? You are influenced by the same SEO crap regardless of AI intervention.
- dgxyz 8mo ago
  Because I can spot a turd a mile away.
- yencabulator 8mo ago
  You are presented the SEO crap, but make your own decisions. It's the difference between buying the top sponsored result on an online marketplace vs. reading reviews and deciding between products.

Tarq0n 8mo ago

Disregarding for a moment whether that's what HN-greybeards want or not, being behind in this area doesn't necessarily preclude Apple from catching up later. There's enough of a market that they can buy it from one of Google's competitors if they have to.

nilkn 8mo ago

Can you not already do nearly that right now with Gemini on any device, iOS or not? I just gave a similar prompt to Gemini. It activated Gemini's "personal intelligence" feature and gave me the kind of highly personalized itinerary and advice you just suggested. It's not quite as seamless as being built directly into the OS, but I actually prefer it this way -- it's mildly sandboxed for safety while still giving me almost everything you just described if I want it. I certainly wouldn't switch away from my iPhone just to remove that sandboxing. It doesn't even need to be coming from a single AI vendor either. For instance, I can already use Grok's voice mode inside our Model Y to add stops along the route if we're hungry.