Well my car will adjust speed and it picks up slowing traffic quicker than I do it will panic brake and it steers so I see no issue quickly doing something.
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Report Details Turmoil Behind Apple's AI Efforts, 'Siri X,' and Headset Voice Controls
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Siri is such a dumpster fire that I don't even use it anymore, on any of my devices. And my household is full apple.
Actually, I'll say this, I only use Siri when driving, because you can't turn it off in Carplay.
Plus, is that even considered real Siri anyway? -- case in point: I only use it when checking/responding to texts while driving. And even that's rare. Most of the time i'll just ignore the text and respond once I am finished driving/parked, and I can respond with my phone.
Actually, I'll say this, I only use Siri when driving, because you can't turn it off in Carplay.
Plus, is that even considered real Siri anyway? -- case in point: I only use it when checking/responding to texts while driving. And even that's rare. Most of the time i'll just ignore the text and respond once I am finished driving/parked, and I can respond with my phone.
Apple should just hire me and I would fix it for them. And also revolutionize it while at it 
not kidding.
not kidding.
Apple doesn’t lack ambition. It set out not to create cloud services to generate massive predictive models which would require pilfering user data thus violating one of their core tenants.
Furthermore, Machine learning is not AI.
Furthermore, Machine learning is not AI.
There are simply dozens of anecdotes about Steve that tell you this story. Steve never cared about the cost, he cared about the product and the user experience. The profit came naturally.
Maybe also this article helps you to understand
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/jobs-made-apple-great-by-ignoring-profit-20110831-1jkns.html
Tim puts profit in the first place and this is why Apple is doomed to fail long term, if Tim doesn't quit. Apple needs a visionary leader again.
I think this story is showing the worrying lack of product leadership at Apple, where mostly incremental changes to technology pioneered under Steve Jobs, now happens and they have big problems with pivoting to big product bets.
For me, the most damning part of this story is the Siri X / Blackbird projects.
Siri X won, which still results in a barely competent and barely usable digital assistant… But running locally, presumably so apple could score points about on device privacy.
Well, thanks Apple - but you need not have bothered.
In the age of Chat-GPT, I don’t know how Apple can compete in-house, as they are so far behind.
Presumably they will simply buy a near future version of Chat GPT that is more refined and productised and run it on their servers (or on a fire walled Azure instance) and then limit it to respond to a narrower set of queries.
Maybe that will buy them some time to work out where they will take Siri as internally derived product (which imho should be killed as a brand as it’s beyond repairable now).
For me, the most damning part of this story is the Siri X / Blackbird projects.
Siri X won, which still results in a barely competent and barely usable digital assistant… But running locally, presumably so apple could score points about on device privacy.
Well, thanks Apple - but you need not have bothered.
In the age of Chat-GPT, I don’t know how Apple can compete in-house, as they are so far behind.
Presumably they will simply buy a near future version of Chat GPT that is more refined and productised and run it on their servers (or on a fire walled Azure instance) and then limit it to respond to a narrower set of queries.
Maybe that will buy them some time to work out where they will take Siri as internally derived product (which imho should be killed as a brand as it’s beyond repairable now).
The thing is that it doesn't have to compromise privacy. You can get GPT3-level performance on a raspberry pi. The iPhone has more than enough to do it.
This is actually an evolving conversation in the AI space. The best article I've seen that explains it is here, highly recommended:
(It's two days old as I write this, which shows you the blistering pace of innovation. Stuff is often out of date in less than a month.)
I’m surprised Siri isn’t further behind the competition all this organisational chaos considered. Using HomePod on a daily basis and comparing that experience to that of my friends who use Google assistant, I can’t say that I feel like I’m lacking out much. On the contrary, I feel like Google’s assistant sounds way more robotic and also fails understanding simple commands. Overall, I’m actually rather satisfied with Siri on the HomePod and HomeKit.
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I struggle to trust these reports that apparently came out of apple or previous employees. We’ve seen them be very wrong very often even with product rumors. Until
Further notice from apple im assuming they’re shipping a lighting port iPhone 15 pro with no side loading.
That Siri we all know Siri is limit. Currently its best feature is running shortcuts and playing music.
Further notice from apple im assuming they’re shipping a lighting port iPhone 15 pro with no side loading.
That Siri we all know Siri is limit. Currently its best feature is running shortcuts and playing music.
When you have two competing projects side-by-side, and reconciling them means somebody's out of a job, choosing the survivor is a hard choice to make, neither team wants to lose, and the person who makes it frequently doesn't have on-the-ground expertise. Sometimes a bad call gets made. You swallow your pride and move on - either from the project or in bad cases from the company. Sounds like the Siri team has been going in iterative circles for so long that the engineers hungering for more challenging projects are bored. When you reach that point it means that you need to take a second look at the people leading the team.
"If you can't spot the crazy guy on the bus..."
"If you can't spot the crazy guy on the bus..."
The only thing I do when I accidentally activate Siri is curse at it for being worthless. Even it's speech recognition is bad for me.
I know people who have no problems with Siri. More power to them.
One other problem with Siri is that it's not voice-first. If I ask for something (and it works) it says "read this web page." No Siri, read the freaking web page or answer to me. It tries to drive traffic back to the phone/device, but it should be preparing us for a world where the device isn't necessary.
I mean, siri + apple watch + cellular plan. Why not? Well, you can't do on-device processing on your apple watch...and you can't read that website on your watch really well.
Siri just got left behind. The bus left her at the station a while, and she's still looking down the road at the bus full of assistants that work forlornly.
I know people who have no problems with Siri. More power to them.
One other problem with Siri is that it's not voice-first. If I ask for something (and it works) it says "read this web page." No Siri, read the freaking web page or answer to me. It tries to drive traffic back to the phone/device, but it should be preparing us for a world where the device isn't necessary.
I mean, siri + apple watch + cellular plan. Why not? Well, you can't do on-device processing on your apple watch...and you can't read that website on your watch really well.
Siri just got left behind. The bus left her at the station a while, and she's still looking down the road at the bus full of assistants that work forlornly.
You don't need interns for this. An LLM will do it. Either GPT3 or any of the equivalent open source versions would be enough.
The business of this blog is apparently to put out negative reports about Apple based on supposed opinions of former Apple employees, of which whom we don’t know the conditions of their departure. And they know that none of their opinions can be verified because they are all under an NDA, so they can pretty much state anything as fact without anyone to refute it.
So you have individuals with a clear lack of integrity that are knowingly violating an NDA. Why would I trust anything they have to say?
So you have individuals with a clear lack of integrity that are knowingly violating an NDA. Why would I trust anything they have to say?
I've been using Alexa for many years and Siri in a HomePod mini for a year now and I find that for controlling my home, Siri works much better than Alexa. Siri understands better the scenes I want to set up and the things I want to control, with Alexa I always had to create automations to make my voice commands work as intended. Since I use my voice assistant basically for this and setting timers, checking the weather, I find Siri ok as a "smart" speaker. On an iPhone, it's a different story though.
So in hopes of making Siri a know-it-all perfectionist they ended up with essentially nothing. Funny how that works.
Really... What does Tim Cook do with the majority of his time, say, from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday?
Pick a number.
As an aside, I wouldn't be shocked if Cook routinely puts in (at least) 60 hour weeks as CEO of Apple.
Yeah, it's pretty clear that Siri is going to need some serious work if Apple wants to compete in the VA area.
100% correct. I often see comments here about Tim Cook's competence from people who clearly have no experience in tech companies. They criticize the wrong thing. In this case, though, yes, this is his fault.
There are legitimate debates to be had around privacy and accuracy of responses. But that's not the issue here.
The article highlights the problem: toxic politics. The leader of the company has one job: to get the right people on the bus, in the right seat, and the wrong people off the bus. If good engineers can't get their work done, then the wrong people are on the bus. This is, as you say, a "spectacular failure of leadership".
For driving, I use the Siri (speaker) button on my steering wheel, which works way better than the “Hey Siri” trigger. This way I have Detect “Hey Siri” switched OFF in Settings, but it still works in the car. Added bonus - when I press that button on the wheel, I do not need to say “Hey Siri” and can go straight to the command, like “Play…”, “Call…”, etc.
I guess Apple has been having a hard time finding a new AI company with the right people capable of finally bringing Siri out of “beta” or whatever you want to call it. They just can’t do it with the people they have now and maybe that includes the man at the top. For a company that usually does things right, Siri has been an embarrassment for the company for far too long.
Apple should just hire me and I would fix it for them. And also revolutionize it while at it
Have you let Apple know?
Disagree unfortunately. Over the next few years we will see competitors soar ahead of Apple in terms of AI integration but we will also see major upsets and pullbacks due to controversy created by this new AI. Apple is among the most conservative when it comes to release of new tech in the form of new products. They almost always play the waiting game with few exceptions. Siri is one of these exceptions and it burned them. Now they have been playing the waiting game again to decide if they should go next level with Siri. Has it really hurt them so far? Not really. Siri is sometimes embarrassing and useless but performs simple tasks well enough. The competition is no better because people only use digital assistants for timers and music so the bar is really low. As soon as Amazon, MS, Google, Facebook, etc. rush out their new ChatGPT-ish assistants we will see a slew of news stories about how people died or got hurt due to the AI confidence in the wrong information that indirectly led to the injury or death. Apple does not want to be anywhere near those kind of stories so they wait. Will they miss out on the hype? Yes. Will they lose customers and sales as a result? Probably not.
I wish they would take more chances and figure out their internal turf wars behind the scenes, but they do what they do very well and the market will continue to reward them for another decade, with or without an improved Siri.