Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 267 posts

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#171

Post by __jal »

s73ver wrote: post #94
__jal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't claim to be a fanboy, but I am a longtime user[1], and this is the primary reason I stick to them for my phone. I frankly can't imagine using Android the way I use my Iphone - the privacy invasions considered acceptable are well in to the "no go" range for me, before even getting to the malware that pass for "free apps". If I were somehow forced to use Android, I'm pretty sure I'd treat it as an adversarial dev…

"[1] I'm becoming less of a fan, as MacOS becomes "cloud aware" and less of a Unix workstation." How is it becoming less of a Unix workstation? It can still do all the Unixy stuff it could before.

What I mean is twofold:

- They're paying much less attention to the "Unixy stuff" than they used to. Old versions of common things take forever to be updated. Compatibility has always been shit, but it is getting worse. SIP means a number of things I tend to modify, can't be, without hassle[1].

- With a workstation, I expect to be able tailor it specifically to my work requirements. This is becoming increasingly difficult at the proliferation of "cloud" daemons increases and they lock down the system - the documentation for most of the daemons ranges from "sucks" to "nonexistent", so it isn't clear if any given one needed for stable operation or if it yet another thing related to trying to sell me music or some such[2]. Reverting the machine to a state where "root" means "root" is rather difficult (See SIP).

Apple's focus is on chasing the flavor-of-the-month social features and keeping up with the GOOGs. Which makes sense - the set of people buying that stuff is much larger than the workstation market. But it means they don't care so much about it, and make choices like letting the core OS get as buggy and unstable as it has become.

It is mostly fine for me. I built a nice king-hell PC running Debian that I'm very happy with. I didn't think I would, but after my last MBP died unexpectedly, I ended up buying a bottom-rung used Air because I'm hopelessly dependant on OmniFocus and a couple other OS X only productivity tools, and I sync my phone local-only. So it tends to live in the dining room, where I work on my schedule and read mail via ssh over breakfast.

So yeah, Apple still has a place for me, but it is peripheral. I spent mid-4 figures on building a PC this year, and mid-3 on that MBA. And I'm thinking about what I really need out of OmniFocus, and how much of that I can build myself.

[1] This is a good thing for many people, but I expect full control of my machines, and I do occasionally sketchy things like patching Safari. The problem with SIP is that I only need full control sporadically, and not for long, but it is a serious PITA to disable/enable. So it just stays disabled.

[2] One example of many is `parsecd`. No man page. Googling about shows that a lot of people think it to be related to location-based lookups for Siri data. Despite the fact that Siri is disabled on my box, it ran and asked for network access all the time, until I disabled it. Now, WTF is 'LaterAgent', and why is it in my process table?

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#172

Post by j2bax »

threeseed wrote: post #127
theCricketer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on Android's weaknesses when it comes to privacy and contrast this with Apple's approach? Asking genuinely to update my understanding.

Couple of examples: 1) iOS has had lazy permissions since the very early days e.g. when an app wants to use this microphone then ask the user right then instead of when the app is installed. This feature is still not implemented on all Android devices nor is it as seamless nor is it mandatory. 2) Apple is providing more and more frameworks e.g. CoreML which run only on the device. This means that developers don't hav…

I don't really see that as lazy. I see that as considerate/beneficial to the user. I much prefer to be asked in context what/how the app is going to use the microphone for rather than on initial install, when I might be like "why the heck does this app need to use the microphone?"

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#173

Post by mtthwmtthw »

abritinthebay wrote: post #97
paul9290 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used Siri faithfully from 2011 til about the start of this year where I bought a google home. Siri is flat out dumb and frustrating to use comparatively in terms of only understanding 85 percent of my queries vs. Google Home understanding 97 percent. It seems to me Apple has not taken all their hordes of cash and used it to up the AI game. Looks like they are solely focused on the present while competitors are…

I feel this fundamentally misunderstands how each of their AI's work. You're describing an interface problem. Google's AI is extremely good at recognizing speech in comparison to Siri but that's a wholly different thing to deep understanding. Siri is a more advanced AI in many ways due to it's understanding of intents. Google's is much more command based (under the hood). However Apple's speech recognition is letting…

I don't really understand your distinction between intents and commands. I've created apps that leverage a variety of bot frameworks, and most of them seem to fall under your "command" criticisms, but are labeled as intents. I think I understand the heart of your argument which is akin to saying google handles intents / actions as if it were filling inputs on a web form that ultimately goes to an api for response generation.

Having said that, I don't know how you can say that Siris backend is much better from an intent perspective without being able to leverage it properly because of the shortcomings related to the UI. From what I've seen, it doesn't even handle context well. Now it sounds like Siri will be used to do proactive things which is certainly new and different from Google Assistant. Yet, I suspect that logic is just being branded as Siri because it is a push to label Siri as your intelligent assistant as opposed to the weird robot thing you can use to check the weather

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#174

Post by starchild3001 »

Mikushi wrote: post #147
starchild3001 wrote: post #133

This article ticks me off. Apple announced some really good features on Monday (CoreML and a bunch of ML driven features). Having this kind of article after WWDC is unfair. As a consumer, I applaud Apple's approach. The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at all. True AI won't need as much data. You do need data for Machine Learning (i.e. pattern matching). That's what other tech firms a…

> The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at all. True AI won't need as much data. Deepmind / AlphaGo, Watson, and other like them are about the best thing we have nowadays when it comes to AI. Let's not even talk about True AI, which if you take any of the definitions can only become reality with so much data we're only brushing on it actually. Saying True AI won't need as much data is…

>> The so-called AI as pursued by Google & other tech companies isn't AI at all. True AI won't need as much data.

>Deepmind / AlphaGo, Watson, and other like them are about the best thing we have nowadays when it comes to AI. Let's not even talk about True AI, which if you take any of the definitions can only become reality with so much data we're only brushing on it actually. Saying True AI won't need as much data is failing to understand how much "data" it takes to make a human brain function, and while that is a whole other can of worm, one thing is certain it's a shit load accumulated over time.

I think you and I are saying the same thing. Namely, intelligence is an accumulation of years of experience, information & data (though human sensory system). But, once intelligence is established (say after 21 yrs of training in case of humans), learning is rather easy (i.e. one shot learning is sufficient to accomplish new, mundane tasks). You don't need to know someone's whole browsing history and emails to make personalized recommendations or to give intelligent answers to queries. The more intelligent the algorithm, presumably, the less personalized data it needs. So when it comes to true AI, you don't need to know as much about the user to help. This is one way to rationalize Apple's approach.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#175

Post by toren »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163
old-gregg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making two assumptions that aren't necessarily true. First, you're assuming that you have control over what kind of information is being collected and shared, and you're assuming it's always good for you. Here's a fairly innocent scenario: if Amazon Echo can learn everything about you, they may discover that you're crazy about Paris and you have good income. Then they can sell this info to every travel websit…

You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price - making the entire transaction beneficial. Economically it would be the market clearing price so would be beneficial to the market generally. Sounds like a great thing.

Wouldn't that price be the consumer surplus price (above the market clearing price)? And wouldn't that transaction have been a result from an inefficiency in the market (lack of perfect information)?

Genuinely wondering. My economics is a bit rusty so not sure if what I said is remotely valid

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#176

Post by old-gregg »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163
old-gregg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making two assumptions that aren't necessarily true. First, you're assuming that you have control over what kind of information is being collected and shared, and you're assuming it's always good for you. Here's a fairly innocent scenario: if Amazon Echo can learn everything about you, they may discover that you're crazy about Paris and you have good income. Then they can sell this info to every travel websit…

You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price - making the entire transaction beneficial. Economically it would be the market clearing price so would be beneficial to the market generally. Sounds like a great thing.

Actually, no. Such price isn't "efficient" because of how efficient markets are defined [1]: "...prices fully reflect all available information." But in this case one of the market participants (you) are not aware that others are getting a better deal.

In fact, this would lead to widespread pricing discrimination [2] based on what they learned (or bought) about you. Imagine seeing 20% markup on virtually everything available to you online, because every retailer can see your higher-than-average income before their page loads in your browser.

Personalized content (which everyone seems to love) is just an inch away from personalized pricing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#177

Post by stouset »

wvenable wrote: post #158
stouset wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have failed to understand the original point you are replying to. "Edam" might be authoritative, but it is not correct . The problem isn't simply that the answer is fundamentally subjective, the bigger issue is that there's not enough contextual information in the question to even arrive at an answer that one could consider subjectively correct. I replied elsewhere, but it's like answering the question…

The agent should then ask for more information; not point me to a web search. In most cases, the authoritative answer is what I'm looking for and the question less likely to be this subjective. The thing is Siri won't give me an answer either way.

Nobody's arguing that sending you off to search results isn't particularly useful. We're just pointing out that authoritatively answering a nuanced question without enough context isn't any better, it's just differently wrong (and in some cases, strictly worse).

Whether or not Siri or Google Assistant correctly and authoritatively answers more (or more relevant) questions is a completely different topic than what's being discussed here.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#178

Post by coldtea »

soperj wrote: post #58
coldtea wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apps like Lyft, Yelp and Uber already know where you are so you can't use those. Only when you use them. You can either not install them at all (problem solved). or only allow them to "know your location" when you explicitly launch them and only for the duration of you actively using them on screen (problem lessened).

You can do similar things on Android. You can also turn off your gps in 2 seconds as well.

With the crazy malware and oparque permissions nobody really knows what's fully going on on Android though.

You could turn off the gps but that's too coarse: you might want it for some apps.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#179

Post by jlebar »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #168
kharms wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose a company invented an aids vaccine, and then charged gay folks and injection drug users 20x, because of hey - those at higher risk are willing to pay more for protection would that be a great thing? Or let's go back to the Paris example. If everyone is paying the most they can afford, that leaves less money on the table for restaurants, cheese and wine when actually in Paris. It's 'great' if you only look at…

Depends on whether you believe healthcare should be treated the same as other products in the marketplace, or if you think they are a public good.

I am trying to understand what you mean by "public good". It's not the formal economics meaning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good), because healthcare clearly is excludable and rivalrous.

The notion of a "public good" also isn't about how things should be treated, but more about how things necessarily are.

It sort of seems you're making an argument unrelated to economics here, even though it's using words also used in the jargon of economists.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#180

Post by AndrewKemendo »

old-gregg wrote: post #176
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price - making the entire transaction beneficial. Economically it would be the market clearing price so would be beneficial to the market generally. Sounds like a great thing.

Actually, no. Such price isn't "efficient" because of how efficient markets are defined [1]: "...prices fully reflect all available information." But in this case one of the market participants (you) are not aware that others are getting a better deal. In fact, this would lead to widespread pricing discrimination [2] based on what they learned (or bought) about you. Imagine seeing 20% markup on virtually everything a…

Yes, note the all available information.

It's not perfectly efficient because there isn't perfect information, however it's more efficient than it otherwise would be.

More information in the system = greater efficiency.

Post reply on HN