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Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#181

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jlebar wrote: post #179
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nope, I'm using exactly as intended.

If one is to believe that healthcare products should be subject to market forces, then their prices should be variable in the same way other products are. In which case the answer to the question is, yes someone with a "niche" health problem would pay a substantially high price.

If however one believes that healthcare should not be subject to market forces, that is, it should be available to all equally (non-excludable) and cannot incur asymmetric costs between users (non-rival) then the answer is no, it would not be good.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#182

Post by freyir »

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.

> You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price

This says nothing of the possibility that one party has a lot of information, and the other party has relatively little information, and the guy with very little information is getting screwed.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#183

Post by strin »

> ... the company hired Russ Salakhutdinov, a Carnegie Mellon professor whose expertise is in an area of artificial intelligence known as “deep” or “unsupervised” learning, a complex branch of machine learning in which computers are trained to replicate the way the brain’s neurons fire when they recognize objects or speech.

The author of the article clearly made a mistake saying "deep learning" is the same as "unsupervised learning".

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#184

Post by AndrewKemendo »

freyir wrote: post #182
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.

> You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price This says nothing of the possibility that one party has a lot of information, and the other party has relatively little information, and the guy with very little information is getting screwed.

The implicit assumption is that the service is charging your air fare or whatever based on your ability to pay. So in that sense, in aggregate, it drives equilibrium between supply and demand - and thus is comprised of market clearing prices, as I said.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#185

Post by [deleted] »

strin wrote: post #183

> ... the company hired Russ Salakhutdinov, a Carnegie Mellon professor whose expertise is in an area of artificial intelligence known as “deep” or “unsupervised” learning, a complex branch of machine learning in which computers are trained to replicate the way the brain’s neurons fire when they recognize objects or speech. The author of the article clearly made a mistake saying "deep learning" is the same as "unsupe…

[deleted]

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#186

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #184
freyir wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say "overpay" but if the user pays for it then that would have been an efficient price This says nothing of the possibility that one party has a lot of information, and the other party has relatively little information, and the guy with very little information is getting screwed.

The implicit assumption is that the service is charging your air fare or whatever based on your ability to pay. So in that sense, in aggregate, it drives equilibrium between supply and demand - and thus is comprised of market clearing prices, as I said.

[deleted]

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#187

Post by wstrange »

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…

This runs contrary to the experience of most people.

See http://www.businessinsider.com/siri-vs-google-assistant-cort...

Siri is dead last. Surprisingly, Cortana did quite well (I didn't realize Microsoft was catching up in this space).

Those responses require a lot more than just voice recognition - they require an understanding of context and "intent".

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#188

Post by freyir »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #180
old-gregg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> More information in the system = greater efficiency.

More information does not always increase market efficiency. In fact, it can have just the opposite effect when there is information asymmetry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

http://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Market_failures/Information...

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#189

Post by snowwrestler »

rosstex wrote: post #26

Me: Hey Siri, what cheese goes well with fruit? Siri: Here's what I found on the web for "What cheese goes well with fruit..." Me: Hey Google, what cheese goes well with fruit? Google: "Edam"

"Is Obama planning a coup?"

Siri: Here's what I found on the web for "is obama planning a coo"

Google: According to details exposed in Western Center for Journalism’s exclusive video, not only could Obama be in bed with communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a communist coup d’etat at the end of his term in 2016!

(Definitive answering style is not always better...)

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/03...

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-home-claims-obama-plan...

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#190

Post by eridius »

naravara wrote: post #143
eridius wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My big problem with Siri is that I have to time when I start talking. What do you mean? You can just say "Hey Siri, blah blah blah" and Siri will pick up the "blah blah blah" just fine. If you're adding an artificial delay after "Hey Siri", waiting for her to respond before continuing, then you're just making it harder. Just speak conversationally.

>If you're adding an artificial delay after "Hey Siri", waiting for her to respond before continuing, then you're just making it harder. Just speak conversationally. I actually find this frustrating and I'm surprised Apple went this way given their usual commitment to humanistic interaction design. When I'm addressing someone in real life, I call out their names and wait for acknowledgement that they're listening bef…

> The fact that Siri doesn't acknowledge it's listening or even give you a visual indicator that it's attention has been caught

Yes it does. It makes a very distinct sound when it starts listening, and the screen itself transitions to the Siri screen and shows the animating waveform.

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