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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

#251

Post by Eridrus »

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…

[citation needed]

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#252

Post by Eridrus »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #4
LA_Banker wrote: post #2

This is interesting because while Apple's (comparative) dedication to privacy is endearing, it's a long-term existential threat. Google knows all about me and its assistant is, usually, great. Amazon has troves of data on what I buy, and I get to yell at Alexa to order more TP as soon as I see we're on the last roll. Apple knows much less about me and, while I'm still an Apple fan and am tied to iPhones/Macs thanks t…

What can Google do in the cloud that Apple can't do on the device?

Speech recognition and natural language understanding.

If you watched the HomePod reveal you'd know that it sends your speech to the cloud for understanding. Which seems like a pretty clear admission that this can't all be done on-device easily.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#253

Post by pas »

jpttsn wrote: post #225
naravara wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But generally speaking, we take advantage of information asymmetry all the time: Sure we do. But this is generally regarded as a bad thing and indicative of a failure in our commercial system to engender fair outcomes. Informational asymmetries aren't things we should be actively involved in exacerbating.

I think that's just something we tell each other so the children can sleep at night. Of course we exacerbate information asymmetries. That's what we do. That's why the neanderthals are in our museums, instead of the other way around. Saying we shouldn't is like saying birds shouldn't fly, because it's not fair to the fish.

There's a difference between survival and luxuries (like a trip to Paris). Ethics and politics should be about finding the boundaries between those things, and try to provide the basics (shelter, education, privacy) and let people try to make not 100% fair businesses out of the other things.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#254

Post by pas »

eridius wrote: post #110
orthoganol wrote: post #27

Well yes, - they don't publish, they don't have a reputation (no teams like FAIR, DeepMind, MetaMind, MSFT AI, etc.), they don't attract the top AI talent, and anecdotally, they don't even even know how to hire for AI (had a brilliant colleague working in AI turned away because he didn't know some facets about the Python language when they hit him with Leetcode whiteboard questions; IMO they aren't in a position with…

> they don't publish Your info is outdated. At a conference last December, Apple's director of AI research announced that their AI researchers will be free to publish their findings. https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/06/apple-ai-researchers-can-publ...

What have they published so far is the question then.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#255

Post by kitsunesoba »

shostack wrote: post #232
Osmium wrote: post #18

On a technical point, I was impressed by their CoreML model format. The specification is open, optimized for maximum transferability, it can convert models from Keras (with TensorFlow), scikit-learn and others, and their Python model converter is also open source: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/coremltools Once you have your model as a CoreML file, it is stupidly simple to incorporate it into an app (the live demo with…

Apparently you can only view that video in Safari or the wwdc app. That's awful.

Apple's streams are playable by mpv, mplayer2, VLC, and any ffmpeg-based player. You don't need Safari, just a player that supports HLS.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#256

Post by naravara »

eridius wrote: post #190
naravara wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's weird. It takes several seconds after saying "Hey Siri" before it starts doing that. It works fine if you say "Hey Siri blah blah blah." But if you wait for the indication, then it actually messes up. It's listening before it's brought up, but it doesn't seem to listen to what you say immediately after it's brought up, it takes a second. It's very strange.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#257

Post by kraig911 »

pwython wrote: post #51
macinjosh wrote: post #3

I am an Apple fanboy but I am also a privacy fanboy. As AI, IoT, and consumer tracking continue to invade our daily lives I think Apple will continue to do quite well if they maintain there pro-privacy heading. Privacy is a feature, it's something people want, and unfortunately its becoming a luxury. That is something that attracts Apple's customers.

I'm one of the few in the "tech world" that isn't so much pro-privacy. Google can read my email, Apple can track my movements, my Amazon Echo can even listen in when it wants. The end result is a huge benefit to me. How is any AI supposed to know what I want, if I try to be an anonymous user? I prefer targeted ads. I prefer submitting my information to "robots" in the hopes that my user experience is tailored to what…

20 years from now you'll still be hearing the same songs and you'll still be drinking the same beer then. You'll be left to an echo-chamber of things that are similar but not different. If you're perfectly comfortable with that now amount of me trying to provide a counter-argument will do. I however think being left to my own devices without things being curated from past perspective is more enriching.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#258

Post by shostack »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #255
shostack wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently you can only view that video in Safari or the wwdc app. That's awful.

Apple's streams are playable by mpv, mplayer2, VLC, and any ffmpeg-based player. You don't need Safari, just a player that supports HLS.

I'm in Firefox on Android. That I can't play a streaming video is ridiculous.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#259

Post by shostack »

agrahul wrote: post #233
shostack wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently you can only view that video in Safari or the wwdc app. That's awful.

I believe it's a HLS video. If you're on Windows, Edge has support for HLS. Otherwise, you'll have to resort to using a media player.

I'm in Firefox on Android.

Re: Apple is struggling to become an AI powerhouse

#260

Post by jlebar »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #181
jlebar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The important thing about public goods is, you can't exclude them if you tried. By saying we should pretend that healthcare is a public good, you are saying we have a choice in the matter. This on face makes it a non public good.

This is a fine opinion to have, but you do yourself no favors by misusing jargon like this.

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