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iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

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Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#2
Can anyone upvoting this please explain what objective information they got out of this post? All I read was marketing speak in bold and caps, with no new information on why people might actually use this.

I'm obviously not doubting the potential, since I haven't seen the app yet, but this article is terribly low on substance.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#3
I'll admit straight-up that I haven't looked at any of the Siri presentations, so I don't know what is and isn't possible with it, but the simple fact of the matter is that AI like it's being pitched ("reasoning", ever-learning, fast and flexible to respond to natural language input) takes an obscene amount of RAM, computing power, and persistent storage to be any good. There's not a chance that this is going to be an inherent feature of the iPhone 5 - it might be a "cloud" feature that the iPhone uses, but if it's as good as the rumormongers are making it out to be, we're talking datacenters worth of hardware, not one phone's worth.

It'll be interesting to see what's actually announced, but I'm having a really hard time swallowing the idea that Apple's putting a Star Trek AI on a phone.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#4
Siri has been out on the iPhone for at least a year and while impressive, I don't believe qualifies as game-changing (it couldn't, for example, tell me what the average velocity of an unladen swallow was). I'm wondering if there've been any breakthrough(s) after they were acquired?

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#5
What I find hard to understand is that Google who has been working on the voice recognition for ages and has actual products out there and enormous data, still struggles with quality in this area. How can everyone put so much trust on Siri that it would change the paradigm when it's hardly tested in the market.

In my opinion it all stems from the trust on Apple. Apple has the reputation that they don't ship half-products and with the rumours going strong that Siri would be part of iPhone 5, everybody is simply jumping on the bandwagon and _assuming_ that Apple has solved the voice recognition problem.

As much as awesome Apple is, I still find it hard to believe that they have figured out voice-recognition.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#7
post #2

Can anyone upvoting this please explain what objective information they got out of this post? All I read was marketing speak in bold and caps, with no new information on why people might actually use this. I'm obviously not doubting the potential, since I haven't seen the app yet, but this article is terribly low on substance.

I wrote the post, so I should probably answer you. :)

Honestly, after watching the 45 minute presentation, there were a ton of interesting tid bits I transcribed word for word (that's what you see in all the quotes and the video is embedded if you prefer that).

For skimming purposes, I tried to bold the most important bits in the quotes, so it was straight from Siri's Co-Founder, CTO and VP of Design, Tom Gruber's mouth.

Honestly, skimming through the article quickly myself (it took me 3 hours total to write including watching the 45 minute keynote and transcribing the important bits) I can't see how you think it is low on substance, because there is a ton of it in there.

I'm honestly fascinated to see if Apple open's up the Assistant API to 3rd party developers as the Siri team clearly planned to pre-acquisition. In my mind it makes a lot of sense given the new "verb" world Facebook introduced, and I think developers would have a ball with it.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#9
A lot of pie in the sky speculation based off a three year old talk there. Especially since I am sure an Apple acquisition wasn't on the road map at the time. But my answers to his questions would be:

* Will Assistant be world-changing?*

No. But it will probably be a damn good feature.

Will it address foreign languages/cultures

Probably, since Nuance can do a fairly impressive number of languages and all signs is Apple is partnering with them.

relationship questions

No. God no.

open task API

Maybe, but I would be a little surprised.

payments

Now we are just throwing buzz words together. Want to know why the "speech to text world" is "untapped"? Cause it is made up. Plus it would essentially be either a search ad or affiliate marketing situation, neither of which seem very Apple-like.

Facebook social knowledge

Again, doubtful. I mean, they've gone out of their way to integrate Twitter in iOS 5, which reeks of Facebook and Apple not coming to terms. But maybe they banged out a last minute deal.

I am sure Assistant be like most Apple features. Fairly impressive, a bit more detail oriented than the competition, but ultimately not that much better. If anything, I think it will be the new Facetime. Good demo, good for ads, some people will use it a bunch, but mostly a showy feature that will get used once and then ignored by the vast majority of users.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#10
post #2

Can anyone upvoting this please explain what objective information they got out of this post? All I read was marketing speak in bold and caps, with no new information on why people might actually use this. I'm obviously not doubting the potential, since I haven't seen the app yet, but this article is terribly low on substance.

I wrote the post, so I should probably answer you. :) Honestly, after watching the 45 minute presentation, there were a ton of interesting tid bits I transcribed word for word (that's what you see in all the quotes and the video is embedded if you prefer that). For skimming purposes, I tried to bold the most important bits in the quotes, so it was straight from Siri's Co-Founder, CTO and VP of Design, Tom Gruber's mo…

I don't mean to belittle anyone's achievements, but this is what I got from the bold parts of your article:

The technology came out of a government funded project on which hundreds of people worked.

It's iterations ahead of the market and so it's real AI with real use.

It will be useful to most people most of the time.

It can't understand languages other than English.

It can't answer relationship questions.

It may have an open API, in the future.

It may allow you to pay for things, in the future.

It may use social data, in the future.

I guess I'll just wait for the actual release to see why and how this is world-changing. If the product is truly world-changing, I don't think anyone can do justice to it with a blog post. Imagine if people tried to explain Google the search engine like this.

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