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iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

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Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#11

Post by IanMikutel »

cheald wrote: post #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 a…

Norman Winarsky, the man who put together the original Siri team, was asked what kind of power the Siri AI takes and if it could have delayed the iPhone today on 9to5mac.com, saying:

Norm: I’m not familiar with Apple’s roadmap and any delays but I can say that AI takes a lot of computing power. The Siri software needs to cache data, needs to access a big dataset at wide bandwidth and needs a big processor to crunch all of the numbers. When we originally released Siri for the iPhone 3GS, we had to perform all kinds of optimizations and shortcuts to get it to work efficiently. All I can say is that it will likely run much better on a faster phone. (Source: http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/03/co-founder-of-siri-assistant-i...)

There is a big jump in performance from 3GS to even iPhone 4, let alone iPhone 5 with possible A5 processor (dual core), 1GB RAM, iOS optimization, cloud performance, and network performance--and that's not even considering if the Sprint iPhone 5 exclusive is true which would mean the device runs on a 4G network that would make this type of interaction even more interesting if interacting with the cloud in some way.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#12

Post by IanMikutel »

Kylekramer wrote: post #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 App…

Thanks for the analysis on my analysis. :)

I can definitely see why you'd think this could go the way of Facetime, but its completely different. Why? Because while Facetime seemed to solve a problem we all wanted solved, in reality its simply not practical to video call someone with a mobile phone a lot of the time. If I'm on the go, walking a city or driving in the suburbs, Facetime is a terrible idea.

Assistant is exactly the opposite. It's almost essential in those situations and extremely practical. I can pretty much see Oprah endorsing this feature alone in her anti-texting-while-driving campaign now.

And YOU get an iPhone Assistant, and YOU get an iPhone Assistant...

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#13

Post by BrainScraps »

IanMikutel wrote: post #11
cheald wrote: post #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 a…

Norman Winarsky, the man who put together the original Siri team, was asked what kind of power the Siri AI takes and if it could have delayed the iPhone today on 9to5mac.com, saying: Norm: I’m not familiar with Apple’s roadmap and any delays but I can say that AI takes a lot of computing power. The Siri software needs to cache data, needs to access a big dataset at wide bandwidth and needs a big processor to crunch a…

I'm with you -

This could be why it would be available only on the newest, 4G-enabled iPhone. If this was all handled in the cloud and delivered at 4G speeds, it could be compelling.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#14

Post by IanMikutel »

revorad wrote: post #10
IanMikutel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

My goal with this post was simply to raise interesting questions based on what the Siri team saw as the future of the product back in 2008, so it could frame all of our discussion and analysis when you watch the keynote with Apple tomorrow.

I think it will be fascinating to see what, if any, of these questions Apple has decided was worth tackling since they acquired the product, and which in the eyes of Jobs, were important and useful enough for the masses.

It's going to be a fun keynote tomorrow.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#15

Post by Geee »

newhouseb wrote: post #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?

Currently, Siri is just a question-answer machine. While it's very good at this, a personal assistant needs to be more than that. I think the next stage in the evolution is tapping on your personal information, having a memory, and being able to have a contextual dialog. All this should be implemented fluidly.

Example:

Me: "Siri, what's up today?"

Siri: "You should have lunch with Sarah at 5 p.m"

Me: "Make a reservation at that Chinese restaurant which we were in last time"

Siri: "Ok."

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#16

Post by IanMikutel »

newhouseb wrote: post #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?

The talk is that they have deeply integrated Wolfram Alpha to automatically pull and handle queries like the one you mentioned.

Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/09/30/mockups_demons...

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#17

Post by revorad »

IanMikutel wrote: post #14
revorad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

My goal with this post was simply to raise interesting questions based on what the Siri team saw as the future of the product back in 2008, so it could frame all of our discussion and analysis when you watch the keynote with Apple tomorrow. I think it will be fascinating to see what, if any, of these questions Apple has decided was worth tackling since they acquired the product, and which in the eyes of Jobs, were im…

It will certainly be fascinating. I'm just amused that you're so fascinated before the questions have been answered :-)

The problem with voice recognition apps is that Google has taught us to get, literally, instant results. Waiting even a second seems way too slow now. That's a very high bar to live up to.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#18

Post by IanMikutel »

BrainScraps wrote: post #13
IanMikutel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norman Winarsky, the man who put together the original Siri team, was asked what kind of power the Siri AI takes and if it could have delayed the iPhone today on 9to5mac.com, saying: Norm: I’m not familiar with Apple’s roadmap and any delays but I can say that AI takes a lot of computing power. The Siri software needs to cache data, needs to access a big dataset at wide bandwidth and needs a big processor to crunch a…

I'm with you - This could be why it would be available only on the newest, 4G-enabled iPhone. If this was all handled in the cloud and delivered at 4G speeds, it could be compelling.

And you could totally see Apple pitching this to AT&T and Verizon and they're going "Crap, people already hate our data caps, and we already hate all the data iPhones use..." and then Sprint's CEO Dan Hesse comes running over to Jobs "Steve! We'd LOVE to handle that! We can do it! I swear, trust me. We have 4G! It's blazing fast...give us a shot...please?" Hands over $20.5 billion dollars...

Source: http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/03/sprint-guarantees-to-buy-over-...

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#19

Post by Robin_Message »

The demo isn't a virtual assistant. Its a glorified search engine with API integration and voice recognition.

My vision of a virtual assistant is that you would be able to say: "Book dinner with Ross and David next week", and the only other interactions you have with the agent are "You're going to that Indian you and Ross like on Tuesday at 7" or "Can't be done, how about Monday the week after?", and possibly a message when you use your calendar "Trying to book David and Ross for dinner this evening" on some days the assistant has picked out. Meanwhile, Ross and David get e-mails that appear to be from you in address, tone and content, suggesting dates and places. If they have assistants too, maybe they don't see them; if they don't, then they can reply and the assistant understands them.

That's the sort of thing a PA actually does; they don't Google the flights for you, they know your diary, your preferences and your needs and they book the right damn flight. Your phone should be saying "Walk out of your office at 2pm and get into the cab that'll be waiting. At the airport, walk to check-in desk 301 and hand me over. I'll take it from there."

The predictions, especially with regard to leveraging data in Facebook sound closer, so I'm waiting eagerly.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#20

Post by IanMikutel »

Robin_Message wrote: post #19

The demo isn't a virtual assistant. Its a glorified search engine with API integration and voice recognition. My vision of a virtual assistant is that you would be able to say: "Book dinner with Ross and David next week", and the only other interactions you have with the agent are "You're going to that Indian you and Ross like on Tuesday at 7" or "Can't be done, how about Monday the week after?", and possibly a messa…

Keep in mind everything you saw in the demo video was from 2008! That's 3 years ago, decades in tech.

Given the time and resources Apple has undoubtedly provided the team since then, I think we should all be expecting much greater than that demo.

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