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iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

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Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#31

Post by spiralganglion »

Geee wrote: post #21
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…

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal.

I'd rather be playing music.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#33

Post by newhouseb »

IanMikutel wrote: post #16
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...

Siri actually already does this (for example ask it "How old is steve jobs?" or to do any math for you)

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#34

Post by IanMikutel »

spiralganglion wrote: post #31
Geee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

Amen brother. Honestly, as I said in the post, I truly believe this could be a new natural user interface. Just as touch interfaces have been all the rage in the tech world since made mainstream in the first iPhone in 2007, Assistant will bring AI to the mainstream in a way that will finally be useful and relevant to most people at most times.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#35

Post by IanMikutel »

Robin_Message wrote: post #28
IanMikutel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, the demo is old, but I think the direction of "it searches for this, this and this" is weak. It'll be too easy for them to have focused on integrating more services. Actually handling something like dinner organising or flight booking has its own foibles and caveats, and while I believe it can be done, I think the best way to start doing it will be focus. I'd pay for a tool that helped me organise social events…

Interesting concept, I never even considered Apple offering additional Assistant features as a premium service. Imagine if you paid an additional $4.99 a month through iTunes for a Assistant Pro app that had greater power. Would you pay for that?

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#36

Post by bambax »

spiralganglion wrote: post #31
Geee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead?

Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#37

Post by revorad »

IanMikutel wrote: post #29
revorad wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On desktops, maybe. But on mobile devices, Google is just as slow as your connection. Imagine if Apple built in some Amazon Silk-like ties between Assistant and iCloud? Or if they do some local caching or if Sprint really does have this exclusively and its on 4G?

If I have a slow connection, it'll be equally slow regardless of the app. So the speed comparison is on top of that.

Amazon Silk-like technology may make sense for ecommerce content (yet to be seen), but it doesn't make sense for complex search queries. The longest time is probably spent in understanding the query and ranking results, not in downloading the content of the results. For the same reason, local caching makes no sense, except for some personal data, which Google also has access to (openly or secretly).

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#38

Post by spiralganglion »

bambax wrote: post #36
spiralganglion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead? Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

My longest performance was 9 hours, I don't drink, all of my 24 albums are licensed under Creative Commons and have never been sold for money.

I make electroacoustic music, and would be thrilled to have the Assistant in my band. I'll let it do the arrangements for my more elaborate compositions.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#39

Post by cheald »

IanMikutel wrote: post #12
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…

The voice recognition on my Android phone is marvelously useful while driving; I hold my search button, say "navigate to Schlotzsky's", and it pops up a map, finds the nearest Schlotzsky's, plots directions to it, and I'm off. No hunt-and-pecking on a keyboard without tactile feedback, no navigating through twelve menus or trying to remember how to spell "Schlotzsky's". It's an awesome feature, and it's something that the iPhone needs to at least match.

What's Apple going to do beyond that, though? They can't build a keynote on "Hey, now we have this feature that our competitor has". It has to be something bigger and better. Android exposes speech input backed by Google's unfathomable processing power and recognition dataset to every application that wants to use it; what can Apple put on a phone that will be significant enough to not be a "me too"?

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#40

Post by hupa »

IanMikutel wrote: post #27
hupa wrote: post #6

I just can't see how this would be anything other than very annoying to use. It would have to work flawlessly to not be.

I feel like you could have made the same statement about the CRAZY idea of a touchscreen smart phone back in 2007...and then Steve Jobs showed off the iPhone and everyone went...well I guess that does work flawlessly. Not trying to sound like a fanboy, but simply saying I think Apple's recent track record has proven they're pretty good at releasing products that work flawlessly. Heck, this could have been the simple…

Straw Man argument, fanboy.

I thought that Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010.

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