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Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

jackcook.com

151–160 of 268 posts

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#151
post #133
post #121

I've been arguing this is the way AI should be deployed. Rather than trying to sell ai as an end to end solution, just let it do the small part that it can reliably do. It's cost effective for the host, and valuable for the user. win win engineering!

I mean, I get why all these startups are trying to sell AI as a panacea. It’s an exciting technology and someone has to figure out its limits. That said, as a user, it is nice to see LLMs used in a small, discrete, undeniably useful way like this. No flashy promises, nothing new for me to learn- it’s just autocorrect, but better.

It's not an LLM. The first L stands for large and this isn't.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#152
post #104

The example at the end made me wonder if Apple's model is actually better than GPT2 for text prediction. It generated garbage, but all that garbage made somewhat sense in the context of only the word "Today". Whereas GPT2 hallucinated random stuff about the US government. A text prediction model should predict what the user wanted to type, so if you evaluate the models based on that, GPT2 actually performed horribly,…

GPT-2 saw "today," and thought "this must be news copy" and generated more news copy. Given a few more words, it could have narrowed down the context. The Apple suggestions aren't even grammatically correct, seemingly no different from the shallow statistical completion we've already had for years, so it's weird that they branded it in lofty AI terms

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#153
post #63
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest multilingual gripe on iOS is that highlighting text in, say, Czech and pressing Translate on the popup just tells you to fuck off. Like, sure, don't support the language, but at least give me a Google Translate link then.

Did you enable the Czech-English dictionary under Settings -> General -> Dictionary? You can also add Czech as a language under Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Add Language. This will let you switch your keyboard to Czech when typing and enable the language on websites and stuff. You can also switch the whole phone to Czech if you like, just by moving Czech to the top of the list of preferred languages.

I do have the keyboard enabled, but the long press translation feature is a separate thing.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#154
post #152
post #104

The example at the end made me wonder if Apple's model is actually better than GPT2 for text prediction. It generated garbage, but all that garbage made somewhat sense in the context of only the word "Today". Whereas GPT2 hallucinated random stuff about the US government. A text prediction model should predict what the user wanted to type, so if you evaluate the models based on that, GPT2 actually performed horribly,…

GPT-2 saw "today," and thought "this must be news copy" and generated more news copy. Given a few more words, it could have narrowed down the context. The Apple suggestions aren't even grammatically correct, seemingly no different from the shallow statistical completion we've already had for years, so it's weird that they branded it in lofty AI terms

Autocorrect doesn't suggest whole sentences so it is irrelevant if the remaining sentence is gibberish or not.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off autocorrect: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207525

Why? So you can use text speak? Bit silly.

In general so that what you write is not mutilated by software that doesn't know the words you use. If there are typos, it's not difficult for the receiver to "autocorrect" while reading, but when autocorrect miscorrects, it's not easy for the writer to notice how the message changed nor for the reader to guess what was there before the "fixes".

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#156
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Settings there is Reset Keyboard Dictionary to revert to the default dictionary.

Thank you!!

Googling for something like “iphone wrong autocorrect” helps in such cases. ;)

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#157
post #126

In typical Apple fashion, when everyone's going bigger and stronger, they're going in a different direction... With optimising to the smallest model that can run all day without draining your battery. I love that they're almost never first to market but they find a way to distil value than others don't. It's the almond milk of technology.

In typical Apple fanboy fashion they are oblivious to what Google has been doing for over two years now.

Apple put neural in their silicon a full four years before Google did:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/09/the-future-is-here-ip...

https://blog.research.google/2021/11/improved-on-device-ml-o...

Apple has just been more methodical to the rest of the ecosystem - essentially waiting to understand use-cases before fully embracing it across their ecosystem from Apple Silicon in Mac with neural and `device=mps`, CoreML, and now more-or-less full force with their ML studio now in Xcode.

Many apps didn't wait for this and Snapchat, as one example, has been successfully taking advantage of Apple Neural since the early early days.

There are many reasons Apple has been the world's most valuable company for over a decade. One certainly is that they have a prescient ability to predict where the market is going, even if they have to use their ever-building position to drag things that way. As demonstrated by the facts and references I provided above, not to mention the iPhone essentially re-defining what a smartphone is way back when Blackberry was the current market leader.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#158
post #154
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-2 saw "today," and thought "this must be news copy" and generated more news copy. Given a few more words, it could have narrowed down the context. The Apple suggestions aren't even grammatically correct, seemingly no different from the shallow statistical completion we've already had for years, so it's weird that they branded it in lofty AI terms

Autocorrect doesn't suggest whole sentences so it is irrelevant if the remaining sentence is gibberish or not.

Maybe it should though, given we have the power to do so (at least, with just a lil more power)

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#159
post #13

Is it possible for it to improve based on experience/iMessage history or is it locked in? I’d love to opt-in to training it on my previous convos…

It already does and I hate it. If a person you’re speaking with misspells a word, it’ll happy suggest^w forcibly autocorrect a similar word to that misspelling if it was recent enough.

I think tpowell was asking about the all-new autocorrect system. Do you have information on how that works, or were you just talking about the old system that is being deleted on Monday?

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. And I’d like to add that the editing experience is also dire and getting worse. Just trying to put the cursor where I want it to fix an error earlier in the sentence in ios17 is a massive pain in the ass. You tap somewhere and it continually selects entire words - I just want to put the cursor there dammit!

Yeah I noticed this starting a year or two ago, it drives me crazy Also, getting the copy/paste menu to show takes a very long time

Yeah there’s just so much delay. Editing/writing text is just plain tedious.
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