Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

jackcook.com

231–240 of 268 posts

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

#231

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

[deleted]

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

#232
post #224
post #216

iPhone’s auto complete and form fills drive me absolutely mad. It’s honestly just basic stuff that should have just worked a decade ago. I’m not even begging them for LLMs or some fancy ML, just learn basic words I type out all the time. For example my full email address? how about my last name? This seems like basic stuff

My iPhone has always suggested those things...

Sometimes on obvious fields like an email input on a web page (not all though). Not in this comment box for example

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because at work I’m typing the same bland things all the time in documents and communications. I appreciate stuff like the predictive word stuff in Google Docs. It’s helpful because business language is expected to be normalized and boring. On the other side of that token, the average language abilities of the average American office worker are pretty low so I’m assuming they view this as an enhanced AutoCorrect and…

> Because at work I’m typing the same bland things all the time in documents and communications. This problem can be solved without text prediction by building a personal knowledge base with hyperlinking[0] and backlinking[1] for discovery, and transclusion[2] for automating writing the same bland things. How I org in 2023 by Nick Anderson[3] goes over a great workflow for this. The advantage of this is that all of t…

What an obtuse way of saying use links and quote replies

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

#234

Everyone's asking tech details and "how", but I wonder about the "why". Do we want LLMs to always write for us, or whisper in our ear what to say? By design LLMs tend toward the most commonplace, mainstream ideas and ways of saying things. They're not much for originality or human idiosyncracy. Are we engineering a bland world full of pablum?

LLMs will by necessity but unintentionally enforce phonotactics but more at the sentence / thought level.

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

#235
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,…

Yes but it also looks no better than the existing autocomplete they have, in which case why use a battery-draining midLM?

"Today is a good day for you to be able to do it more than i just a few weeks to get a new."

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

#236
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,…

It's hallucination if you hate it, and creativity if you like it.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because at work I’m typing the same bland things all the time in documents and communications. This problem can be solved without text prediction by building a personal knowledge base with hyperlinking[0] and backlinking[1] for discovery, and transclusion[2] for automating writing the same bland things. How I org in 2023 by Nick Anderson[3] goes over a great workflow for this. The advantage of this is that all of t…

What an obtuse way of saying use links and quote replies

Thanks!

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed!

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Snapchat use it?

https://qz.com/1005879/snapchat-quietly-revealed-how-it-can-...

The linked paper makes no reference to CoreML or Apple in general. It seems to be CPU-accelerated on all platforms, iPhone included.

Do you have another source that goes into Apple's implementation?

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

#240
post #227
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side of that token, the average language abilities of the average American office worker are pretty low so I’m assuming they view this as an enhanced AutoCorrect and they appreciate it because it makes them look less dumb. Awfully presumptuous, don’t you think?

I would also assume this to be largely true, mainly because of how language in media has gone from being formal and informative to casual and less expressive.

I agree there has been a style shift, I don't think writing has gotten any less informative. I personally don't like formal writing, but either way it has no bearing on whether or not ideas can be gotten across effectively. Substance over style!
Post reply on HN