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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#21

Post by varunnrao »

bitwize wrote: post #8
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #3

I wonder if this would help either .vision pro hasn't done better in any way

Vision Pro is an amazing product looking for a purpose and a market. I've opined that it's the 128K Mac of the 2020s -- an expensive toy of very little practical use on its own, that portends a revolution in computing, later versions of which really do change everything. I don't know if that's true anymore. It isn't the 1980s, and initiatives that don't make money over their first year or so tend to get axed. There's…

I would say it's more like the internal Xerox machines that were built in the mid-1970s at PARC. Most people have no idea how to work with those machines. By the time the 128K Mac came out, people understood what a GUI interface was and knew how to use them - it's just that the Mac in particular was limited by it's hardware.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#22

Post by bluedevil2k »

The baffling part of Apple’s AI strategy - they continue to insist on using the “Siri” brand. That brand is damaged beyond repair and has been for many years, maybe since it was first launched 10+ years ago. The recent mistakes of over promising and under delivering have further eroded the brand to near zero. For a company that comes up with ridiculous branding of small features (Retina Display, Force Touch, Dynamic Island) the choice to keep “Siri” and its negative connotations is un-Apple like.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#23

Post by LoganDark »

mvdtnz wrote: post #17
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

> They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. Are you serious? Did you miss the headlines around their news and text message summary products?

> Are you serious? Did you miss the headlines around their news and text message summary products?

Actually, riddle me this: Do you really think they would just ignore how that went?

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#24

Post by RandallBrown »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #22

The baffling part of Apple’s AI strategy - they continue to insist on using the “Siri” brand. That brand is damaged beyond repair and has been for many years, maybe since it was first launched 10+ years ago. The recent mistakes of over promising and under delivering have further eroded the brand to near zero. For a company that comes up with ridiculous branding of small features (Retina Display, Force Touch, Dynamic…

They've started moving away from Siri with the latest iOS and branded most of it "Apple Intelligence".

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#25

Post by LoganDark »

swatcoder wrote: post #20
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

No commercialized LLM product released so far would meet Steve Jobs' standard for a high-profile Apple product, and while that standard is clearly much more lax now, there still is one and still higher than what people accept from OpenAI et al. I wouldn't call that perfectionism, just a struggling brand standard that can't afford to lose even more face. I think many inside and outside Apple hoped that the ways that t…

> I wouldn't call that perfectionism, just a struggling brand standard that can't afford to lose even more face.

It's very well-known that Apple is perfectionistic. I'm not meaning to say that perfectionism is a negative quality or a bad thing, just that it takes a while.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#26

Post by petesergeant »

LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

> Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs?

Depends what you mean. Building an LLM seems to be easy enough that several companies have built one, and even Twitter was able to magic one out of the ether from pretty much a standing start given the resources.

Getting an LLM to do the right thing for you 99.999% of the time? Has anyone managed that yet? Frontier models still hallucinate the most basic shit, and consistency is very, very difficult.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#27

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

worstdevna wrote: post #9
moandcompany wrote: post #6

A few quick cliffs notes plus added info: John "JG" Giannandrea was hired over to Apple around 2018 to head Apple's new AI/ML division, which would include the Siri organization that predates Giannandrea's tenure at Apple. Giannandrea was previously the executive in charge of Google's Research division. Mike Rockwell was hired into Apple from Dolby Labs around 2015 to head a group called "TDG" that would be the R&D a…

It feels like Apple had a dream of a granting easy AI integrations for many different apps and workflows, only to discover that very few people wanted any of those integrations from apple intelligence. At least, not the current iteration of apple intelligence.

I suspect the most significant thing holding Apple back in the realm of AI is the fact that Apple prides itself as a company that delivers revolutionary products with ‘wow factor’ that is leagues above the competition. Apple just doesn’t have anything like that with AI.

Furthermore, the challenge with AI is that even though it can deliver some shockingly impressive results, it also generates some bafflingly stupid responses, as well as answers that are seemingly correct but are never less wrong in ways that are hard to determine. Those hallucinations really shatter the illusion of quality and reliability, which ultimately undermines confidence in the functionality as a whole.

Given that, Apple is stuck trying to catch up to the rest of the products in the AI space while also realizing that everyday AI is nowhere near as polished as Apple would expect it to be. So the more Apple pushes AI, the more customers are likely to pick up on the errors and inadequacies of the product.

Even though other AI assistants suffer from the same fundamental problems, the ones from Apple Intelligence are going to seem more embarrassing because of Apple’s brand image.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#28

Post by knowriju »

travisgriggs wrote: post #4

I wonder if there’s any “doers” in that top 100? Or is it all just “discussers” and “deciders”. I’ve owned Apple products forever. But as long as Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy remains on full display, these shuffling of the titanic deck chairs will continue. I wish it could be otherwise. I wish a company could introspect on itself and say “hey, our doer/decider balance is out of whack, let’s correct” but that just ne…

What do you mean by 'doing' rather than 'deciding' especially at the c-suite level ? I thought that's what c-suites are paid to do - 'strategy' and 'capital allocation'. Any example company you have in mind that has leadership actively 'doing' ?

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#29

Post by csharpminor »

eru wrote: post #18
bitwize wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine Jobs being in there like "Tell me what you've done." "Well, um, sir, we've realigned our strategy around generative AI and..." "No no no, tell me what you've DONE. In the past six months. It shouldn't be hard."

A good enough bullshitter will easily answer that question.

Jobs was kind of infamous for making people put their app / product in front of him while he sat in silence and used it. Harder to fake.

But lots of execs don't know enough about their own products to interrogate like that. So they settle for BS presentations.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#30

Post by ForTheKidz »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #27
worstdevna wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like Apple had a dream of a granting easy AI integrations for many different apps and workflows, only to discover that very few people wanted any of those integrations from apple intelligence. At least, not the current iteration of apple intelligence.

I suspect the most significant thing holding Apple back in the realm of AI is the fact that Apple prides itself as a company that delivers revolutionary products with ‘wow factor’ that is leagues above the competition. Apple just doesn’t have anything like that with AI. Furthermore, the challenge with AI is that even though it can deliver some shockingly impressive results, it also generates some bafflingly stupid re…

> Given that, Apple is stuck trying to catch up to the rest of the products in the AI space

Oh, of course. Like...? Nothing else has access to relevant data. That's like 95% of the pitch of siri.

Voice assistants are just fundamentally embarrassing to use, imo. The only exception of which I can think is while driving.

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