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Siri AI

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471–480 of 746 posts

Re: Siri AI

#471
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes aside, I have been using siri to control my smart home and set my alarm for nearly ten years now. I haven't really had problems with basic stuff like this.

>Siri turn off the main light in children's bedroom 100% of the time turns of all the lights in children's bedroom. Alexa has no problem with this. Disappointing to say the least. Completely useless, I was going to get an Android this year on upgrade cycle. Will check this out first.

Amazon devices get a lot of flak for being too invasive, but at least they work.

Re: Siri AI

#472
post #438

It's interesting how anemic the use cases seem to be - we see the same things recycled over and over: "reword my email", "remove object from picture", "add a reminder", "summarise my text message which was already only 20 words long" etc etc. As if these are the major problems in people's lives. I really feel like there's a fascinating valley of death between simple things that actually work and things of real value…

An alien landing on earth consuming Apple marketing content would be under the impression that humans did nothing but organise hikes to Big Sur with their friends.

Well.. it’s not the furthest thing from the truth in the bay

Re: Siri AI

#473

I switched from android to iOS 7 years ago and I’ve actually been debating going back just because of how bad iOS is at AI. And every other facet of my life, I am finding ways for it to save my time on an almost daily basis. And yet on iOS, just finding something from a text Message is still a nightmare. Siri seems to rarely get better and sometimes actually get worse.

Same problems on Android. Google Assistant was better in 2016 than it is in 2026, and the Gemini assistant is a joke. They can’t even integrate with their own music app (YouTube Music) properly. I switched to iOS this year and I’ve been learning that the grass is not much greener. I do miss uBlock Origin. Maybe my next stop is GrapheneOS or a similar degoogled ROM…

There is a uBlock Origin Lite extension for Safari available in the App Store. Technically not as powerful (hence the “lite” in the name) but it’s perfectly blocking all ads for my usage.

Re: Siri AI

#475
post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the aspirational use cases you're talking about basically are just "digital secretary." There's a massive problem with that even if the models end up being capable in the future. The value of a secretary is that you know them, they know you, and you trust them to do things right. There are stakes if they don't. No company can provide that as a service at scale for everyone without it being a disaster. Not becaus…

it's an interesting question if any of the AI companies would be willing to step up and absorb the risk ie: to give the AI agent a "stake". eg: if my booking is wrong, they will cover the cost and compensate me. It would sort of just come down to buying premium travel insurance for everyone that uses it. And insurance for anything else they do. It has to be one of two things - they either believe the risks are worth…

> eg: if my booking is wrong, they will cover the cost and compensate me

That would be nice, but it's the wrong angle. The reason people like real secretaries is not because somebody is compensated when things go wrong. It's because things don't go wrong. I don't use this thing if I need to fear things go wrong, even if I'd be compensated.

Maybe it would provide the right incentives for the companies though.

Re: Siri AI

#476
post #438

It's interesting how anemic the use cases seem to be - we see the same things recycled over and over: "reword my email", "remove object from picture", "add a reminder", "summarise my text message which was already only 20 words long" etc etc. As if these are the major problems in people's lives. I really feel like there's a fascinating valley of death between simple things that actually work and things of real value…

For fun I planned a holiday entirely with LLM's lately, and followed through.

It used good models and did a lot of searching, including searches in other languages. It got nothing right, riddled with fake places and times. It also found some weird and unique places I never would have considered.

I had a blast, brought me back to traveling pre-internet, requiring a level of spontaneity I had forgotten we used to depend on. 100% recommend it.

Re: Siri AI

#477
No, I don't want Apple to read all my emails, text messages and photos. I'm probably not going to buy Apple devices any more if it really works like this, by default sending all your data into their cloud.

If I want to use AI, I want to be able to select the exact messages / photos which I want to send to it. Otherwise I expect the device to keep the data protected. I don't need any of these features either; I can remember if someone sent me a cookie recipe.

Re: Siri AI

#478
post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is doing the right thing for users. The right thing for users would be to allow user choice, and for Apple to compete fairly. Apple allowing third party access doesn't automatically mean user data gets hoovered up by OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. It just means users now get the choice, if they want to make that choice. Users could stay with Siri/Apple if they care about what Apple is offering, or choose to accept t…

There is a vast asymmetry in knowledge and capability to make those choices for most users. Most users will press agree and consent to things they don’t understand to get to the next screen, and while that would be terrible for the individuals I think it’s also important to look further at the ramifications because probably Apple would be blamed.

They can't under GDPR. The DMA is for market access - there are other laws for privacy. Those require use commensurate with what is needed for the service, so anyone who e.g. scraped all of a user's local info and stolen it would be breaking EU privacy laws themselves.

This is not complicated. Even in the US, every other industry is regulated to your benefit, you're just used to it and haven't realised. Digital technology obviously needs to be too. And yes, you have to do it properly.

Re: Siri AI

#479
We need Siri API. Features like this are nonsensical in an era where I can wish up any feature or workflow for an app.

People outside HN will begin to expect they can do anything with a computer in the same way they expect to be able to say anything in a support chat. Using pre-LLM automated chat feels like a joke. You enter the chat expecting to having a conversation and instead you get a GUI phone tree.

This is exactly how it feels to use any of the AI tous from Big Tech and others.

We have entered the era of deeply personal computing. There are so many incredibly personal features that no mega corp could ever be expected to build. Now that lay people can build things, let them!

There's a podcast that I listen to which is translated to a bunch of different languages. It's exclusively on Spotify with no RSS feed. I have a cron that checks daily passes it to an LLM and notifies me as necessary. I did not code a line. I only set up an OAuth endpoint.

Enabling your customers to do things like this will make them incredibly sticky too! So please for the love of God, let me glue Siri into whatever I want.

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