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Siri AI

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Re: Siri AI

#561

Post by MrDunham »

zmmmmm wrote: 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…

Agree and disagree on the "planning a trip" use case... as I'm sitting on a river cruise on an AI co-planned vacation (we found the cruise, AI set the daily itinerary).

Now the big (BIG) caveat is that I used Claude Code on my Max 20x plan from within VS Code. I have a fairly decent harness that I'd built and was sure to prompt it to run several subagents, including one that grounded walking times with Google Maps directly.

I'd say this is FAR beyond what the average person would do ("Hey Siri, plan me a trip to Prague") but also it shows that the models can do it with the right harness and guidelines. This wasn't that hard for me to do, so it seems to be more of a feature buildout ("the travel expert" AI) with a few markdown files than anything.

All told: web search for grounding times/locations, map grounding for walking paths and times, an adversarial agent to keep the model(s) honest, and a little bit of prompting and you've got a really great travel planner.

In short: the average person won't do this, but if I can build it in a few hours any of the 100% of people working at Apple/OpenAI/Anthropic who are smarter than me can build it and bake it into Siri (or ChatGPT, Claude, etc).

Re: Siri AI

#562

Post by microtonal »

kristianc wrote: post #465
zmmmmm wrote: 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.

And even if I organized a hike to Big Sur, Apple Maps would be pretty worthless because it doesn't have trail visualization and navigation worth speaking of (ok, maybe in Big Sur, but certainly not the rest of the world).

So I end up pulling out the trusty old Garmin gpsmap with cycle/hiking maps, that survived drops from 1.5 meters at 30 km/h as I was gliding of a mountain with my bike.

Re: Siri AI

#563

Post by microtonal »

9dev wrote: post #530
idle_zealot wrote: post #442

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…

The vast majority of people never even asked for a personal assistant, because that isn’t something normal people have or do need in the first place. They aren’t so occupied/privileged/posh to need someone to do the trivial tasks of daily life for them. This whole venue of technology is an exercise in ivory tower construction completely disconnected from ordinary people.

Personally, I'd more interested in Reminders actually being able to sync lists properly and not delayed or reshuffling items while I'm typing before they would work on a personal assistant. Reminders (like Siri) has become the favorite joke of the family by now.

They don't even seem to get the basics right, why would I want another layer on top?

Re: Siri AI

#564

Post by DrewADesign »

riffraff wrote: post #531
grey-area wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe there are just a few complete trips to major city in the training data that it could copy from? I imagine major destinations are much easier.

I used LLMs last year to plan an multiple week itinerary through Japan with the family, I wasn't super happy with the result so I tweaked it but they provided a useful template and some surprising ideas. As you guessed, there's a ton of info in the training data on this topic, but there's some value in being able to see it on one place with different options.

I think your experience with that trip echoes mine in a lot of areas. It’s a decent start. It takes care of some of the initial blue sky thinking to lay the groundwork. The problem is I think that’s the funnest part of a problem and I hate working on the details… it takes most of the creativity out of most problems as if it was drudgery, while leaving me to do the nitty gritty, which I consider the actual drudgery. I just don’t see LLMs’ contribution to tasks like this being anywhere close to being worth what they’ll cost after the VC subsidies run dry.

Re: Siri AI

#565

Post by michaericalribo »

MattDamonSpace wrote: post #522
Tepix wrote: post #518

They promised Apple Intelligence with iPhone 15 Pro and more recent models. Now [relevant parts of] Siri AI is restricted to iPhone 17 / iPhone Air and more recent models. People who believed Apple and bought an iPhone 16 to use with Apple Intelligence are getting the shaft.

There are active lawsuits

Get a whole $25-$95!

https://clarksonlawfirm.com/lp/apple-intelligence-false-adve...

Re: Siri AI

#566

Post by [deleted] »

zmmmmm wrote: 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…

[deleted]

Re: Siri AI

#567

Post by mittermayr »

throwfaraway4 wrote: post #556
mittermayr wrote: post #552

Coming this fall... In "English" later this year... We've heard that before, haven't we, Apple? I feel the right way to fix the trust issues would be to announce this when it's actually done. Like, here's Siri AI, and you can download and use it, right now.

You can. Install the beta

EU. iPhone 13 Pro. Not complaining, but I can't really.

Re: Siri AI

#568

Post by audiala »

zmmmmm wrote: 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…

We are currently working on this with Audiala (iOS and webapp, Android should be released any coming days), making progress slowly but surely. We started to add tools to the AI chat to organise your trip and explore the place following your preferences and those of your group if you decide to share the trip. We can turn feedback into actual improvements pretty fast now, so would love to have yours and progress towards building the app you really want.

Re: Siri AI

#569

Post by djaro »

Snoddas wrote: post #546
9dev wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people never even asked for a personal assistant, because that isn’t something normal people have or do need in the first place. They aren’t so occupied/privileged/posh to need someone to do the trivial tasks of daily life for them. This whole venue of technology is an exercise in ivory tower construction completely disconnected from ordinary people.

I think you are wrong. They never asked for one becase they never imagined being able to afford one. The amount of administration organizing a normal household takes I suspect most would be glad to leave to someon/something they trust and that can be held accountable. Today that someone needs to be a person (imo). But who knows, a startup may be plotting accountable digital assistans as we speak.

I think theres some real use cases in the household department. I would love an AI that I just tell my nutrition goals (I want to eat X calories, Y protein, Z fiber, hit all vitamins) and it just generates a full meal plan for me each day. Like, I go to the store and it made the complete shopping list for me. And automatically updates the rest of the day if I tell it I skipped a meal or ate a snack.

Re: Siri AI

#570

Post by globular-toast »

zmmmmm wrote: 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…

Renting a car isn't a problem I have either. I've rented cars and vans plenty of times. I just phone up and talk to someone or email them. It's really easy.

A lot of these "problems" seem to stem from people just not wanting to interact with other people at all. Do we really want to become like Asimov's "Solarians"?

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