Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri. He was very successful at Google (e.g. BERT was published just after he left), but it looks like he wasn't able to save Apple from itself.
John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
141–150 of 380 posts
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I think the question here is not so much why the old is leaving, but if anyone seriously expects the new guy to succeed any more? ex-Microsoft too, not exactly a great start. What does seem slightly odd is Apple have probably saved billions by failing to be dragged into the current model war.
I agree that not falling for the hype and rushing in may have just saved them. Apple is typically not a first mover. They often hang back, rethink the problem, and deliver something really nice. But not in this case. They had Siri first and then squandered their lead, but may have avoided a huge write-down as a result.
it's still early days. plenty of time to win with AI.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while. If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single func…
Why on earth would you want to accelerate, brake, and steer by voice?
I'm assuming they meant things like "change temperature" or "seat massage" or "play Despacito" - things you might need to look for in a rental car
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#144If they let you use siri to change settings it would be very useful. Instead I have to search fro hard to find options.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while. If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single func…
Why on earth would you want to accelerate, brake, and steer by voice?
Step on it Jeeves, and go through the park.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alexa is in the same boat. Compared to old-fashioned finger-and-screen interfaces, maybe voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case. It's inconvenient, unreliable, and even if it works quite slow. Yet you see companies continue to chase the dream in the current generative AI craze. I get the sci-fi "wow" appeal, but even the folks who tried to build Minority Report-style 3D interfac…
> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while. If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single func…
I think the utility of voice commands is marginal at best in a car. In isolation, voice commands don't make sense if you have passengers. You basically have to tell everyone to shut up to ensure the car understands your commands over any ongoing conversation. And in the context of old fashioned knobs and buttons, voice is seriously a lot of complex engineering to solve problems that have long been non-issues.
Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#147If it's not a new color, or a new switch between stainless, aluminum, or titanium, Apple seems unable to manage their tech stack.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#148Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri. He was very successful at Google (e.g. BERT was published just after he left), but it looks like he wasn't able to save Apple from itself.
> Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri...
From TFA
Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year ... Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea ...
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#149Siri is probably among the products which had the most exposure to users (probably a billion+ users throughout iPhone's history) without capturing that opportunity to actually do anything meaningful with the huge user base it got for free. A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock. If they had 0 im…
Siri was also completely miscommunicated from the beginning. I could never get Siri to do what I wanted, because I didn't realize that it had a very strict and narrow menu, but it never communicated what that menu was, and had no way of saying "here are the 5 things you can tell me about." And then there were the network communication issues where you don't know why you're not getting a response, or if Siri is going…
This is just the conversational interface issue. You need the system to be able to do most of the things you would expect a human to be able to do (e.g. if you're talking to your phone, you'd expect it to be able to do most phone things). If the conversational system can only do a small subset of those, then it just becomes a game of "discover the magical incantation that will be in the set of possibilities", and becomes an exercise in frustration.
This is why LLMs are the first conversational interface to actually have a chance of working, once you give them enough tools.
Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
#150Meanwhile android demanding I use Gemini and then telling me my Google account has no Gmail to turn on Gemini to add a calender entry
And then my exchange business plan telling me copilot is here over and over in a giant popup screen and then saying - it's not available yet