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John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

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Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#171

Post by macleodnine »

dboreham wrote: post #19
m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

Um...you know JG was formerly at Google doing all that magic you love and is now at Apple, right?

For the rest of us, who is JG?

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#173

Post by polishTar »

iainmerrick wrote: post #125
julien_c wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Dean didn't have a demonstrable expertise in AI before heading Google AI.

Yes he did -- He co-authored an influential deep learning paper in 2012: https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub40565 I think his contribution at that time was mainly clever ways to drastically scale up existing neural net techniques, but just scaling things up 100x or 1000x seems to be a large part of the magic of deep learning.

And not only that. Even his undergrad thesis back from 1990 was on neural nets. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I1fs4sczbCaACzA9XwxR3DiuXVt...

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#174

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

zjaffee wrote: post #162
runako wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of order: the last 3 transitions have been layering versus actual shifts. Text-based computing -> GUIs was a shift. Broadly speaking, there is no market today for consumer-facing computers where text is the only input capability. The most profitable company in the PC era also has the most profitable PC unit today. The Internet runs on top of the GUI layer. The smartphone is (in much of the world) an "also" not…

Tacking on to your comment, one could argue that voice alongside increasing number of sensors and inputs available on smartphones are very similar paradigm shifts to that of the text-based computing to GUI shift. We're replacing the keyboard and GUI to one that is far more ubiquitous and backgrounded, and computing experiences are based on all data that is available and economical to process rather than having things…

I watched The Office for the first time a few months ago.

I was AMAZED that a show that recent had a lot of office workers with desks with no computer.

In 20 years, I don't think it's crazy to think the next generation will look back at our time and think... I can't believe you sat there staring at a rectangle and pushing buttons all day.

I'm not betting on it, but it seems plausible to me that in 20 years Hololens / Google Glasses combined with voice recognition and some type of gesture control could be good enough and desirable for most people.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#175

Post by pmart123 »

matwood wrote: post #150
skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

> Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? Siri plus shortcuts have made many mundane tasks easier. When I get in my car to come home from work I say "Hey Siri, heading home." That causes my phone to text my wife my arrival time and starts the last podcast I had playing. It's a simple thing, but is so much easier than texting and then thumbing through the podcast player to start where I left off. I ha…

I am skeptical when technologists say voice assisted systems will become the dominant interface at least in countries with a high rate of literacy.

I just look at TV vs radio, texting versus calling, or audio books versus written content. I believe most studies indicate that people are better at visual comprehension versus auditory:

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140312-audi...

I know scientists love working on voice and speech recognition, since it is a hard problem to solve, but it sometimes feels like its a bit of a solution in search of a problem. I'm sure there are good use cases, I'm just skeptical that they are profound enough for voice to be our primary medium for interaction.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#176

Post by runako »

zjaffee wrote: post #162
runako wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of order: the last 3 transitions have been layering versus actual shifts. Text-based computing -> GUIs was a shift. Broadly speaking, there is no market today for consumer-facing computers where text is the only input capability. The most profitable company in the PC era also has the most profitable PC unit today. The Internet runs on top of the GUI layer. The smartphone is (in much of the world) an "also" not…

Tacking on to your comment, one could argue that voice alongside increasing number of sensors and inputs available on smartphones are very similar paradigm shifts to that of the text-based computing to GUI shift. We're replacing the keyboard and GUI to one that is far more ubiquitous and backgrounded, and computing experiences are based on all data that is available and economical to process rather than having things…

I partially agree. My terrible pun of including Excel was a reference to a very common application that's not going ubiquitous or backgrounded anytime soon. Similarly, nobody's soon going to be coding via a voice-drive device without a display.

On the mobile side, imagine the hellscape of privacy intrusion that would result if people all used voice to message each other (instead of text/email/etc).

GUIs are sticking around because they are the best available option for many use cases. Portable GUIs are likewise going to stick around for a long time. Fashionable nerds may decide to stop calling these "PCs" or "mobile phones" at some point, but the form factors will prove resilient.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#177

Post by munchbunny »

skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

The only reason I can envision using voice controls for anything is in the car while driving, and you would only begrudgingly use them because it is overwhelmingly safer to have both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.

Yup, that's pretty much the only reason I use Siri. Though I could see VR as another possible use case, since hand controls in VR are less precise and slower than keyboard/mouse for textual input.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#178

Post by OkGoDoIt »

skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

I used to use voice commands extensively when I used Android. But in 2015 I got an iPhone and Siri is so much worse (both recognition accuracy and available functionality) that I stopped bothering. It’s a shame.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#179

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mcphage wrote: post #38
threatofrain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After so many years Siri still doesn’t do “take me to the nearest McDonald’s” like Google Assistant can. And whenever Siri isn’t “confident” it just launches Safari, but it’s often not even the best starting point, and Siri sometimes gives up silently without feedback. Also for a bit of fun, ask Siri for the population of Buffalo NY. I noticed because Siri also tells you that Buffalo is big, and then goes on to say..…

> Also for a bit of fun, ask Siri for the population of Buffalo NY. Nice

Someone at Apple may be reading this thread, because it returned the answer normally for me.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#180

Post by ryanwaggoner »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #151
saagarjha wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes you feel better, the “always on” recordings never leave your device. They’re not even that great at recognizing anything other than “this sounds like a ‘hey Siri’”.

For a fun experiment, yell RED FIRE TRUCK into your phone then immediately activate Siri manually. With Hey Siri turned on, you will reliably get all three words. With it off, you will usually get Chuck or Truck, or sometimes FIRETRUCK depending on timing. This seems to be for people who start talking before the Siri prompt is fully active like “Set Timer for 5 minutes”. But shows that Apple is typically pre-recordin…

I don’t get anything, just activates Siri normally.
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