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MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

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Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#21

Post by ribosometronome »

azinman2 wrote: post #19
Aqua_Geek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what do you (in the general sense, not specifically asking the parent) use Siri for? I think my main (only?) use case is setting a timer. Maybe I find conversational UIs awkward, or maybe I just got jaded REALLY quickly from Siri’s lacking capabilities early on, but I have hardly used it in the decade or whatever that it’s been around.

I use it almost daily for something that is simple but under appreciated I don’t know why it’s not in every marketing video: “Siri, remind me tomorrow at 10am to do X” I outsource so much of my memory to the phone via Siri ALL THE TIME. It’s so useful. Even for things in 20m. I’ll easily forget if I don’t do this, and it’s reliable so it gives me confidence. It also keeps the notification present until I actually do…

Especially with Shortcuts, Siri can have some pretty useful functionality. My personal big improvement I'd like to see is being able to better able to tap into those actions without having to set things up in advance.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#22

Post by bombcar »

Aqua_Geek wrote: post #18
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #2

I wonder if this has anything to do with their acquisition of DarwinAI. After a decade of mediocrity, I'd love to see Siri get smarter. Any improvement would be welcome at this point.

Honest question: what do you (in the general sense, not specifically asking the parent) use Siri for? I think my main (only?) use case is setting a timer. Maybe I find conversational UIs awkward, or maybe I just got jaded REALLY quickly from Siri’s lacking capabilities early on, but I have hardly used it in the decade or whatever that it’s been around.

If Siri could do the following reliably (meaning not having to ask again, not having to repeat, having it work 99% of the time) it would be golden:

1. Find my phone via Siri on homepod

2. Set a simple timer

3. Add to a list

4. Send a text message to one of a few contacts

It can and sometimes does do all of those things, but horribly unreliably.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#23

Post by erulabs »

If it’s going to take general artificial intelligent to get a voice assistant that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers, then so be it. Imagine the GPUs required!

I’m still baffled at Siri and Google assistant. Virtually zero innovation in a decade. I just want to be able to turn on BBC radio while my hands are wet, is that really so hard?!

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#24

Post by samatman »

erulabs wrote: post #23

If it’s going to take general artificial intelligent to get a voice assistant that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers, then so be it. Imagine the GPUs required! I’m still baffled at Siri and Google assistant. Virtually zero innovation in a decade. I just want to be able to turn on BBC radio while my hands are wet, is that really so hard?!

> that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers

You're in luck! Siri will do that right now. Just tried it. Works.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#25

Post by ksubedi »

erulabs wrote: post #23

If it’s going to take general artificial intelligent to get a voice assistant that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers, then so be it. Imagine the GPUs required! I’m still baffled at Siri and Google assistant. Virtually zero innovation in a decade. I just want to be able to turn on BBC radio while my hands are wet, is that really so hard?!

Google Assistant is pretty decent. But as someone who is pretty much locked into the Apple ecosystem, Siri needs a reboot from scratch.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#26

Post by Rinzler89 »

samatman wrote: post #24
erulabs wrote: post #23

If it’s going to take general artificial intelligent to get a voice assistant that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers, then so be it. Imagine the GPUs required! I’m still baffled at Siri and Google assistant. Virtually zero innovation in a decade. I just want to be able to turn on BBC radio while my hands are wet, is that really so hard?!

> that can remember not one, but two entirely separate cooking timers You're in luck! Siri will do that right now. Just tried it. Works.

OMG, 2 cooking timers?! Pinnacle tech right there.

Knowing Apple, I was expecting one base timer, with every other timer being a $200 upgrade.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#27

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Aqua_Geek wrote: post #18
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #2

I wonder if this has anything to do with their acquisition of DarwinAI. After a decade of mediocrity, I'd love to see Siri get smarter. Any improvement would be welcome at this point.

Honest question: what do you (in the general sense, not specifically asking the parent) use Siri for? I think my main (only?) use case is setting a timer. Maybe I find conversational UIs awkward, or maybe I just got jaded REALLY quickly from Siri’s lacking capabilities early on, but I have hardly used it in the decade or whatever that it’s been around.

Raising blinds, turning on/off lights, and unlocking the front door. It is convenient since I can do all those things with one command (raise all the blinds and turn off all the lights, or raise all the north blinds and lower the south ones), it would be a hard problem to create physical buttons to do what we needed without running around the room to hit various switches.

Google can also do this. Alexa has lots of problems, but it can raise a blind in a pinch. We also spent a ton on Lutron shades because we discovered that we were just managing them too much manually (Siri then is great for controlling that).

You can also ask Siri the weather in the morning, useful in figuring out how to dress the kid.

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#28

Post by dang »

BryanLegend wrote: post #20

Trainig

Yes, the submitted title was "Apple announces MM1: Multimodal LLM Pre-trainig Report". We've reverted it now. But the greater problem wasn't the typo, it was the editorializing (from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.")

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#29

Post by kstrauser »

epaga wrote: post #17
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #2

I wonder if this has anything to do with their acquisition of DarwinAI. After a decade of mediocrity, I'd love to see Siri get smarter. Any improvement would be welcome at this point.

Mediocrity is far too positive a word for the dumpster fire that is Siri.

I hear that a lot, and I have no desire to tell you your opinion’s wrong, but it doesn’t match my experience. Siri’s… fine, I guess, for what I ask of it like setting timers and reminders and such.

It’s not perfect, for sure:

Me: Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen lights.

Siri: I can’t process multiple requests.

Me: Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen lights.

Siri: OK.

But it works reliably enough that I use it all the time for the reminder and timer actions. Is it vastly worse for other people, and in what ways?

Re: MM1: Methods, Analysis and Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-training

#30

Post by samatman »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #2

I wonder if this has anything to do with their acquisition of DarwinAI. After a decade of mediocrity, I'd love to see Siri get smarter. Any improvement would be welcome at this point.

Personally, I don't want Siri to be 'smarter', if smarter means it becomes an open-ended and unpredictable way to have an LLM guess what I meant. I'd like Siri to be more powerful, yes.

I like that I can model Siri as a decision tree with voice-activated input. Being able to configure it to do more things (for example, to put reminders in Things rather than Reminders), that would be useful. More discoverability would also be great (but this is Apple we're talking about, so good luck there). But for me personally, the most important feature is that Siri is predictable: once I figure out how to do something with it, asking again in mostly the same way will get the same result. If I want to talk to an LLM, I have ChatGPT on my phone.

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