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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#231

Post by codr7 »

ddp26 wrote: post #180

John Giannandrea (JG) was running the Google Assistant when I was there. That didn't go so well. (Pre-LLM assistants as a category have done badly - Alexa/Siri did _ok_ but presumably everyone working on them had higher hopes.) I remember being surprised when JG seemingly "failed up" to become head of Apple AI. It's been many years and it's hard to point to anything that's gone well in that category. Seems like there…

Alternatively, the rumors were true, and Alexa/Siri were actually real people working very cheap for a while.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#232

Post by doug_durham »

travisgriggs wrote: post #4

I wonder if there’s any “doers” in that top 100? Or is it all just “discussers” and “deciders”. I’ve owned Apple products forever. But as long as Pournelles Law of Bureaucracy remains on full display, these shuffling of the titanic deck chairs will continue. I wish it could be otherwise. I wish a company could introspect on itself and say “hey, our doer/decider balance is out of whack, let’s correct” but that just ne…

The T100 has many individual contributors. Most Apple managers are "doers". It's an expectation.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#233

Post by resource_waste »

helveticabold48 wrote: post #10
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Why is Apple struggling so hard with LLMs? I get that they're a hardware company, but surely that can't be the full story. They must be suffering from some case of extreme perfectionism or something like that. I would assume it'd be very difficult to get an LLM to perform consistently and reliably without making it useless.

My guess: Their privacy centric image/strategy is a two-edged sword. You can only do so much on device locally.

Its wild to me that people actually believe the privacy marketing.

I guess not... there is a reason Apple is still in business, they are great at deception.

It just seems so silly to believe a blackbox company that was outed by Snowden in PRISM would actually be privacy focused. Or that a company that touts security has been hacked so easily by Pegaus that anyone even buys into the marketing.

But hey, people are religious, so I should be less surprised that people trust others.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#234

Post by cg5280 »

SirMaster wrote: post #218

Do people actually want this AI stuff in their phone? I don't want AI on my desktop/laptop computer and I don't want it on my phone either. None of my family or friends that I talk to seem to want it either.

A lot of the Apple Intelligence stuff seems like a waste of space. But having some personal LLM with context over my phone and life? That sounds pretty cool.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#235

Post by dionian »

SirMaster wrote: post #218

Do people actually want this AI stuff in their phone? I don't want AI on my desktop/laptop computer and I don't want it on my phone either. None of my family or friends that I talk to seem to want it either.

I do, i use LLMs heavily, and i hope they can make Siri smarter

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#236

Post by tlonny »

SirMaster wrote: post #218

Do people actually want this AI stuff in their phone? I don't want AI on my desktop/laptop computer and I don't want it on my phone either. None of my family or friends that I talk to seem to want it either.

If AI is what stops me having this exchange with Siri 50% of the time:

> Hey Siri, please play Emerald Rush, by Jon Hopkins on Youtube Music.

> Sorry, you'll need to continue in Youtube Music.

Then yes - I want AI on my phone

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#237

Post by ksec »

ddp26 wrote: post #180

John Giannandrea (JG) was running the Google Assistant when I was there. That didn't go so well. (Pre-LLM assistants as a category have done badly - Alexa/Siri did _ok_ but presumably everyone working on them had higher hopes.) I remember being surprised when JG seemingly "failed up" to become head of Apple AI. It's been many years and it's hard to point to anything that's gone well in that category. Seems like there…

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years.

John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time.

Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly every single one of them were walked back to Steve Jobs era. Mainly by Deirdre O’Brien who has been with Apple for 20+ years.

Changes of Direction in PR. Which leads to Katie Cotton leaving.

Forced out Scott Forstall. Tim is suppose to be the mediator.

Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job. Especially after merging iOS and macOS team together.

Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue and sidelined Phil Schiller. Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Fitness, Apple Books, News, All these services are Eddy Cue. The committee that ultimately ruled for Apple's 30% cut? Tim Cook and Eddy Cue.

Probably a few more names missing.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#238

Post by codr7 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #214
roydivision wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how Apple prioritise their bug fixing, but it really looks to me like bugs only get fixed when adding new features, if at all. This is such a trivial big win as well, create a software dev team to focus on the outstanding bugs. Head it with one or two senior developers, make it the first step in onboarding new developers. What a great way to learn, and make a difference. This is not rocket surgery, and…

> This is such a trivial big win as well, create a software dev team to focus on the outstanding bugs. Head it with one or two senior developers, make it the first step in onboarding new developers. What a great way to learn, and make a difference. Sounds nice on paper. In practice, the seniors assigned to the team will see it as a career dead-end (because fixing bugs doesn't get management attention, but flashy new…

Sounds more like process problems than strategy problems to me.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#239

Post by PKop »

SirMaster wrote: post #218

Do people actually want this AI stuff in their phone? I don't want AI on my desktop/laptop computer and I don't want it on my phone either. None of my family or friends that I talk to seem to want it either.

Copilot as a sort of unobtrusive popup window on my PC, as long as it remains an isolated app without roots into the OS, used as a more precise search engine available with a keyboard shortcut while coding on Windows has been surprisingly useful for learning etc.

Anything more ingrained or trying to be too clever or invasive, not at all. Microsoft has a funny example here, as what I describe is the consumer Copilot app. The Microsoft 365 Copilot experience seems the worst extreme, muddling the product, injecting itself across domains for dubious benefit. The rating in the app store of both of these 2 apps reflects this divergence.

On mobile, I could see the potential as a substitute for search engines, with pros and cons for it's style of information retrieval. Beyond that it's stretching the use case of LLMS

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#240

Post by dylan604 »

SirMaster wrote: post #218

Do people actually want this AI stuff in their phone? I don't want AI on my desktop/laptop computer and I don't want it on my phone either. None of my family or friends that I talk to seem to want it either.

From the number of people that do say "Hey, Siri", I'd suspect that people do want it. The concept is a nice one. Hands free. Remote control things with your voice. Super convenient by not having to have the device sitting next to you, just within earshot. Not even needing to be a mobile device. Just gizmo somewhere in the room. For non-technical people, it's utterly magic as a concept.

For technical people, it's a privacy nightmare because it doesn't really work as advertised on the tin. The only way they can get it semi working is by pushing the request to the mothership and do processing there rather than locally on device which means privacy is an option. Also, be technically minded, some people developing these systems make more money on data harvesting than any other service, so local only prevents them from that precious data. So the local processing isn't just a technical problem, but one that interferes with their core business. Of course, none of that is advertised on the tin

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