I really hope Apple releases an iPhone with a good on-device private LLM assistant, perhaps next year. Their hardware is well-positioned for it.
It could make me get a new phone outside of my usual ~4 year cycle. Siri is almost unusable for me.
It could make me get a new phone outside of my usual ~4 year cycle. Siri is almost unusable for me.
Here’s one story to offer some context. There are others. https://archive.is/en3VL
Don't underestimate Apple at disappointing enthusiasts like you and me. We've been hearing many awesome stories about the next thing Apple will do, only to realize their marketing team chose to keep it for future iOS/MBP/iPhone generations to keep the profits high.
A voice assistant that takes 3 seconds to reply and then takes half a second per word is a nice demo, but not a product Apple wants to sell.
And yes, some people will say they rather have that than nothing on their hardware, but “the Internet” would say iOS 18 is slow, eats battery life, etc, damaging Apple’s brand.
What they don't do is sell you a lie a year before release then deliver shit (like every other fucking vendor).
All of Apple's windows software (iTunes, Safari, etc) has been, at best, a barely working port.
I'm assuming they are putting a lot more thought and care into it than the touchbar, crappy keyboards and the rest, but I'm also not holding out much hope either.
It’s incredibly rare for Apple to publicly talk about things that won’t be selling extremely soon.
The iPhone had to be pronounced because it was going to show up on the FCC website, and obviously Apple wanted to control the message. I suspect the Vision Pro may be similar, but they also wanted developers to start getting ready so they would have software day one.
The only thing I can think of that Apple pre-announced and failed at was the Air Power mat. They said it would be coming out soon after and had to push that a couple times before finally canceling it.
Other than that small exception, if modern (post jobs return) Apple announces something is coming, it will come out and be quite close to what they say.
They don’t pull a Humane AI, Segway, Cyberpunk 2077, or No Man’s Sky.
The hardware, that is.
With software, their Come to Jesus moment is still in the future.
(To me, Swift is sort of the Jony correlate on the software side. Doesn't fit perfectly, of course, but very similar "we are perfect who cares about evidence la la la I can't hear you" vibes and results)
If you're referring to Google, then you're right. But OpenAI has consistently delivered what they announced pretty quickly. Same with Microsoft. To think that Apple somehow has a secret sauce that helps them surprise everyone is an illusion. They've had 3 years now to show their interest in LLMs, but they're just too conservative to "think different" anymore.
I mean they do truly useful stuff already using ML just not LLMs
They've done this a dozen times already.
Netflix + Hulu / Apple TV+
Generic Earbuds / AirPods
Meta Quest / Apple Vision Pro
(The last one being a hopeful wish)
E.g. assuming Apple Vision launches soon, they’ll be “many years behind” Quest from the date of first launch, but most likely miles ahead as far as usability.
VisionPro is nice. I can see costs coming down over a period of time. Also, we've been waiting long enough for that AI car.
The only exeption of not delivering I can recall was AirPower. It's a product they've announced and then embarassingly weren't able to finish up to their standards (or up to what was promised), so they have cancelled it altogether.
I believe it's more likely we've heard awesome stories about things Apple will do in the future, only to realize that the average HN commenter is incapable of understanding that such stories are contextless leaks, and that it is far more likely you are operating with incomplete information than Apple's "marketing team" is holding things back for future "iOS/MBP/iPhone generations" to keep their profits high.
I know it's more fun to vomit dumb conspiracies onto the internet, but consider changing "realize" to something which conveys equivocation, because your theory about Apple's marketing team holding back mature technology in order to benefit future devices – in addition to being predicated on leaks and rumors, and risibly inane when you consider that such action would create a significant attack vector for competitors – is as equivocal as the belief that Trump is on a secret mission to destroy a global cabal of pedophiles.
And even then, the activation keyword is likely to be whatever Apple says. Similar logic as 3rd party keyboards, don't want user input to get stuck on even merely potentially untrustworthy or buggy code.
The rumors were true.
I guess this won't change, because it is probably for legal reasons, to avoid being sued by some "I just dried my cat in the microwave" style genius after making a car accident (unrelated to Siri, but trying to shift the blame).
Adding support for smaller languages would be nice actually. When its reading out of Hungarian messages loud it sounds incredibly retarded. I always have a great time listening to those and trying to guess the message. :) It would be nice if I could send a message to my significant other about being stuck in traffic in Hungarian. (the iPhone keyboard already does pretty decent voice recognition in the language)
Apple has had automation for ages with Automator, Shortcuts etc but nothing that actually integrates well with day to day flow. So.. setting a timer when my hands are wet already works ok, and that’s about what I need.
I honestly wonder what type of voice interactions people want with their phones. I can see transcribing/crafting chat messages I guess? But even so, it feels like it would mess up and use iMessage instead of WhatsApp, will it narrate my memes, open links and read “subscribe for only 4.99 to read this article”, cookie consents etc etc. if everything sucks how is narrating it gonna help?
Maybe I’m old but I still don’t see the major value-add of voice interfaces, despite massively improved tech and potential.
Most “AI” features are so incredibly fragile they’re not worth deploying.
So, rather than turning it off, manually correct the incorrect completions and use the suggested words bar frequently and it will learn how you type. It’s just having to start over after tossing out several OSes worth of training that makes it feel worse.
I can still get chatgpt to say the most vile things and if Apple release something on device I'll get that to be a bad, baaaad robot, too.
LLMs are not yet safe for public facing production use,imo.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/21/apple-ai-researchers-ru... https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.11514.pdf
Of course in the long run I think it will happen — smaller and more efficient models are getting better regularly, and Apple can also just ship their new iPhones with larger amounts of RAM. But I'd be very surprised if there was GPT-4 level intelligence running locally on an iPhone within the next couple years — that sized model is so big right now even with significant memory optimizations, and I think distilling it down to iPhone size would be very hard even if you had access to the weights (and Apple doesn't). More likely there will be small models that run locally, but that fall back to large models running on servers somewhere for complex tasks, at least for the next couple years.
They can still outsource to a much larger LLMs on their servers for anything that can't be done locally like they do now.
You mean nothing available? Or you mean nothing that public knows exists? The answers to those two questions are different. There are definitely products that aren't available but the public knows exist and are upcoming that are in GPT-4's ballpark.
1: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.11444.pdf
2: https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboar...
If trained on an iPhone API + documentation and given a little web access it would blow absolutely everything out of the water.
If they can already create -basic- Python/Swift/JS/rust apps that sets timers, save things, create lists, how's that too dumb for being a Siri replacement? They just have to give it access to an iPhone/Web Api like ChatGPT's code analysis tool.
So if you ask it "hey siri do this, this and this", it will create a script, then run it on the internal API, or fetch an article then work on that etc.
I know it's still logically "dumb" but i'm not trying to play game theoretical scenarios with my phone or do logic tests or advanced math (yet).
But yeah "hey siri transfer all of my funds to eric", or "hey siri group all of my photos where i'm nude and send them to jack" are new almost sci fi vectors.
Is it “porch led”, “porch light” or “outdoor light”? Or is “outdoor light” actually the one in the front yard? What is the one by my kids nightstand? And what routine name do I use to set the mood for watching a movie?
I would hope a properly trained llm with an awareness of my devices and their locations would allow for more verbal ambiguity when controlling things.
I know a half dozen different ways to improve that today without LLMs.
Pixel phones have had emergency call issues for years across multiple models but they just get a pass. Apple would be crucified for this.
Well, I guess they're also not allowed to cause RF interference or randomly catch fire.
my pyjamas are regulated to be fireproof too
The idea of having an unpredictable LLM in the ecosystem is Apple's worst nightmare. I bet they will overly restrict it to the point that it stops being a general purpose LLM and becomes a neutered obedient LLM that always acts according to Apple's rules.
Also, it doesn't help that ALL the authors of this Apple paper are chinese. It raises questions about how Apple will handle political debates with its LLM.
The CCP thinks it owns all Chinese people on Earth, but that doesn't mean you have to agree with them!