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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

I disagree, I think the problem with surveys like this is the focus on billing everything as "AI" instead of just what it used to be as a nice feature.

A lot of the small things that Apple has introduced, are things that blend in and are not screaming "AI" at you. Which is a good thing.

So many of the things that are being pushed by other companies are AI crap that is flashy to show off but either the utility of it is nowhere near the promise due to fundamental issues with AI, or the novelty of it wears off and is actually useless and no one cares.

Sure I wish that Apple was a bit faster with some of this, but when compared to things like Recall, rabbit, or other vaporware. They are going about it the right way, we just need to stop trying to throw around the "AI" name on everything when most users didn't have "ML" shoved down their throats for the features that they used every day powered by (fundamentally) the same tech.

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The article is specifically about what Apple calls “Apple Intelligence”, not about other AI/ML-based features they have incorporated.

I think you are downplaying just how many eggs Tim Cook has put in this basket to pitch to shareholders vs. the perceived low % of apple engineering staff that seems to have been involved in its creation. ATT has been advertising "get the new iPhone with Apple Intelligence" before it was even available for sale! And now it's here, and it's a tiny bump in feature set. A super missed opportunity to rebrand/completely revamp Siri, and instead an implicit acceptance of defeat that Siri is still so dumb, you should just ask her to ask "someone else" (ChatGPT). Cook is feeling pressure to explain how Apple is going to crank out unsustainable revenue growth even after basically saturating the world (at some point you've won capitalism).

Apple has to balance it, clearly investors want to shove AI into everything but most users simply don't care or want to be reminded its "AI" every moment. Apple has to walk the line between both of these groups.

You are right about investors, but how many of those investors have also funded and continue to push for vaporware products and features? We have seen this many many times over the last couple of years. So I do think their importance needs to be downplayed since they are clearly making bad decisions.

Also, this article was about customers not investors.

Apple for years has been marking "Siri" as far more than just the voice assistant and instead encompassing many of their ML systems. For example the "Siri App Suggestions". I don't think that rebranding it would make any sense.

users have been actively propagandized by the media against ‘AI’ but will probably find it useful in the cases where they use it

Your second part is technically correct since users have benefited from applications of ML of many years without throwing it being "ML" in their face because it wasnt as much of a marketing term as it is now.

Your first part, not true however. Many people are concerned, see the issues with it, and are frustrated and distrust it even more when someone so clearly tries to discount any concerns, fears, or just dislike of it.

Fact is, most users don't care about the underlying technology. Most users did not need "AI" shoved in their face to enable many of the ML workflows that we are currently seeing rolled out.

That’s too big a claim to assert without support: there isn’t a monolithic “the media” and “propaganda” implies deceptiveness along with coordination, and it’s hard to reconcile any of that with the positive coverage from many outlets for years, not to mention that some of them have been experimenting with it themselves.

> A super missed opportunity to rebrand/completely revamp Siri, and instead an implicit acceptance of defeat that Siri is still so dumb

I don't understand how Siri is so bad. If you just hooked it up to ChatGPT then Siri would actually be incredibly useful. The only reason why Siri still exists is because iOS doesn't let you replace it.

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