For consumers AI has anti hype right now. It's off-putting to see consumer products slapped with a hundred AI labels. I see people talk about how you can turn off all of Apple Intelligence with one toggle rather than hundreds on Samsung.

Firefox is also marketing how easy it is to disable AI.

I think a lot of people are not hype about AI in their toaster, but... I don't think people are generally turned off form deeper integration in their OS itself. Especially when for some people this is representing ideas similar to how programmer-types get excited about Shortcuts.

Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff

> Decently accessible automation and discovery, without having to go figure out a bunch of stuff

Sure, but is this actually happening? Last time I tried, Atlassian's heavily-pushed AI couldn't even turn a Jira ticket number of Confluence into a clickable link. Similarly, Windows has been actively moving away from providing locally-installed applications in the Start menu search towards offering random internet garbage.

I'm all for using a LLM to make something like Siri able to understand both "Siri, turn off the lights" and "Siri, make it dark!" - but that's not what's being pushed onto consumers, because there is no way anyone is going to pay $100/month for any version of that.

Unfortunately companies seem to be in panic mode about making ANY offering to not become irrelevant that they're giving AI overall a bad reputation. Everyone made a mad dash and didn't spent enough time making that product well thought out. Some got burned by it such as Microsoft.

Everyone seems well convinced AI can just replace 90% of software out there but I've yet to see any evidence of that. Sure it can stand up a blog, get a simple app together pretty quick but once you get into larger scale software it's not capable of doing it by itself and you still need teams of developers working together.

People like features, benefits, and outcomes. AI isn't a feature, it's a technology that can enable features. But it's being marketed as the only thing that matters.

The user does not give two shits if the new laptop "has AI". This is how Apple has been killing it lately, they market the macbooks being powerful, cheap, with long batteries, and a premium feel. Things the user cares about. Most of the stuff marketers are just blanket labeling "AI" will eventually be shuffled to the background and rebranded with a more specific term to highlight the feature being delivered rather than the fact it's AI".

Nailed it.

I reckon most humans never learn the valuable lessons of the past.

As you put it - nobody cares about the technology in and of itself. They care about “ok cool what’s in it for me?”. That’s what determines their decision to purchase/use a thing.

You're right, there is plenty of space for features that require AI to work but that are undistinguishable from "classical" feature. Better autocompletion is a proven one for example.

Sentiment among my teenage kids and their peers is that AI can fuck right off. It's way over the line into actual hate of anything AI.

Apple's Neural Engine and the CoreML framework to leverage it are almost a decade old now.

Apple Intelligence was a rebrand, and Apple has made some unique decisions rolling it out.

For instance, the new chatbot version of Siri's hallucinations were seen as unacceptable, so its release was delayed.

Is a chatbot that provides false information regularly really an advancement?

Apple chose not to do photorealistic generative images, so they can't be used for deepfakes.

Apple chose not to add a feature to write text for you, just one to clean up what you write, because they don't want to help kids in school cheat.

That is definitely true, but some time ago Apple’s marketing team has also put out some pretty cringey commercials to the contrary. It’s wild how they seemed to be encouraging people to cheat and hide their ineptitudes, rather than just being honest about it.

As far as I'm concerned, I would rather see the industry prioritize AI that doesn't provide false information over pushing slop out as quickly as possible.

Hell, there are chatbots out there trying to convince kids that suicide is a great idea.

How is prioritizing pushing out slop as quickly as possible with no consideration of the consequences acceptable?

Yeah exactly the Apple Intelligence thing was pure BS to shut people up who kept saying apple was going to get disrupted by missing out.

Apple seems to follow the values that Steve laid out. Tim isn’t a visionary but he seems to follow the principles associated with being disciplined with cash quite well. They haven’t done any stupid acquisitions either. Quite the contrast with OAI.