How The Wall Street Journal Fell Behind in the ‘Apple Is Behind on AI’ Arms Race
Aaron Tilley, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race” (News+ link):
For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier
this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing
capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have.
The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total
overhaul. Capable of running on an iPhone and without an internet
connection, the new Siri impressed people with its improved speed,
conversational capabilities and the accuracy with which it
understood user commands. Code-named Project Blackbird, the effort
also imagined a Siri with capabilities built by third-party app
developers, according to people familiar with the work.
Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of
the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the
more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software
onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s
speed and privacy. The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021.
Tilley is the WSJ’s Apple beat reporter, and one gets the feeling he was tasked with filing a report with the above headline already written. These opening three paragraphs are the only interesting ones in the entire story. But there’s nothing actually new in them.
Here’s Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information in April 2023 under the headline “Apple’s AI Chief Struggles With Turf Wars as New Era Begins” (archive):
In some cases, Giannandrea’s new hires have run into seemingly
impenetrable bureaucratic obstacles. In one example, he in 2019
recruited another close friend, Arthur van Hoff, to explore a
project to rewrite Siri from the ground up. Code-named Blackbird,
the effort involved creating a lightweight version of Siri, which
would delegate the creation of more functions to app developers,
said five former Siri employees. The software would run on iPhones
instead of in the cloud, which would improve Siri’s speed and
performance while enhancing user privacy, they said. Demos of
Blackbird prompted excitement among employees on the Siri team
because of its responsiveness, they added.
But there was a problem. Blackbird competed with the work of two
longtime senior Siri leaders: Alex Acero and Robby Walker, who
were responsible for two important teams that helped Siri
understand and respond to queries. Acero and Walker pushed for
completion of their own project, code-named Siri X, for the 10th
anniversary of the voice assistant, which aimed to move the Siri
processing software onto the device for privacy reasons.
However, Siri X’s goal was simply to reproduce Siri’s existing
capabilities without the more ambitious targets of Blackbird, the
people said. Despite that, Acero and Walker won. They assigned
hundreds of people to their effort, which subsumed and killed
Blackbird. Most of their project was completed in 2021.
Same story, but Ma’s version from 13 months ago included the names of the engineers in charge of the dueling projects.
Back to Tilley’s report at the WSJ yesterday:
Apple has long prided itself on perfection in its product
rollouts, a near impossibility with emerging AI models. While
OpenAI systems have dazzled more than 180 million users with their
generation of writing, images and video, they are prone to
occasional errors, often called hallucinations. Apple has had
limited tolerance for such issues.
“There’s no such thing as 100% accuracy with AI, that’s the
fundamental reality,” said Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of
computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
“Apple is not compatible with that. They won’t release something
until it’s perfect.”
How does this square with the state of Siri as it works today? Does Tilley think today’s Siri, though limited in scope, is “100 percent accurate” and “perfect”?
Don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience.
★
Aaron Tilley, writing for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “How Apple Fell Behind in the AI Arms Race” (News+ link):
For those who saw them, the demonstrations inside Apple earlier
this decade of a revamped Siri offered a showcase of the amazing
capabilities a powerful AI voice assistant could have.
The famed assistant, one of the last projects Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs worked on before his death, had been given a total
overhaul. Capable of running on an iPhone and without an internet
connection, the new Siri impressed people with its improved speed,
conversational capabilities and the accuracy with which it
understood user commands. Code-named Project Blackbird, the effort
also imagined a Siri with capabilities built by third-party app
developers, according to people familiar with the work.
Yet a competing project won out in an internal contest ahead of
the 10-year anniversary of Siri’s launch. Known as Siri X, the
more-modest upgrade involved moving more existing Siri software
onto iPhones from remote servers to improve the voice assistant’s
speed and privacy. The Siri X enhancement was unveiled in 2021.
Tilley is the WSJ’s Apple beat reporter, and one gets the feeling he was tasked with filing a report with the above headline already written. These opening three paragraphs are the only interesting ones in the entire story. But there’s nothing actually new in them.
Here’s Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information in April 2023 under the headline “Apple’s AI Chief Struggles With Turf Wars as New Era Begins” (archive):
In some cases, Giannandrea’s new hires have run into seemingly
impenetrable bureaucratic obstacles. In one example, he in 2019
recruited another close friend, Arthur van Hoff, to explore a
project to rewrite Siri from the ground up. Code-named Blackbird,
the effort involved creating a lightweight version of Siri, which
would delegate the creation of more functions to app developers,
said five former Siri employees. The software would run on iPhones
instead of in the cloud, which would improve Siri’s speed and
performance while enhancing user privacy, they said. Demos of
Blackbird prompted excitement among employees on the Siri team
because of its responsiveness, they added.
But there was a problem. Blackbird competed with the work of two
longtime senior Siri leaders: Alex Acero and Robby Walker, who
were responsible for two important teams that helped Siri
understand and respond to queries. Acero and Walker pushed for
completion of their own project, code-named Siri X, for the 10th
anniversary of the voice assistant, which aimed to move the Siri
processing software onto the device for privacy reasons.
However, Siri X’s goal was simply to reproduce Siri’s existing
capabilities without the more ambitious targets of Blackbird, the
people said. Despite that, Acero and Walker won. They assigned
hundreds of people to their effort, which subsumed and killed
Blackbird. Most of their project was completed in 2021.
Same story, but Ma’s version from 13 months ago included the names of the engineers in charge of the dueling projects.
Back to Tilley’s report at the WSJ yesterday:
Apple has long prided itself on perfection in its product
rollouts, a near impossibility with emerging AI models. While
OpenAI systems have dazzled more than 180 million users with their
generation of writing, images and video, they are prone to
occasional errors, often called hallucinations. Apple has had
limited tolerance for such issues.
“There’s no such thing as 100% accuracy with AI, that’s the
fundamental reality,” said Pedro Domingos, a professor emeritus of
computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.
“Apple is not compatible with that. They won’t release something
until it’s perfect.”
How does this square with the state of Siri as it works today? Does Tilley think today’s Siri, though limited in scope, is “100 percent accurate” and “perfect”?
Don’t know about you, but that’s not my experience.