Craig Federighi says Siri won't become sentient, but it'll get better

For me, I’d just like to be able to ask a question and get an accurate answer. The one thing Apple will miss out on with their model is that more people will just want to ask Siri some seemingly random question and get an answer, no matter what the question is. My friends and I get together every Friday, go to ,inch and co e back to my house where we have cake coffee or tea. We talk about everything. Often we need information to settle an argument. I see that as being more useful than summarizing my emails or messages.

but Apple is farming that out to ChatGPT. It’s out of their control. I’d really rather Apple handled that as well.

AppleInsider said:

Apple sees Apple Intelligence as a decades-long arc that needs to be done responsibly. That arc begins with iOS 18.1 and the other operating systems on or around October 28.

As I mentioned elsewhere all consumer-facing AI features right now really shouldn't be considered more than an alpha or early beta state. Some AI tasks that people do in 2024 and 2025 won't be done in 2026. There will new tasks that arrive. Some will come and go. But for sure there is no reason for anyone to consider today's consumer-facing AI features as mature technology.

We see too much of that online in various discussions -- not just here at AppleInsider -- where people are judging AI as though it were fully featured and not expected to change.

That is shortsighted at best, maybe more naïve. It would be like judging the viability of streaming music based on early 64kbps streams (long before people had smartphones).

Federighi and Apple are the only ones being honest that none of this is anywhere near becoming ‘sentient’ AGI. 

Has anyone else noticed that it’s  already WAY better at finding the correct music results?

I can actually get it to play the correct Led Zeppelin (I-IV) or Yes (Yes, The Yes Album) album now. Before, it was impossible.

AppleZulu said:

Federighi and Apple are the only ones being honest that none of this is anywhere near becoming ‘sentient’ AGI. 

That's not really relevant right now from a consumer perspective. 

Consumers will use what they have at their disposal just like always. 

Honesty isn't exclusive to Apple and Craig offered up a ridiculous line here:

"One example he cited was that Siri is already helping users open their garage door or send a text, while ChatGPT isn't meant for those use cases." 

This kind of utterly useless statement should be whacked out of existence by the interviewer. 

Why didn't Stern just take him to task with that one? 

Or this:

"Not only is Apple's on-device system and Cloud Compute difficult to build and execute"

The question 'and....?' should have been asked here. Apple is not the only company doing this. On device compute has been around for years and for very clear reasons. That will increase over time as hardware options increase. The cloud compute part is just a soundbyte too. Stern should have been all over him on that.

This summer I realised my sister-in-law was having 'conversations' with AI and the context and follow up questions/answers were spot on most of the time. 

While it is never going to be perfect (your personal mileage may vary) and user reflection is a must, the actual usefulness was off the scale in terms of context and accuracy. The same obviously cannot be said for Siri. 

And it will only get better. Being sentient or not is irrelevant as long as the overall experience is worthwhile.