Apple’s Keynote at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference is a mere three hours away from when I’m trying to get this posted. Dynamic Musings has been neglected, but I want to quickly scribble down my thoughts and hopes for what Apple is going to announce with Artificial Intellignece. If you judge the news and the general discourse, Apple is either going to revolutionize the space or disappoint everyone. I don’t see how Apple can follow its normal modus operandi of being late to a market and then finally cracking it. We just don’t know that much about AI. It reminds me about how Bluetooth was added into everything even if there was no reason for it.
Before going into what I want to see out of the announcement, I want to write down how I’ve been using AI and my general thoughts. My wife and I had a discussion over the weekend on tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. We use them to either summarize our thoughts on a topic or as a starting point for new projects. Nothing that is sent to us is used as-is, but as input that goes into our final products. I find that useful but the thing I wrestle with is if it’s a net positive for the world. By all intents and purposes, running large language models that take hundreds (thousands?) of input is intensive on the servers. Running those servers take energy. The energy used result in emissions that are not going to contribute the climate positively. In fact, I get the sense that it will exacerbate the climate crisis. With Google adding it’s AI to every search and potentially Apple introducing things to billions of iPhone users, if we’re not thinking about this then I’m going to be bearish on our chances to survive long-term on this planet.
First and foremost, I want to see that Apple is thinking about this. I want as many of the features to be done on-device. If they are going to be sent to a server, I want those to be opt-in and some sort of indication of the overall cost of doing an action.
Next, I want a better Siri. I’ve been able to avoid Siri for most tasks but now that I have a Car Play-enabled car, I’ve been using it a lot more. Due to its limited functionality that will reliably work, I’m left to adding reminders for me to perform actions when I get home or at a later date. I can’t actually do them. I’d love for Siri to be able to look at the apps on my phone, grok the various actions, understand my intent, and then perform those actions. The Rabbit R1 has its Large Action Model and that’s basically what I want from Siri.
Finally, I’d like for some of the current features to be expanded. I love the photo memories. I love the journal suggestions. Combine them please. Make them better. I don’t use the Journal app because I have to write things. It should still push for context and feelings, but the phone already knows so much and to have it spit out a journal of the things I did in a day could be really cool. I’m reminded of a website that I used a lot when I was trying to collect Xbox Achievements. 360voice would create a blog entry each day you played through Xbox Live. It was rudementary, but it was cool and fun.
