[fumar]

The lengthy post boils down to this quote " Google could build the AI to win it all" but it is not guaranteed. I appreciate the context as someone who hasn't kept a close eye on Google's AI efforts, but Ben doesn't cover why Google has a right to win outside of search data. Interestingly, there is no mention of AWS and Amazon's wider efforts to create AI tools. There is hype around chat bots but what is the likelihood chat functionality is the premier AI gateway in the near future?

Edit: I thought about the topic more while wrapping up my work work. I am on the periphery of AI at one of the large US tech companies and we've placed AI bets along many of our existing products. Every day I run into this – "I manage xyz product, we plan to add AI to help with XYZ in 2024" or we added this chat functionality for "manual job to be done." I don't claim to have insight into the future on which of these solutions will be successful for their intended clients. The pattern I see is that AI can be quickly (relative) integrated or coupled onto existing software services. Is that the secret to AI? It will permeate through our digital lives either in small or big ways – but critically it isn't one AI to rule them all. AI micro services will act like intermediaries between humans and some end service.

It is like chocolate. Why not pair chocolate with [enter any food stuff]? You could hit a home run like chocolate with peanut butter or chocolate chip cookies. Now we have chocolate everywhere including drinks, but chocolate isn't required for a tasty result. And importantly chocolate isn't always a standalone dish – it can be though.

[carlineng]

The argument is more than that -- namely that in addition to having sophisticated AI, Google also controls the OS (Android) and hardware (Pixel). Being able to integrate best-in-class AI at every level of the stack is a tremendous advantage. OpenAI can't do this because they don't control the OS, and will always need to go through an app. Apple can play since they control OS and hardware, but at the moment they appear pretty far behind in the AI aspect.

[ghayes]

Is anyone really that far behind on AI given that the newest open-source models are closing in on GPT4?

[simion314]

I agree, Apple needs to wait and see what team offers a good alternative to OpenAI and buy them, I hope they do not buy and close an open source friendly team.

[willvarfar]

I'm expecting:

* Microsoft to do it for business users

* Google pixie does it first for personal use. Android phones might even momentarily be more desirable than iphone

* Apple eventually get there, for their walled garden

* Amazon etc fall totally behind

* And, years later, users of google docs are still waiting for basic AI help writing docs whilst google completely doesn't try in that space

[hef19898]

I know that I'm part of a minority, but I'll avoid touching an "AI" enabled smartphone as long as possible. All privacy issues and tech issues aside, so far I have simply not found a single use case in which AI-tools would make my life easier.

[kolinko]

As for privacy - Apple does most, if not all AI processing on-device. E.g. Siri understands voice commands when offline (although may work worse then I think).

A good on-device assistant would be super useful: - instead of searching for a setting, you just tell it to change a device setting - decent appointment/reminder setting ("remind me to invite joe to my next birthday party" -> and it knows who Joe is, and how to set up such a reminder) - all kinds of search ("what was that book about startups that someone recommended to me a year ago?", "open up a tracking page for that thing I ordered last week", "show me a photo of XX I took last summer") - managing e-mails the way old-school secretaries did - "any important messages?", or "reply to everyone I'm out of office, unless it's related to X"

[hef19898]

As I said, while this is usefull for others, I have zero need for any of this. Settings? I know where to find those. Setting alerts? Use the standard calendar and timer apps. Internet search? Type it.

I make a point to not share my search history with anyobe, or any other data as much as possible. And I wont start doing so to enable some AI gadget I am more than happy to live without.

[gwicks56]

I think it will be more like:

"Pixie, reply to that email for me"

"Pixie, book that car service for me and remind them they promised a free brake fluid replacement"

"Pixie order all the ingredients I need to make my wife her favourite dish"

"Pixel, buy everyone in my family birthday presents"

I will 100% pay for that capability, and as someone that uses GPT4 to basically do my job for me, it really does not seem that far off. And I do think Google has an advantage here over Apple or anyone else, not just in Hardware, but in the enormous amount of data and information they have about both people in general, and specifically me.

[Loughla]

I can see it being wildly popular. Especially if it can edit photos.

Phone, remove the blemish from this picture.

Phone, make my hair slightly more red, and my waist thinner by one inch.

Phone, tell me who that guy in the background of my pictures is.

Phone, what time do I need to leave to get coffee on my way to work.

Those sorts of things.

[willvarfar]

AI would be much better at code _review_ than code generation.

AI would be much better at auto-completing whole sentences and paragraphs and suggesting rephrasing etc in docs and presentations, than at answering questions about the world.

But the race seems to be to answer questions about the world based on a 2021 dump of the internet, so ... :)

[hef19898]

Oh, as a tool I see a ton of use: personally for image processing (sharpening, noise reduction) even if I can perfectly live without it, professionally I see a ton of potential use in optimizing planning (supply chain, production, scheduling, netwrok planning...) by proposing scenarios and supporting the people doing said planning. I don't need AI to search the internet for me, summarize a book (if it is worth or important enough for me, I just read it) or all the other stuff AI currently is doing.

[benjijay]

Just to be that picky guy; > Android phones might even momentarily be more desirable than iphone

Most of the world is already there, and it's not momentary. iPhones only dominate the market in North America - Android has the majority basically everywhere else

As for docs, I can see them pushing for more Gemini integration depending on how M$ Copilot goes when it reaches saturation

[oarsinsync]

> Just to be that picky guy; > Android phones might even momentarily be more desirable than iphone

> Most of the world is already there, and it's not momentary. iPhones only dominate the market in North America - Android has the majority basically everywhere else

Market share is not necessarily proportional to desirability. Cars make a useful analogy here. I think a Ferrari is more desirable than a Volkswagen, but Volkswagen’s market share is much higher.

[acdha]

Android is there because it’s what the cheapest devices use and most of the world does not want to pay even iPhone SE pricing. That’s relevant because the play described of making the Pixel lineup more compelling will hit the same problem if it’s tied to more capable hardware which is outside of the budget for many people.

[lmm]

OpenAI has close ties to Microsoft and we've already seen them integrate AI into Bing; MS may not be a player in phones but they make a major OS and some of the best hardware money can buy. I'm really not convinced vertical integration matters all that much, but if it does, they can do it.

[wayfinder]

Unsurprisingly, they already integrated OpenAI into Windows. You can ask it questions and pass it files.

[poulsbohemian]

>Apple can play since they control OS and hardware, but at the moment they appear pretty far behind in the AI aspect.

I disagree strongly with this, and it has everything to do with how we conceptualize AI.

I get in my car and plug in my iPhone. CarPlay immediately causes the Maps app to pop up and route me to my next meeting. I can say "hey siri, set a reminder to call Mr. Jones at 3:00" and she will gladly comply. If my buddy texts me while I'm driving to the meeting and asks if I'm free for golf tomorrow, she will automatically try to pin that on my calendar. I can throw out lots of examples here, but you get the idea.

Now granted, voice recognition in Siri has been pretty bad. She struggles with a lot of basic things, like putting on the music I request. But, there's no question in my mind that these augmented reality moments are where AI is actually making a difference in our lives and represent the actual business opportunity bridgeheads. In Apple's case, they not only already control the hardware (the phone, the watch, the earbuds, the tablet) but they've also figured out how to start bridging this into other hardware like a vehicle.

[anileated]

The impressive ML is ML that’s part of daily life. Even as I tap on this iPhone’s keyboard, button regions (tappable, not visible) slightly change in size depending on what it predicts the next letter would be. No one calls this “AI” yet it’s the same tech, and arguably more beneficial for the society as a whole than “AI” as a dedicated commercial service purpose-built to launder copyrighted creative works for profit (which is what AI is in the eyes of an ordinary person these days).

[datadrivenangel]

And yet the iPhone keyboard has gotten worse than it was a few years ago. I used an iPhone 8 years ago, and when I got an SE last year the keyboard was too smart, and so I disabled all the AI features.

[anileated]

Adjusting invisible tappable key regions, swipe typing, etc., these are based on ML even if you disable predictive typing and other settings though.

[ben_w]

Conversely, I've recently had Apple software mess up in a whole bunch of different ways:

• Maps doesn't understand that I don't own a car, defaults to driving sometimes

• Autocorrupt rather than autocorrect

• Calendar suggestions only work for the simplest of dates, so it suggested an event for the wrong month

• One case where it seemed to think the only timezone in the world was California

(It's not all negatives: for me, Apple has the least wrong voice transcription AI, and I do like their computational photography and definitely the ability to select text in images and Safari's website translation — but even then I don't think they're way ahead of the rest with these things, and website translation was definitely behind).

[jeffbee]

I suggest you try the assistant features on a Pixel 8 Pro. They have all the features you mentioned (except the creepy eavesdropping golf one) and the interaction is miles ahead, especially the text to speech.

[plufz]

I do not have any Android products, I only use Google Assistant through my Sonos speakers. Do you know if that code is different from that on the Pixel? (Because my experience of Google Assistant is long from good/useful, it struggles with basic tasks, I have to overpronounce to be sure it can differentiate “lights on” from “lights off”, etc etc.)

[jeffbee]

I don't know, because I haven't used Sonos for this purpose. But it's easy to imagine that a mobile handset with an array of microphones that you tend to hold near yourself would be more suited at the hardware level.

[nextworddev]

AwS is just a reseller of 3p LLMs at this point (via Bedrock). If you don’t believe me try their 1p LLM (Titan)

[acdha]

That may be true but consider that AWS was “just” a reseller of Intel servers a decade and a half ago (remember people saying S3 was too expensive and hard to use with tons of competition, too?). Integration matters and if they do a good job of making it easy to build into applications I’d easily believe that the path for a lot of businesses will involve a partner they already have extensive relationships and experience with.

[nextworddev]

S3 was actual innovation that AWS led the market in. Apples to oranges comparison.

[acdha]

EC2 was innovation, but many people didn’t see it. S3 was more distinctly new although still not the first object store or even object store over HTTP as a service, but if you were there a LOT of people did not share that perception and said it cost too much, would never scale, or required too much software to be modified. I’m not saying that to diminish the importance of S3 but simply that we often wildly overstate the importance of being first to ship an idea versus easy to work with, low-drama for operations, etc.

[nextworddev]

Ok we can both agree tho that AWS isn’t the platform leading LLM innovation. That said I’m not disputing that AWS will make money with Bedrock and enterprise contracts

[emschwartz]

I understood the crux of the argument to be that the holy grail UX is having an always-on AI assistant you can have a spoken conversation with. He says that Google’s combination of hardware, Android, loads of data on the user, and good enough AI chops might be a combination that makes an assistant so helpful that it would get people to switch away from iOS to use it.

[keenmaster]

Intelligence makes almost everything better, so maybe salt is a better analogy than chocolate (especially once the hallucination rate of LLMs becomes more acceptable).

[semi-extrinsic]

I like your chocolate argument and will steal it for future use.