[thrwaway1985882]

> I’ve watched that little animation several times, and they tell a better story in a minute twenty-five than all of Apple’s AI commercials combined.

If I showed that video to someone who isn't steeped in decades of Linux, I suspect they'd ask me what an Ubuntu is. As compared to the "schlub writes an email" video, which was compelling, funny, and actually shows the product they're marketing.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> As compared to the "schlub writes an email" video, which was compelling, funny

OP is right, though. What you're calling "compelling" and "funny" seems very much also like messages telling you to that it's ok to lie to everyone around you including your family and friends. That's not a funny message to me. It's an appalling one.

[stackghost]

Absolutely nobody is going to see these ads and to "Ah, well, now that I have seen this ad I will start lying".

That person is already lying about stuff. We've all done it.

I think the real indictment against Apple (and AI more broadly) is that this is the best use case for their supposedly revolutionary technology that they could come up with.

[Thorrez]

I don't want to interact with people who lie. I don't want to interact with people who say lying is a good thing. Apple is saying lying is a good thing ("genius") in some of these ads.

[addicted]

> Absolutely nobody is going to see these ads and to "Ah, well, now that I have seen this ad I will start lying".

I don’t think anyone is claiming these ads will get people to start lying. The claim is that lying to your loved ones is good and makes you smart is indeed the message these ads are sending.

People do lie. But they don’t usually feel good about it. These ads send the message that not only is that good, but Apple Intelligence will make you even better at lying.

It’s just a bad message.

[InDubioProRubio]

Loneliness is the product that creates more markets to fill the void.

[michaelt]

> What you're calling "compelling" and "funny" seems very much also like messages telling you to that it's ok to lie to everyone around you including your family and friends.

Eh, "lovable but lazy dumbass forgot something and has to lie their way out of it" is a pretty standard trope of boomer sitcom humour.

Just imagine these ads, but the person using AI was Homer Simpson.

[actionablefiber]

A lot of sitcom tropes involve behaviors that are repulsive in real life.

[foobarian]

Heh. That "little animation" is so generic, you could have substituted Ubuntu with Windows or MacOS and everything they showed would have been valid.

[vundercind]

Right—what "story"? "The appearance of desktop computers has changed over the period of time that Ubuntu has existed"? What does this thing do for me? Especially, what does it do for me that other platforms don't, or that I might not expect it would do for me?

[Zanfa]

It was exactly like every other enterprise animated product video. Random words with some electronic music. I was actually expecting "synergy" to pop up.

[amatecha]

At least they got one noteworthy "hit" on the jargon bingo card: "performant" -_-

[mateus1]

The most annoying part when I worked in marketing was explaining to people that it’s not about the their opinion, it’s about profit. One person’s take is worthless.

[boringg]

Can I just point out the self gazing nature of this post?

Short form: I made an Advertisement in AI, I promote it by making shitting all over Apple (get more viewership using Apple) and then finish off to say I watched my own video in amazement 5 times.

What a beautiful self promotional world we live in.

[digitalPhonix]

I can't tell who you're saying is self promoting? Apple/the team that made the Apple ads or Ubuntu/the team that made the Ubuntu ad?

[CaptainFever]

I think: Ubuntu/the team that made the Ubuntu ad.

[hbn]

It's funny the video is celebrating 20 years of Ubuntu yet the editing style and music choice feels like it should have been for the 10 year anniversary. Real early-2010s chic.

[windexh8er]

I think the write up seems to bring the indirect point that AI has limited use cases currently. So instead of taking the traditional Apple approach with showcasing the technical aspects of the product (an example being Apple has highlighted photography and video a lot in the last few generations of iPhone), instead Apple falls back on cheeky ads, which to be fair, are also not new to Apple marketing.

I do think that Apple's "white lies" series of ads are awkward, however. Apple has seemingly paused ads around privacy and security and are now targeting Apple Intelligence - they seem to be somewhat at opposite ends of the target market in a way.

It does feel as though Apple is conflicted here and I'm curious to see how it plays out for them. I'm, personally not a fan of the current generation or implementation of AI and do not want to use it. If AI could hook apps for more hands free operations at a deeper level I could see usability improvements for hands free environments which might be nice. Beyond that I really don't want it.

[Alex3917]

> I'm, personally not a fan of the current generation or implementation of AI and do not want to use it.

Why not? It gives vastly better than human performance across a wide range of problems. Just this morning I asked Chat GPT to find me the smallest set of positive integers whose median is 2 and whose average is 3.75, and it just spit out the correct answer instantly. That would have been an enormous pain in the ass to figure out how to do manually, but instead I got it done while in the middle of packing my kids' lunches for school.

[windexh8er]

Because, ultimately, I'd like to continue to think and solve on my own. If I want to leverage a chat model, which I do, I can do that very easily on my own hardware. I don't want it so far shoved down my phones innards that I'm paying for hardware that is useless outside that use case.

Imagine the next 30 years when the majority of the population has no clue on how to function without cloud connected models answering questions on the daily. Very Black Mirror.

I also don't trust any of the frontier model vendors at this point so there's also that. Especially Sam Altman / OpenAI.

[LeafItAlone]

>Imagine the next 30 years when the majority of the population has no clue on how to function without cloud connected models answering questions on the daily.

The basis of this argument has probably existed for as long as humans have been able to self reflect.

If technology can very reliably do something I need to do better than I can do, why would I spend energy doing it myself.

[windexh8er]

> If technology can very reliably do something I need to do better than I can do, why would I spend energy doing it myself.

In reality, you're spending more energy. That being, yet, another problem with this use case [0].

Also, did it really "do it better"? Maybe it did it better than OP could, by their own admission. But they didn't learn anything in the process nor did they seem to consider the validity. Will it be right next time? How does one know? As indicated above - it doesn't appear to be a stretch that it could have just as easily given the wrong answer. [1]

"In an age of information, ignorance is a choice." — Donny Miller

[0] https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/projecting-the-electri... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41997498

[CaptainFever]

Related quote:

"They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks." - Plato

https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/

Related blog: https://pessimistsarchive.org/

[windexh8er]

The irony of Plato's writings on writing shouldn't be lost on you.

[tzs]

In case anyone is curious how you would solve this manually, here it is. In what follows assume all lists are sorted from low to high.

For a list of just one or two integers the median and mean are the same so we can rule those out.

For a list of 3 integers the average is their sum divided by 3. But 3 times the average we want (3.75) is 11.25 which is not an integer. That eliminates lists of length 3.

On to lists of length 4. In a sorted list of length 4 the median is the average of the middle two numbers. The only pairs of 2 positive integers that average 2 are {2, 2} and {1, 3}. That gives us these templates for possible lists:

  {a, 1, 3, b}
  {a, 2, 2, b}

Remember, these are sorted and they are positive integers. In the first then the only possible value for a is 1. In the second a could be 1 or 2. Our templates are now

  {1, 1, 3, b}
  {1, 2, 2, b}
  {2, 2, 2, b}

For 4 positive integers to have a mean of 3.75 their sum must be 15. Setting b to make the sums 15 we get these as the possible solutions:

  {1, 1, 3, 10}
  {1, 2, 2, 10}
  {2, 2, 2, 9}

A quick glance to make sure that the 4th number didn't end up smaller than the 3rd number, and we are done.

[epcoa]

> and it just spit out the correct answer instantly.

What did it spit out? Because there is more than one solution (or none, if unhelpfully pedantic).

It's certainly possible with practice to quickly mentally figure out that 3.75 * 4 is the least whole multiple, so n = 4. Quick and dirty 2,2 makes a possible median and so 1, 2, 2, 10 and 2,2,2,9 are clearly solutions, since x+y= 15-4 where 0<x≤2, y>2 is not hard to do mentally. I struggle to call this a hard or enormous mental calculation. (Not missing the other solution, just acknowledging it takes an extra step - apparently it is hard for ChatGPT!)

4o actually struggled with keeping a median straight: https://chatgpt.com/share/67225a67-48ec-800f-a581-9651e7f65d...

And o1-preview had a very difficult time coming up with all solutions. https://chatgpt.com/share/67225ead-c9bc-800f-bcc1-067aacbf2b...

I'm not terribly impressed by that last one especially for nearly 2 minutes of "thinking". I also don't love that it keeps saying, set, set... A helpful tutor should at least gently point out these are not strictly sets. There's no solution of a set of positive integers that solves that problem.

If your GPT didn't give those 3 solutions right off the bat (I could not get mine to) and clarify they are not formally sets, it is a type of failure. Sure you can argue that a better prompt would improve it, but this is a problem, non experts putting in ill-formed or flawed prompts and not getting useful feedback where an expert human would be more helpful. A good human will tell you it's a multiset and in general there isn't a unique solution so the problem could be phrased better.

I asked o1-preview to make the question more rigorous and it came up with "Find all sets...".

[tr3ntg]

Agreed. The Ubuntu ad feels like it's written with Apple Intelligence. "Secure, Certified, Everywhere, For You"

[ellisv]

I agree. If I showed that video to anyone I don't work with, they'd have no idea what they were watching.

[briandear]

I have no idea what they were selling. Are they selling a free operating system?

[jasonlotito]

> If I showed that video to someone who isn't

...the target audience, it wouldn't work. Same with the AI stuff.

Show that to someone with no understanding of Apple and it's products, or AI, and you'll have someone equally confused.

The understanding here is that in both cases the marketing is targeted at a certain group.

More interestingly, you admit that one story promotes interest in the product, while the other promotes the viewer being, as you put it, a schlub.

Maybe you can explain why you being a schlub is better than wanting to learn more about a product (or how quickly you try to pretend like that's not what you mean/said and move the goal post, lol)?

[thrwaway1985882]

> Show that to someone with no understanding of Apple and it's products, or AI, and you'll have someone equally confused.

Apple is selling a magical button that unprofessional idiots can press to be perceived as professional. Who in the world is going to be confused by that?

[repelsteeltje]

Is there somewhere I can watch the Apple ad(s)? I don't understand what or who this schlub is.

[KTibow]

Ads are linked in the article, I believe the "schlub" is shown in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m0MoYKwVTM

[repelsteeltje]

Yeah. Somehow I get a different ad

[ceejayoz]

They're linked in the article.

That video specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m0MoYKwVTM

[repelsteeltje]

My bad, it seems YouTube guides me towards other ads. Might be because I'm in eu or not using their app.

I managed to find the ad elsewhere

[nicoco]

The post contains hyperlinks.

[jangxx]

The article has links to all the mentioned videos.

[epcoa]

Forget about lying, this is just amorally stupid and pandering.

I find the hypothetical universe where that guy is going to get anywhere good suggesting what his boss should “undertake” unbelievable. (Also not a good demo).

And we’ve been in this GPT world nearly 2 years. The boss is obviously supposed to be smart, he’s a black guy in a suit after all. Is this the first time he’s ever received something that was obviously from an AI. What’s he confused about?

[ceejayoz]

> The boss is obviously supposed to be smart, he’s a black guy in a suit after all. Is this the first time he’s ever received something that was obviously from an AI. What’s he confused about?

Ironically, you're doing the same thing as the actor in the skit - pretending to be confused, for effect.

Obviously, the boss is used to receiving unprofessional responses from the employee in question. Obviously, the boss is thrown as a result. Obviously, this is a contrived situation for the purpose of humor that in real life wouldn't go like this.

[epcoa]

The idea that a shlub like this would only just now for the first time be using an LLM like this is what is unbelievable. And as a joke it is simply stale. I get it, Apple has to at least pretend to themselves like they are groundbreaking in these things that are now years old. It's cringe because Apple thinks this is a novel premise for humor.

[ceejayoz]

> The idea that a shlub like this would only just now for the first time be using an LLM like this is what is unbelievable.

It's unbelievable that someone would use a brand-new feature on their device for the first time?

[epcoa]

Again: It's unbelievable that someone (like this) would be using an LLM to compose an email to their boss for the first time.

He's a lazy fuck office stiff (yet still manages to warrant an iMac desktop), you're telling me he's just now starting to use an LLM to compose emails? Sure, whatever. If you think this ad is clever and funny you are entitled to that, you're not going to convince me it isn't idiotic and the joke is old. Unless the message was Apple AI: the new thing for oblivious dipshits or the recently recovered comatose.

Their ad agency should know better too: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/google-pulls-ai-ad-for-olymp...

Even the bastion of pretentious journalism Fast Company has this headline: "In Apple’s new ads for AI tools, we’re all total idiots"

> Ironically, you're doing the same thing as the actor in the skit - pretending to be confused, for effect.

If you're intuitive enough to conclude that an otherwise inarticulate douchebag probably used an LLM to compose an email, why would you "pretend" to be confused? Makes no sense. There's nothing remarkable about using an LLM to write an email.

[ceejayoz]

> Again: It's unbelievable that someone (like this) would be using an LLM to compose an email to their boss for the first time.

There's always a first time.

> He's a lazy fuck office stiff (yet still manages to warrant an iMac desktop), you're telling me he's just now starting to use an LLM to compose emails?

I know plenty of "lazy fuck" people not yet using LLMs. Having it built in to the device is likely to change that.

> Even the bastion of pretentious journalism Fast Company has this headline: "In Apple’s new ads for AI tools, we’re all total idiots"

That's fairly standard for ads. Cleaning supplies are sold on a "so easy dads can use it" sort of basis. Prepared food is sold on a "because you can't cook, obviously" basis. etc. I have managers at work who ask me to write client emails for them, even, because I'm a pretty good writer.

> If you're intuitive enough to conclude that an otherwise inarticulate douchebag probably used an LLM to compose an email, why would you "pretend" to be confused?

The actor is pretending. The character is shocked - for comic effect - that such a nice email came from someone who never sends professional ones. In the real world the response is obviously more likely to be "ah, they used ChatGPT this time", but if you expect realism in ads...

This really isn't as complicated to understand as you're making it.

[kraig911]

I just get a sense from all this AI marketing hype is that AI is yet another grifter tool. The Ubuntu video was meh and I dont think it worked well to describe the story. A better video would be to show perhaps someone getting their kid an ubuntu laptop and how it shaped their mindset and future. Or Ubuntu on your grandma's computer and now we can enjoy coffee instead of fixing computers... etc etc.