Big Tech’s Big A.I. Push with Tom Merritt – TMO Daily Observations 2023-02-10
Daily Tech News Show’s Tom Merritt named generative A.I. the most important story of 2022. It is not slowing down in 2023. He joins Ken to talk about this week’s announcements from Microsoft and Google. Plus – what’s going on with Apple and A.I.?
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Ken and Tom:
Great and thoughtful discussion.
I also believe that what Apple are doing with AI (Siri) has less to do with specifically engaging a chatbot/AI-augmented search engine than it has to do with what machine learning does even without being asked. We already see this even with how Siri anticipates, based on our behaviour patterns, our next needs or requests, and proactively prioritises those in our tasks. For example, Siri knows that I start my day with a workout. I use a primary app (Teambeachbody) but also supplement my strength training days (thrice weekly) with routines on YouTube. Siri knows which days I am going to do this, and will put YouTube at the top of my app selection unasked, followed by Beachbody. On my HIIT days, it prioritises the Beachbody app. Next, when I’ve finished, it will list, unasked, my classical music station, which also features hourly news briefs in the morning, which I can start without having to search. It also knows that, on Saturdays, after my workout, I am more likely than not to play the live Met opera broadcast, and will put that at the top of my list.
It now even knows what days my wife is working out of town, and will suggest Messages or Find to check in on her, which I’ll do at least once, because we live in uncertain times.
These are all things that Siri is doing in the background, without my having to ‘arrange’ or request it. None of these have I had to ‘request’ or create a shortcut to enable. These are just a few examples. It constantly prioritises, most often very accurately, whatever service or productivity app I am most likely to use throughout the day, varying by time of day and day of the week.
I expect this capability to eventually migrate from the phone to the place we will find even more convenient, wearables, at functional parity with perhaps some additional wearable-specific features that would be less relevant on a pocket device. We can already see the beginnings of this on the Apple Watch.
Cheers.