There had better be an option to disable any and all LLM tendrils in iOS or I'm going to probably end up throwing my iPhone into a lake. Call me a luddite or neo-amish or whatever, but IMO the entire feature set is cursed and I want nothing to do with it.
I don't think it is cursed yet. Apple seem to be taking a very conservative approach to the whole AI and LLM thing and are externalising it to OpenAI so they can cast it off if it turns out to be a pile of crap.
Where they are investing heavily is in some of the local on-device ML stuff which actually looks vaguely useful. And it's all standard classification, image processing and summarising stuff. All viable, not overhyped solutions. The photos.app contextual search thing is very useful already for example (even if it can't identify the difference between horses and cows very well).
Think of the standard hype/maturity curve. Apple know how to play it.
Apple already force useless "assistants" on you, how is this different? For example, you can't use CarPlay with Siri disabled, even if you dont use Siri at all. Similarly, you cant disable ChatGPT training on your chat history without also disabling history in general.
Forcing me into a voice assistant enabled at all times regardless though kills the whole thing. I end up preferring buttons and gui because the hands-free "assistance" is most often exercises in frustration and I conclude not worth it.
At this point many years of poor quality experience whenever I encounter voice processing is the matter. Happy to call me old, stupid, and bad at speech ... all are probably true. Still won't fix the frustrations I have for Siri, Tesla, Google-something, Bixby's button, and Alexa devices ... much less every customer service line now consistently apologizing that they didn't get that.
Carplay is leaps and bounds a better approach to gui/console in most cars. Much better than Subaru, Ford, Toyota or others can produce and there shouldn't be a voice assistant cost along with it.
You are not happy with the voice recognition quality (me neither). But I don’t see how Siri being an “assistant” changes anything. It’s just (poor) voice recognition (and only when triggered). What is the difference between an assistant and voice commands for you? And which of these differences cannot be turned off?
The key here is when you state "when triggered", it's already of poor quality when listening, why would I apply that low quality to an open mic situation? I don't want Siri available spending the few milliamps listening for something I'm trying to avoid.
I also don't want side button only, this triggers most of the times I drop my phone onto the wireless charger in the car.
Edit: Clearly I should have bought iphone SE, at least home button avoids that?
It doesn't make sense that I should enable it just to avoid it and still get accidental triggers.
Carplay does not need any voice assistance to offer the basics like maps and audio. Lock the whole thing for all I care without Siri enabled, but to be useless if I choose to run my phone without Siri? Seems stupid to me. The trade off here is worse compared to set and forget with just Bluetooth connected for maps and audio at this point.
For a real trade off I'd consider;
How about something easy like a shortcut which enables Siri when Carplay is triggered and disables Siri when Carplay disconnects?
Just don’t use it. Why is it so important to disable it? It’s similar to saying “I don’t want to use pockets, hence I don’t want any cloth with pockets”.
It really feels like you’re fixating a bit on this.
Since your have omitted “6/ person returns iPhone and happily goes on with its life”, I assume it’s the least bad option for you still.
If you really want the level of detailed control you’re about, take a custom rom on android. It’s more work but it’s possible.
I don't get this, at least if it relates to my particular reply. Someone seemed to be having trouble understanding the reasoning of someone else and I tried to summarize it. Where's do you get condescending from this?
Probably, but I don't use it, only use my car buttons/dial for controlling CarPlay. The times I've tried the voice control it got maybe 50% of the instructions correct, which was more distracting than the muscle-learned buttons/dial control, so I keep using what works.
If I was trying to use voice control, it'd make sense. But I don't, so it doesn't.
In the data control of ChatGPT, you can now disable the use of your data for training:
Model improvement
Improve the model for everyone [ ]
Allow your content to be used to train our models,
which makes ChatGPT better for you and everyone who
uses it. We take steps to protect your privacy. Learn more
Still, I agree with the OP that all these ML/LLM should be on device. My mobile phone is very personal.
I’m not clear on the “forcing” part. What does Siri do you want it to stop doing? I use it to set a timer from time to time, that’s it. The rest of the time, we simply do not interact. It never triggers mistakenly for me.
but i see it could have a lot of potential benefits - especially on an iphone with multiple apps easily being able to communicate properly through this AI.
and of course it can provide awesome benefits for disabled people - making their device much more capable than before (in their hands)
Oh no, AI used from inter-machine communication is a recipe for disaster in my view. AI it’s simply _not reliable_. You don’t want that for communication between machines…
honestly, I hope regulation allows sideloading and alternative apps sometime soon. We need to firewall our devices from the accelerating pace of data snarfing.
Some developers have a crazy attitude about what they should be able to do and what the customers want. I would guess that a good portion of Apple customers consistently choose Apple products to avoid the developer attitude above. The smugness is truly off-putting and unlikely to create a good customer experience.
Somehow the developer feels enlightened and has taken on the mission of saving Apple customers. Apple customers can be quite technically literate and want a platform that keeps the developers at a distance. This is the feature one of the key features.
Google is as bad or worse, but there are plenty of other choices. Run a FOSS tablet, or forgo using a phone at all. They really are optional. I have not carried a phone in years.
There’s just so many things that have piled on the smartphone train that sometimes it is necessary. The recent blog about turning an iPhone into a dumb phone is realistically the best bet for a regular person - and if you do the sign in to iTunes / don’t sign in to iCloud, you get access to these (realistically. sometimes mandatory) apps
Apple offers people an extended social graph, support, and great UX so long as they leave their freedoms at the door of the walled garden. They win people over with carefully crafted psychological manipulation.
This is toxic behavior that stunts societal progress for money.
That is like a cult in that it exploits peoples tribal nature to lock them in to an ecosystem for the gain of those at the top.
I find that to be evil. I also find Microsoft, Google, and Meta to be just as bad if not worse, as well as all companies who emulate their behavior.
We should be selling users services, useful tools without restrictions, increased freedom, increased privacy, and increased defense against centralized entities that may put them at risk for profit or power.
