How narcissism is an American disease and it's spreading fast do to companies like Apple, Facebook and online dating learning how to profit off it.
I think the only way to not be aware of this trend is to be american
Apple in 1997 [1]: "Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Apple today: "Very Victorian, which I loved."
[1] https://thebrandhopper.com/2023/08/20/apple-top-commercials-...
From the bicycle of the mind to the tricycle of the mind.
The birthday one was in no way meant to be humorous.
May have missed the mark for many, but the scenario depicted is certainly intended to be funny. "Oh shit, we said no presents but the kids did some!"
- "we said no gifts" - right... so you're the only one who actually followed that? Well, bad luck!
- usually it's the husband forgetting the wife's birthday, not the other way around.
- ...and finally, I'd like to quote Jesus himself: "He who is without sin can cast the first stone" - this ad (and the others) show situations most of us have been in, so they're at least relatable.
Also, those ads showing different AIs acting like HAL but saying "the future doesn't have to be scary" are terrifying. In one the woman is locked in her house by her AI-bot, and uses a menacing tone, doesn't let her leave until she grabs her water bottle. In another, a man is in a self-driving car, which changes routes and takes him to a surprise birthday party. It is NOT a leap to go from these to hearing actual cases where "woman is trapped in her apartment and dies in a fire because the AI wouldn't unlock her door (or AI died first in the fire)", or "self-driving Tesla is hacked by the cartel/abusive ex and drives passenger to their death." I want NO part of the future they are selling.
It doesn't even need to be a conversation. Humans forget things.
"Oh damn, I forgot! Let's grab dinner tonight!" or w/e, that's all people need.
Most AI in a nutshell right now.
The face she makes when walking away from her family ... imagine being married to that.
To me they looked bleak, depressing and evocative of a culture that views giving respect to other people as an annoyance that needs an app to make it go away.
I wonder how much of (people self diagnosing themselves with) autism is actually related to other circumstances like lack of media literacy, lack of familiarity with social circles/norms (or lack of cultural knowledge)
The Ubuntu ad is not bad certainly but it is meh, and where it lacks is where it goes on the tech mode.
The Apple Intelligence ads really are sending a terrible message. Humanity needs more honesty, not a higher pile of lies.
More accurate endings would be:
- "I thought we told Warren to stop uploading company emails to chatgpt."
- "A photo collage?!, after I spent a week building you that new console table for your birthday."
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.
That video specifically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m0MoYKwVTM
I managed to find the ad elsewhere
...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)?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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/
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
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}
{1, 1, 3, b}
{1, 2, 2, b}
{2, 2, 2, b}
{1, 1, 3, 10}
{1, 2, 2, 10}
{2, 2, 2, 9}
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...".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It's unbelievable that someone would use a brand-new feature on their device 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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vGAVcSjqMps
This is just running defense for the reality distortion field.
> I know plenty of "lazy fuck" people not yet using LLMs. Having it built in to the device is likely to change that.
Sorry I just don't live in this world. Everybody and their dog uses LLM. Especially the professional crowd affluent enough to afford Apple devices. The untapped market here is tiny.
I use an iPhone, a MacBook, I use a HomePod as part of a home automation system. I'm not an anti Apple fanboy. This shit is completely stupid and underwhelming.
> That's fairly standard for ads.
Now you're just being a condescending prat. I don't need a lesson in the obvious. I told you it's stupid for specific reasons that you simply care to not acknowledge, fine. Think whatever you want, you obviously love these ads. Great.
And since when was, other things are shitty too so this must be good even a worthwhile observation?
> Prepared food is sold on a "because you can't cook, obviously"
But, if you could actually cook that particular day, you wouldn't be using the prepared food. (Whether you can cook any day or not is another thing). As someone who cooks regularly, neither prepared food nor McDonalds are beneath me. On the otherhand, you obviously could easily be using an LLM for the last two years to write emails. So this is dumb. As a dad, I'm ok with "dads are stupid" tropes if there are other redeeming qualities. Your Apple ads have none.
I can relate with someone that can't cook. All I want to do with that Walter is punch him in the face. And, no, the knowing acknowledgement from token Asian doesn't improve things.
My prediction, like the Google ad, that ad is going to tank like the turd it is.
We do indeed live in very different worlds.
We had a similar "moral panic" about Satanic child sacrifices in the 1980s. Satanic child sacrifices were not a widespread practice, though.
You got me. This isn't debate club. If you want to think Apple's incumbent base isn't heavily using (or actively avoiding) LLMs either ChatGPT and Gemini or the 10k other B2B remixes, you can think that. And for the ones that aren't are they just holding out for Apple's flacid offering?
I don't know what to tell you. I work in midwest academic medicine, not tech, I'm not in the SV bubble. The people that don't use this stuff for either clinical (the only fucking rule I need in ad block seems to be freed.ai) or research work are still very aware of it, they're not waiting for Apple. It isn't a friction issue. People working in management consulting, it is used heavily because there is at least a desire to provide a professional sounding voice to customers. The thing is that in the real world J (the draft email should have said nigga, that would have been funny) knows Walter is still an idiot, yet Walter is still employed so what possible benefit is there to using an LLM. For internal stuff, you know you're not fooling any body, that is often the reason you don't use it. Not because you can't, but because it's pointless.
I don't think Apple is marketing a compelling product with that effort. The people that really want state of the art wordsmithing have had options, and what is Apple giving the naysayers? Is this better than ChatGPT, that example in the ad sure as hell isn't.
Maybe you're right that Apple is really reaching out with a compelling novel email writing product to their base, I'm just not convinced.
I don't use HomeKit as a core, but I use it because it integrates with iDevices. I am very much looking forward to Siri being less of a dumbass. Still think this marketing effort is lame.
Many people who comment on Apple have never actually worked there and they think some curated history book tells the real story.
Go have a conversation with Eddie Cue or Craig Federighi about Steve. Or even Jony Ive. Perhaps talk to some of the original Lisa and Mac teams.
The messaging that AI is for lying is another big yikes. Apple marketing department has lost the magic.
Is there a specific advertisement you're referring to here, or just all apple watch advertisements? I haven't really seen any ads for the apple watch, and I am curious if this is an exaggeration.
I'm assuming by "literally" you meant "metaphorically", but I'd like to look up which ad you are referencing to get an idea of what you mean.
Edit: I've watched the ads. They are not in great taste, in my opinion, however they also did not tell me I would literally die if I don't buy an Apple Watch.
Or a similar crash detection feature in iPhone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWBFF9R3VmU / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsAL36M8bwE
I think they are correct in their use of "literally".
After a while it feels like crying wolf...
On the other side of the coin of more widespread and continuous monitoring is always the concerns of increasing false positives
I'm not sure how else they advertise that now your Apple devices replace OnStar and Life Alert, than advertising kinda the same way that those did (but less lame, hopefully).
Different audiences, Apple has power users, but its largest audience is an average person (my wife for example). The average person doesn’t care about tech, they want it to work, work well enough and be dependable.
Linux is can be a minefield, and Windows is a mess IMO.
I’m just being provocative to highlight this is a subtle issue. I agree with the general sentiment that Apple shouldn’t be encouraging ppl to lie. I found the actress kying to her colleague one quite tasteless.
That said, this all sums up how I feel about generative AI at the moment: a solution looking for a problem.
The average person doesn't care about an animation of a terminal or a chip with 3d composited "Performant" or "Secure" text. They care about "what can this thing do".
The scenarios could have been different or better to me. But maybe I’m not the target audience, and iPhone is the beginner smartphone that almost anyone can use.
The Ubuntu ad looks cheap.
I’m kind of glad Apple is putting a touch more flavor in their ads.
I recently saw some Ray Ban Meta glasses ads.
One of them had a guy ask the glasses to describe what was in front of his face, and then he remarked “wow that’s accurate” (there are people skateboarding). The guy wasn’t blind. His use of the glasses made little sense.
Another ad has a young man asking his glasses how to dress for fall and then blindly following the suggestions like they’ve never dressed themselves before. It was embarrassing to watch.
A third ad has someone ask their glasses how to decorate for a disco theme party, and then they implement the very mediocre suggestions.
None of these things required AI, it’s just kind of “there”, and companies are like “idk maybe people will use our AI to like… dress themselves? or something?”
Email to boss: could've been someone who had a genuine struggle with language using it to finally get their boss to notice the effort they put into their work.
Remembering a name: could've used it to get the name and left it at them being impressed rather than making it a lie.
Summarizing email: could've used it when in a hurry at work whilst someone sent an extremely long email.
Video memories: could've used it for two people to share a nostalgic moment together without making it a lie.
With Apple Intelligence, now you do.
One of my favourite ads is a very simple story that is made gut-wrenching by creating an emotional connection and some great production value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2lv_Xl1e4U
The guys says he's surprised she remembers him. She could just look straight at the camera, say what can I say, I'm very intelligent, wink, and it wouldn't be gross.
It's not the first Apple ad to be in poor taste this year.
But generally, yes the uses aren't there. In the Apple AI video, the worst is that the 'more professional' text, actually reads much less professional.
If someone in a business situation sends you an AI generated email (and it's obviously AI it's so easy to tell) it makes it seem like they are unable to write English properly, giving the opposite impression than intended.
“no big deal. get it done. steve”
Like other attempts at AI wearables like the Rabbit and Humane pins, I think that falls under "maybe useful but why wouldn't I just do the same thing with the phone that I'm carrying anyway".
- Half of what people use the Web for is looking up trivia that would have been too high-cost to look up before, to bother with (most of the other half is posting on social media about it). Glasses further lower the cost of looking up many categories of trivia, making even more trivial pieces of knowledge cheap enough to look up. On a revealed-preference basis, this seems to be something people really like and find irritating when denied—nobody used to feel an itch when they couldn't find an answer to some fleeting trivial question that entered their mind. Once exposed to the Web, and even more so when smartphones were introduced and the Web became something you carried everywhere, they do, and it'll be the same for answering questions about stuff they're looking at, once used to glasses.
- The use case of capturing otherwise-missed (getting out the phone is too slow) fleeting once-ever moments is going to be very compelling for people.
Yes AI algorithms are behind it, but hardly something new to brag about in 2024.
Yes, Google Translate has been able to do this for a while now, but I still find the experience very yanky and high friction so that I don't do it on a whim, usually.
Everything-translating AR glasses would have been something I'd have really appreciated on a trip to Japan, for example.
Not trying to be snarky, I think I very much understand your reaction to this constantly monitored and surveilled world we're in. I think it's arguable that these types of glasses will make it worse too.
But people are recording without permission on their phones since several years now - what has been your reaction there?
I'm not a very confrontational person, so I tend to grumble and say nothing.
The original text is:
> Hey J,
> Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you're the big enchilada.
> Holler back
followed by the sender's first name in lower case surrounded by flexed bicep emoji.
The AI rewritten text keeps the "Hey J,". It changes the rest to
> Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task.
> Please let me know your thoughts.
> Best regards,
followed by the sender's first name capitalized and with no emoji.
I don't see how the second could be considered less professional than the first.
From the other comments here it seems like some people may be seeing different ads when they follow the links, possibly depending on their location. The text above is what was in the ad I get to from the link in the article. Are you getting something different?
On the other hand, this is a pretty common scenario: user is surprised when AI gets something right :) Not sure it’s the best showcase of a product, though …
Why not highlight those in the ad rather than the useless stuff?
Personally Ive been enjoying wearing my Ray Bans for the past year and have used them to do things no other glasses can like...
- Translate.... was in Canada recently and a sign about Jasper the town i was in was in French. I asked Meta to translate it... it took a pic and audibly translated it for me.
- Was in Harpers Ferry WV on an overlook ..looking down into the town of Harpers Ferry which has a huge church which i have no idea it's name yet ask Meta what church is that over there. Took a pic and told me.
- Was in line at HersheyPark up on a platform and my friend wondered how many people you think are in line so i asked Meta and it took a pic and gave me an estimate.
E.g. these aren't burning problems in my life. Even the translation, I'm happy to just be in the dark, or take a phone pic and translate if I really really need to.
Having everpresent AI tech on my face doesn't seem worth it if these are the kinds of problems I get solved.
I dunno, I'm picturing a future with everyone standing around absorbed in their own devices (not too different from today) but where we struggle to ask each other normal questions due to offloading our collective intelligence and social skills to the cloud. Destined to become Daphne totally reliant on glasses to interact with the world around us.
I'm probably overly dramatic here. You're out having fun at a park with friends! I'm just trying to imagine how future generations will interact with this tech, particularly the youth who won't know a world without.
We all use Google to find knowledge/answers but most are not pulling out our phones during conversations cause that's rude. Yet it's not rude to get the answer from your glasses you are wearing on your face and still present in the conversation your having as well people will think wow that's cool (per my experience).
Also at times friends will ask me to ask my glasses things during our hikes and what not.
That's an idiotic toy to use among other people, and I am keeping things polite here. Unless you ask each of them if its OK they will be recorded and evaluated by Meta company (and who knows who else).
Your convenience stops right where rights of me and my family starts. Bring it next to any small kids and expect some well deserved non-nice feedback coming your way.
I could care less about other people I do not know I am using the glasses to capture my life (not theirs) and for
- Sunglasses
- To listen to music and take phone calls
- To take pics and videos of what Im experiencing in my life not others
- To enhance my conversations as pulling out my phone is rude to get the answer in a social conversation .. using my glasses no one has said anything rather thinking it's cool
They don't need to figure it out, they just have to wait.
People holding their camera phones up everywhere and (maybe! You can't know for sure!) recording stuff used to be off-putting in about the same way, but we got over it within a few years. Ditto various other socially-shitty things, like talking on a phone in public or using nearly-invisible earbuds that make it hard for people to tell where your attention is or even notice that it might be somewhere else.
I kinda wish we hadn't gotten over those things, but we did, and having watched it happen a few times I'm sure we will again for this.
Your examples were all pretty low-stakes, so I guess "it doesn't matter if it's correct" is fine for them. But what if you actually ended up relying on an answer to be correct and it wasn't? Would you independently verify the correctness, or just blindly operate on bad info?
Personally i think those who are concerned about whether it's correct or not are not ones to jump all into new technology yet will when enough of their friends, family and co-workers have done so. There they find that level of trust they seek.
If we have trusted Google all the years then the AI that becomes the most trusted becomes the next Google. Open AI needs to create their own smart devices (phone and or glasses) and with that they could become the next Google. The information GPT provides me seems correct and matches Google's AI. Siri even with 18.1 is still terrible ... just asked it what day is November 9th it forwarded me to a Google search (lame).
I disagree, I think this is bad ethics, and bad marketing people, working for Apple...what other explanation - same people crushed musical instruments and books, human craft-work -- using a hydraulic press, in a recent Apple advert.
Advertising certainly can show outrageous ways to behave, and it's "okay". Calling someone and simply shouting WAZZZAAAAAAP! into the cell phone, for the famous Budweiser advert during the superbowl...derives into a crew of 3-5 people shouting AAAAAAAAAAAZZZAAA into their phones, oddly. That was cute ....
However this is about enabling through lying. In one ADVERT it makes a Manager believe an Employee is more engaged than they truly are, rewriting their unprofessional language using the new "Professional" button, reasonably leading to a future misallocation of resources by the manager to the irresponsible seemingly under-skilled or simply lazy unethical employee.
What's worse is the people who are NOT using Apple products to lie. The Employees who did not lie about their grip on written language now have to compete with AI, wielded by their ill-behaved coworker. It stratifies society into Idiocracy.
This is a TERRIFYING series of advertisements chosen by Apple.
Signaling through speaking will become even more important. Get thy children to debate club, seminar-based classes (hope you're rich!), theater, and hell, I dunno, ToastMasters Junior or whatever.
That too is also going to be dead if we follow that logic.
But millions of people have been using Grammarly, et al. for this for years. Managers have actually paid to deploy tools like this to their employees. The ship you're talking about has already sailed.
it is a crippling of language.
the art of language ironically injured by automation.
Further, it’s pretty clear from the watching the commercial that the boss is not fooled by this. The humor of the commercial is supposed to derive from the absolute contrast between the well established and known behavior of the employee and the content of their email. Humor doesn’t always land for everyone to be sure but this sounds like the same sort of handwringing over tech replacing human effort we’ve seen for years. Calculators would let people bad at math sneak their way into jobs where you need math, IDEs will let people bad at coding sneak their way into places where you need to code. Now it’s “ai grammar editing” will allow people bad at writing professionally sneak into places where they need to edit professionally.
I might even still think my co-worker is a flaming moron who shouldn't be allowed out of the house unsupervised. But if I know that sending that in an email isn't going to solve anything and just make things worse, am I being deceptive if I remove that sentence from the email?
Or consider an alternative scenario. I attended a conference where a speaker made a reference to the Alamo. The speaker was older, and the reference would have been the same sort of "make a stand" reference any number of speakers would have made over and over in the 90's. But after their talk, I was talking with some younger attendees, folks born after the turn of the millennium. Among them, the speaker's metaphor was a hot topic. Specifically the "yikes" factor of referencing the Alamo in any way that in any way implied the defenders should have been looked up to. The speaker's intended message was lost in the specific details of their chosen metaphor because the words which they absolutely intended to speak did not hold the same meaning for the audience to which they were spoken. If some hypothetical AI speech editor existed where you could punch in the age range of your intended audience and it would edit out metaphors and references that would land wrong with the audience, is that being deceptive or is that good editing and "reading the room"?
If I try to watch a technical review on a smartphone, they’ll still talk about camera megapixels, screen size/brightness, corners, etc. No one talks about scroll sensitivity and jankiness, [bad] position of buttons on screen and on the frame, sensor nuances, how it feels in a pocket, can it work as a display, notification sounds and sound level separation, etc.
All marketing, including third-party based, focuses on absolutely basic features for abstract people who do nothing and have no problems to solve apart from taking pics of themselves and other two-digit iq activities. I guess it’s only logical for this image to walk into a skate park and ask their glasses about what these guys are doing.
That's a heck of a reach. Is it also a lie if I ask my partner what someone's name is when I forget?
The email writing one is pretty innocuous as well. Grammarly has been running basically the same ad for the last 5 years.
I agree the others are not so great.
> 0:16 Bella: Zac!
> 0:17 Zac: Oh wow, I didn't think you'd remember me.
> 0:19 Bella: Yeah of course, as soon a I saw you I'm like, it's Zac, nobody walks like Zac.
What does the Ubuntu ad say to the user? How does it capture someone’s attention? None of the ad tells me why this is something worth paying attention to versus other distros or OSs, it doesn’t even tell me it’s about the OS at all unless I already know what Ubuntu is.
Contrast with the Apple ads that tell you exactly what they want in the same time frame. Apple ads have always been tongue in cheek, and have always had a portion of people rubbed the wrong way because they took it too literally.
But at the end of the day, barring the few missteps like the crush ad, they seem to work for the target audience.
I find a lot of technical folk seem to struggle with “I don’t like it therefore it must be bad” and would have failed basically any media analysis class in college as a result. Similarly, the author falls into the “I like Ubuntu and this ad” and hasn’t stopped to think about how it plays to anyone but himself. It’s a really self centered outlook and one that means they’d never be able to market to others.
Exactly. Contrary to the article, it doesn't tell a story at all. It's just some slick-ish graphics with a few words overlayed on top. They're nice words. But they didn't really embrace "show, don't tell".
The main message is `sudo apt install btop`. But most people who use Linux already have this htop replacement installed.
The people in these new ads are lame and clearly Apple intends to portray them as lame.
Even back then they had the Mac vs PC or a variety of other ads too that weren’t “cool” but were funny. Tongue in cheek ads have been in their DNA since forever.
Take for example the new Mac mini ad which is cute
https://youtu.be/JjpGvjy0Gxk?si=Gk1cU80FiJX2KYbC
Or just scrolling through their YouTube channel now to find a few over the years
Find your Friends https://youtu.be/yk6UVnMn9ts?si=UIqblUwbbONPFyRR
The Greatest https://youtu.be/8sX9IEHWRJ8?si=NhRVcMZyOlU7-PfC
HomePod ( probably my favorite of the bunch. Directed by Spike Jonze, starring FKA Twigs. Imho one of the best ads they’ve done) https://youtu.be/k70OczvX45k?si=4cKP63L4UwdP1vaW
AirPod pros https://youtu.be/DpcXUXtZ4CU?si=AqWofXEOu7ejTCA0
One could argue that they’ve not had anything as iconic as the silhouette commercial. I’d agree with that, but I disagree with the position that their ads today don’t show cool people or that ads back then didn’t show “lame” people.
Like he’s doing something nerdy, dressing up in cosplay, but he’s doing it well, he’s got friends, businessmen get out of his way as he strides down the sidewalk. Some of the people he interact with don’t get him, but he doesn’t care. He’s nerdy but he’s living his best life.
The Mac Mini ad is cute, and it portrays the Mac Mini as a sort of… little computer with over-the-top bravado. It is sort of self-effacing and tongue in cheek, like clearly the little computer is over-compensating for its small size with attitude. But it works somehow. Partly because it is the device, I think. I’m not imagining being the computer, I’m imagining being the user, so the over-eager awkwardness of the computer doesn’t reflect poorly on the “me” character. Partly I think because the computer is like… awkward but not unpleasant.
There’s a big difference between being nerdy/awkward but embracing it, and being nerdy/awkward and a loser.
Some of these new ads look more like the latter to me. The Bella Ramsey ones, IMO, they are not so bad, like she’s doing a “forgetful/absent minded but still successful” character and it kinda works. But one with the guy who can’t write a professional email and the lady who forgot a gift but wants to sneak into the nice moment, they didn’t work for me. You don’t want to be those characters, right?
It’s the “you’re weird, you’re quirky, you’re different, you’re you” of being cool, not the jock/rockstar cool. The iPod commercials just happened to illicit both. But look at most Apple ads through the years and they have a consistent corporate theme.
That’s what is cool. Being confident to meet your friends at a convention in costume is cool.
Idk who said it, but it’s the “personal computer”. The person is key.
That Ubuntu commercial left me with a weird akwardness, not knowing what or who it was for. It said "For you", which was the best part and I think it means I am in control of things, but that message might be lost with everybody not familiar with IT/Linux/Open Source. I don't know what certificates it was talking about though.
Try watching the iPhone ads assuming you don't know what Apple does nor what an iPhone is. They make absolutely no sense.
Ads are targeted at a market, and these in particular assume some degree of familiarity. I guess the Ubuntu one in particular is to celebrate the 20 years, so it's a different vibe from a sheer call to action spot.
Also since you bring up familiarity, does that Ubuntu ad tell you which version it’s about? What’s it telling even a seasoned Ubuntu veteran?
And lastly, there’s a much larger percent of the population that knows what an iPhone is but even if they didn’t, it’s in the name. The ads end with iPhone, by Apple and show the product.
Based on that ad, what is Ubuntu? A desktop? An OS? A computer company?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe8revsg3k
Is that a story or one single scene ? Was there someone on the phone ? Is the text bubble that person answering ? or is it just movie magic like so many over ads?
It only makes sense as an ad if you know the product, otherwise you wouldn't even understand it's the phone doing it all.
We're in agreement that the Ubuntu movie isn't selling it either. My point was that it's probably not aimed at that, you aren't suppose to rush to Ubuntu's site to download an ISO on the spot after watching it, it's probably more of a branding act than a push to action. Precisely to seed the Ubuntu name perhaps ?
You don’t need to know how it happens.
And that’s fair about the Ubuntu ad. I think the issue is the Ubuntu ad isn’t trying to be anything much. But the author has positioned it on a podium against the Apple ads where it doesn’t belong. They’re not trying to do the same thing at all, and so framing them that way isn’t fair to Ubuntu
While watching those ads i considered a kids perspective. It bugs bunny looney tunes stuff. Its silly, cartoonish, and sticky. Its a very good ad.
Side-point: imagine if this clearly cartoonish ad did encourage "cheating at life". whats the downside? Those people are still putting in as much effort as they would have regardless. only now maybe they have read an example of a good email or a summary which could encourage them to learn more later. or maybe its just fun having a world where lazy people are trying to skate by a la The Dude
It is pretty depressing though. The main character is just kind of tired and sad.
"You need AI because you are lazy and stupid and do not care about honesty and accountability."
We've been working with it for over a year now and I'm of the mind that AI, in it's current state, really isn't a tool meant for an end user to interact with.
It feels like it's the most useful when it's transparent and you -- as an end user -- don't know that there's an LLM in the process. The best use cases seem to be those that don't require an end consumer to directly interact with an AI, but their journey through some process is assisted by an AI instead.
The problem is that a lot of the marketing -- like these examples and Google's very misguided "Write me a letter" to an Olympian -- exists because companies keep trying to make "fetch" happen; the AI becomes the journey instead of being an assistant in that journey.
Amazon's Rufus is a prime example. It's tucked away as a button that one has to activate explicitly. But it would almost be better if it could just clean up the search results when I do a search and a bunch of junk is returned.
The use case our startup is working is one more that I think really works well: why are you showing me these results?
Our product basically takes any search output and uses our internal knowledge graph for our clients to "explain" to the customer "why these results for this query/question?"
We use the same knowledge graph to then extend our client's native search results with much more relevant results using the LLM to better match results to the semantic intent of the question.
It's all quite nifty and transparent; the user wouldn't know that there's an AI involved without labeling it as AI generated.
I think being aspirational with AI can feel a bit in-humane. A lot of people seeing this experience a bit of cringe when the topic of AI is brought up. Maybe they’re worried about their job, that technology is too pervasive - whatever it is, they’re uncomfortable. It’s an easier pill to swallow if I can laugh at it. Apple seems to be picking up on that in these ads.
It's cheaper, though. I assume. The main effect of which is that it's finally cheap enough to be economical to phone-spam our grandparents and scam them out of their savings... hm, yeah, never mind, it's all down-side.
Like, that's actually useful but probably not super sexy.
The former is mostly just a reduction in task and condensation of information. The latter is the opposite: an extrapolation of some conclusion based on given information.
This is not the fault of an LLM, but the people using it and the use cases that have been designed. An AI assistant that just gave me the facts (condense) rather than generate its own conclusions (expand, extrapolate) is fine, IMO.
I don't love the Apple ads, but they are at least showing me some evidence of the features they're saying exist in Apple Intelligence.
Edit: the ad in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe8revsg3k
Apple seems to be big enough to make fun of the AI fiasco.
Apple's ads show you the product, how you can use it and how you and the people around you feel after using it (like you took a sneaky shortcut and happy, respectively).
I clicked on those thinking that the author may be overstating things but those ads are really really bad.
There’s basically 2 messages they’re promoting (the office worker one seems to be promoting a different message from the other 3).
The first ad: - You’re a loser and Apple Intelligence will make you look like less of a loser in an email. But also people will look at you, see you as the loser you are, and then immediately be suspicious about that email you sent.
The other 3: - Apple Intelligence will make you an even more efficient psychopath and make you great at manipulating loved ones and people who are interested in you.
WTF, Apple. The quality of Apple advertising has taken a huge hit over the past decade or so. But these ads go beyond just the anodyne nature of their previous advertising. This stuff is truly deranged.
Earlier it told me that it looked into my parcel tracking details and assured me that it was on schedule for delivery, so it wasn’t able to let me connect to an agent.
Except I hadn’t yet given it any tracking number.
The Apple ads are dystopian and revulsive. She really pulls out her phone while talking to a person and then lies to her face. A wife and mother forgets dad's birthday and smugly "gifts" him 50 auto-playing photos, as shown on her phone screen?
Ads tell you what the company thinks about it's target audience and clearly Apple thinks we're all just a bunch of bumbling fools that can't do anything without our phones.
Compared to this Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, which frames everything as something that can help you out and is fun and quirky: https://youtu.be/GZ-xGBTvtO4
I've been using Mac as my workhorse my entire career, switched from Android to iPhone recently. These ads are actually making me reconsider what my next hardware upgrades are going to be.
He's out of line, but he's right.
For a second I forgot where I was, and thought she'd be found out, then remembered it's an ad, and everyone is impressed.
Maybe the image is actually related to the woodworking? But I couldn't help but think, "that's about right - a random, ill-fitting photo"
What's funny is that google photos sorta makes these sort of random little videos all the time for you and asks if you want to see them. It also suffers from the issue of not really understanding the context from some of the pictures it pulls in. But this is a thing that's been around for a few years, like a lot of things, apple is late to the game but pretending they invented it.
I'm afraid I disagree here.
While I do find the Apple ads a tad obnoxious, they speak to the problems of normal people and how Apple Intelligence can directly solve these problems. How many people haven't forgotten a birthday, forgotten someone's name or felt stupid while writing an email?
The Canonical animation on the other hand, while cool, doesn't communicate to me that it understands my problems and is going to help me fix them.
Here's the full transcript of the Canonical ad: "Modern, Private, Performant, Secure, Supported, Certified, Everywhere, For Everyone, for You".
This is comparing apples to oranges.
This video was posted a month ago even when Apple Intelligence wasnt available at all and in any form https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe8revsg3k . Even present day after it was launched Siri can not do this.
Start-ups and other tech companies are doing the whole fake it before you make it so Apple is too. Some recent examples...Open AI demoed and sold if you sign up you might get access to their version of H.E.R. yet Many months later its nowhere to be found yet surely that juiced their revenue. Does it really exist or it was a fake it before you make it demo? Similarly with Musk bringing out those robots implying they were AI driven yet later we learn they weren't. Isnt this all something called false advertising??
I guess this is truth in marketing.
Contrast that with the Canonical ad provided as an example in the article, which I found a waste of my time and closed it after 30 seconds, having learned nothing and not drawn to use the product.
I was upgrading for these features so now I’m thinking of selling this 16 pro and buying a drum set because my 13 mini was easier to hold and apparently Siri isn’t getting any smarter according a the WSJ article yesterday.
Maybe the ad people tried to come up with relatively palatable ones?
Note that no one is cheating on their school homework, which is a huge consumer use case category. And no creative work was detectably plagiarized (art, code). Though they still did do employment slacking/incompetence gaining advantage, by increasing deceptive and time-wasting noise for everyone else.
Or maybe that's the actual use cases of their target audience?
i hate that ad because:
a) they're not really even doing sexual innuendo, they're just saying things in a tone of voice that makes you think they're making racy comments
b) why are the kids sitting outside the bedroom door listening? do they want to hear their parents doin' it?
At a push, if we wanted to try maintain a more essential meaning of "gross", I guess we could imagine that the author is saying that not doing an optimal job of selling your products is morally repugnant to them. Maybe that's true, I suppose.
An example of Apple actually being gross in their marketing is using the word "privacy" to mislead people into thinking they have privacy when they use Apple's devices. It's security they are attempting to offer to users, not privacy.
This intentional and somewhat subtle conflation of two terms in order to give people a false impression of Apple products is, in my opinion, properly gross.
If only he'd let Apple Intelligence proof-read his blog post.
That said the Ubuntu ad at the end eroded what trust I might have put in this blog author’s taste in ads. It was boring and didn’t make me feel anything. In fact if you swapped out the desktop screenshot with Mac or Windows it wouldn’t change any of the meaning. It was borderline AI-generate-able which is ironic given its context.
My dude. These ads were supposed to be funny. Can apple not joke? When did we all get so serious?
The actor looks and acts a little bit weird, even their mannerisms.
The other Actors are being dup'd by the Actor and her AI.
I think this add is targeted at the people being dup'd in the ads.
People associate the younger generation as a little bit weird and head of the curve wrt technology, and this Actor being younger and visibly a bit weird re-enforces that connection.
This ad is saying, buy this new technology or you'll be getting dup'd too.