Re: apple intelligence not so intelligent

On 2025-01-18 18:57:53 +0000, Colour Sergeant Bourne said:

On 1/16/25 11:02 AM, badgolferman wrote:

Apple has come under intense scrutiny for rolling out an underbaked
AI-powered feature that summarizes breaking news — while often
butchering it beyond recognition.
 For over a month, roughly as long as the feature has been available to
iPhone users, publishers have found that it consistently generates
false information and pushes it to millions of users.
 Despite broadcasting a barrage of fabrications for weeks, Apple has yet
to meaningfully address the problem.
 "This is my periodic rant that Apple Intelligence is so bad that today
it got every fact wrong in its AI a summary of Washington Post news
alerts," the newspaper's tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler wrote in a post
on Bluesky this week.
 Fowler appended a screenshot of an alert, which claimed that Pete
Hegseth, who's been facing a confrontational confirmation hearing for
the role of defense secretary this week, had been fired by his former
employer, Fox News — which is false and not what the WaPo's syndication
of an Associated Press story actually said. The AI alert also claimed
that Florida senator Marco Cubio had been sworn in as secretary of
state, which is also false as of the time of writing.
 "It's wildly irresponsible that Apple doesn't turn off summaries for
news apps until it gets a bit better at this AI thing," Fowler added.
 The constant blunders of Apple's AI summaries put the tech's nagging
shortcomings on full display, demonstrating that even tech giants like
Apple are failing miserably to successfully integrate AI without
constantly embarrassing themselves.
 AI models are still coming up with all sorts of "hallucinated" lies, a
problem experts believe could be intrinsic to the tech. After all,
large language models like the one powering Apple's summarizing feature
simply predict the next word based on probability and are incapable of
actually understanding the content they're paraphrasing, at least for
the time being.
 And the stakes are high, given the context. Apple's notifications are
intended to alert iPhone users to breaking news — not sow distrust and
confusion.
 The story also highlights a stark power imbalance, with news
organizations powerless to determine how Apple represents their work to
its vast number of users.
 "News organizations have vigorously complained to Apple about this, but
we have no power over what iOS does to the accurate and expertly
crafted alerts we send out," Fowler wrote in a followup.
 In December, the BBC first filed a complaint with Apple after the
feature mistakenly claimed that Luigi Mangione, the man who killed
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had shot himself — an egregious
and easily disproven fabrication.
 Last week, Apple finally caved and responded to the complaint, vowing
to add a clarifying disclaimer that the summaries were AI-generated
while also attempting to distance itself from bearing any
responsibility.
 "Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making
improvements with the help of user feedback," a company spokesperson
told the BBC in a statement. "A software update in the coming weeks
will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization
provided by Apple Intelligence."
 "We encourage users to report a concern if they view an unexpected
notification summary," the company continued.
 The disclaimer unintentionally points to the dubious value proposition
of today's AI: what's the point of a summarizing feature if the company
is forced to include a disclaimer on each one that it might be entirely
wrong? Should Apple's customers really be the ones responsible for
pointing out each time its AI summaries are spreading lies?
 "It just transfers the responsibility to users, who — in an already
confusing information landscape — will be expected to check if
information is true or not," Reporters Without Borders technology and
journalism desk head Vincent Berthier told the BBC.
 Journalists are particularly worried about further eroding trust in the
news industry, a pertinent topic given the tidal wave of AI slop that
has been crashing over the internet.
 "At a time where access to accurate reporting has never been more
important, the public must not be placed in a position of
second-guessing the accuracy of news they receive," the National Union
of Journalists general secretary Laura Davison told the BBC.
 https://futurism.com/apple-ai-butchering-news-summaries

 Maybe so...but it's for the children and the environment :-)

According to a recent report, all the servers, cooling, etc. needed for this silly AI fad will be worse for the environment than all of the cars driving around in California.  :-\