Cabel Sasser

First three top-of-mind thoughts about Apple Intelligence:

• I really wish they would have addressed the environmental story. That would help me personally accept these features more. But I know they can’t… because the story isn’t good.

• I actually think a lot of it looks quite nice, feels Apple-esque, and the UI they’re doing is really cool

• I remain viscerally repulsed by any AI generated art lol (In their Notes demo the sketch looked better!)

True absolute star of the keynote: MathNotes

Jun 10, 2024 at 6:55pmWeb
Show threadEzekiel Jun 10, 2024
@cabel All this really comes down to what they have to offload to the cloud. Anything on-device is gonna be fine (or else it would wreck battery life)
Show threadCharlie SorrelJun 10, 2024
@ezekiel @cabel The models still need to be trained, which uses a ton of energy already. Plus the Chat GPT stuff is an energy nightmare.
Show threaddch82Jun 10, 2024
@cabel I never thought the day the iPad calculator was announced would ever come
Show threadDavid Crooks 🏳️‍🌈Jun 10, 2024

@cabel Math notes is cool.

I guess we can only hope that next year the story is “here’s how we've made AI more sustainable”.

Show threadEric PJun 10, 2024
@cabel Apple did not have to go that hard on the calculator app. That looked INCREDIBLE.
Show thread(((Jann Gobble)))🏳️‍🌈Jun 10, 2024

@cabel The environmental story on it is relatively fine - on an iPhone 15 Pro (or later) and M-Series iOS device. (on-device)

It's the devices prior to A17 Pro that is gonna hurt... #WWDC24 #ios18

Show threadPhilippJun 10, 2024
@cabel yeah all that generated art looks repulsive. GenMoji seems slightly more acceptable…
Show threadmike sugarbakerJun 10, 2024

@cabel

* they are doing great work for the culture by situating AI imagery firmly in cringe memoji land

* on-device AI is the only good environmental angle. If people have to pay for AI energy themselves, the incentives are right for it to get more efficient.

* after 35 years they've finally sherlocked wolfram, who deserves it

Show threadIvan MirJun 10, 2024

@misuba @cabel yup, the art produced by Apple has had that sterile cringy corporate vibe for years – just look at their emojis.

So AI generated images fit that space and should live right next to the exploding-head-wild-boar memoji.

Show threadJC 🪐💾🌄📚Jun 10, 2024
@misuba idk man, I wish memoji were more culturally cringe. I see a lot of memoji pfps on mastodon.
Show threadJeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱Jun 10, 2024

@misuba @cabel I actually had the opposite thought re: environmental impact.

A billion iPhone/iPad/Mac users aren’t going to notice the minor increase in cost to charge their devices every day, and many will use unclean power to do so.

As opposed to a single organization that could pay more attention to that stuff and quite intentionally source solar/wind/hydro/etc. power for their data centers.

IMHO if there was a good environmental angle they’d have pointed it out.

Show threadmike sugarbakerJun 11, 2024
@jeff @cabel trouble is there isn’t a single institution, there’s a bunch and they’re all trying to outspend each other because they’re all afraid one of the others will lock them out of some yet-to-be-discovered underwear-collection scheme
Show threadJeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱Jun 11, 2024

@misuba @cabel Apple is a little different insofar as it’s unlikely that they’re doing the frantically-in-search-of-a-business-model thing the others are doing.

This is, as always, about selling little glass rectangles and services make little glass rectangles more appealing.

I actually see some meaningful benefits (mainly privacy-related) from doing most stuff on-device. I just don’t think environmental impact is one of them.

Show threadJeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱Jun 11, 2024
@misuba @cabel I’d be interested in seeing how they address that as they’ve made some pretty unambiguous commitments regarding environmental impact, I’m sure they’ll be asked about it. It’s possible some of my assumptions are wrong.
Show threadScannerJun 10, 2024
@cabel I am wondering if Siri can finally work with someone that has a slight stuttering speech impediment. (And being able to type into it anywhere is a big win).. but the minute they went on the image generated part, summaries, it was making me grimace super hard (having seen how bad they can get).
Oh, I do want to see what it does with my horrible handwriting (it can read it pretty well, I am curious about how it will make it legible for other humans.)
Show threadRich AestheticJun 10, 2024
@cabel I think the AI art looks cool, but its totally subjective. Maybe someday if someone sends AI art, it’ll show up as non-AI generated art on people’s devices for people who don’t like the way AI art looks 😂
Show threadChristopher GriffithsJun 10, 2024
@cabel For a moment there I thought Tim was about to reference how Apple could do AI garbage without the corresponding environmental horror story that’s associated with the server farms and such powering all this LLM stuff, and then… crickets. A huge fail there on a bunch of stuff I’m really not all that interested in, for the most part. Better Siri? Great. Pass on almost all of the rest.
Show threadisaiahJun 10, 2024

@cabel my wife (a high school math teacher) only looked up from her own work once to look at the keynote. it was the math notes section.

when it solved an algebra equation she visibly groaned and said “ugh!” — i can’t tell you exactly why. but i know she didn’t like it at all.

AI images don’t seem to disturb her, but AI math gives her the creeps.

maybe each of us has our own personal uncanny valley of AI creepiness.

Show threadMarina EpelmanJun 10, 2024
@isaiah @cabel Let’s be clear, it didn’t solve any equations (or “solve math” 🤮). It plugged some values into an expression. It did some arithmetic. It plugged. It chugged. It didn’t solve anything.
Show threadisaiahJun 10, 2024
@marinaepelman @cabel as someone with no arithmetic skill who likes advanced math i’m all for it.
i think for my wife’s work, anything that obviates learning basic algebra makes motivating her special ed students that much more difficult.
Show threadMarina EpelmanJun 10, 2024

@isaiah @cabel So far, they haven’t shown anything beyond what a very simple graphic calculator could do, but in a prettier package. (It can plot y=x+2, but can it plot x+y=3?) So, calculations with numbers, not solving equations, etc.

Also, showed total misunderstanding of what the word “solve” means by saying “solve math” in the keynote and writing “solve functions” on the website. Just unforgivable!

Show threadisaiahJun 10, 2024

@marinaepelman @cabel ok now i have to go try to slip “solve math” into a dinner conversation and see how wife kids react

wife has math degree, and technical-editing credentials, one kid is getting his math degree, the other is finishing engineering degree

so this will probably be nails on chalkboard. tho sometimes they’re pretty blasé about grammar so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i’ll report back my findings.

Show threadMarina EpelmanJun 10, 2024
@isaiah @cabel Yours sounds like the kind of family I’d enjoy meeting :-) (and I am super curious about technical editing credentials for mathematicians and everything that entails!)
Show threadisaiahJun 11, 2024

@marinaepelman @cabel we’re the nerds you’re looking for. 🤓

after uni my wife launched into a teaching career. a year later she wanted a do-over.
so she worked at several software companies writing manuals (hey, remember Stuff-It?) and picking up technical editing certificates.

after kids grew up a bit I think she was ready to try teaching again. now she’s a spec-ed math teacher at the local high school.

dhe doesn’t write/edit much anymore except when i ask her to edit my software docs.

Show threadJamesonJun 10, 2024
@cabel Agreed! I do wish they’d explicitly addressed the source of the image training. I’m sure it’s NOT as awful as what Meta/Adobe and others are doing. But then why not say that, loud and clear?
Show threadSeanJun 10, 2024
@cabel they’ll address it as they always do, at one of the hardware launches. Nothing to be worried about.
Show threadGene Cowan 🏳️‍🌈Jun 10, 2024
@cabel @lisamelton That Mathnotes stuff was pure Star Trek.
Show threadCory BirdsongJun 10, 2024
@cabel it is really damning that there is still something just off and weird with the way AI-generated images look even in the extremely constrained space of drawing an emoji.
Show threadJosh HrachJun 10, 2024
@cabel Since the majority of what they demoed is on device, is there a need to mention the environmental aspect? Plus, it sounds like most of it isn’t coming until this fall. Perhaps they’ll talk about that impact during the September event.
Show threadSteveJun 11, 2024
@cabel ‘viscerally repulsed’ perfectly describes my thoughts on the artwork ‘improvements’. But there’s a worrying implication which could take hold that hand drawn imagery is somehow second best.
IMHO there’s no way anything it produced could better the (once) 5-year-old’s house sketch.
Show threadCaiJun 11, 2024
@cabel The total silence on environmental impact was really disheartening, especially when we know it could be *really bad* (see Microsoft). In 10 years we will look at the state of the world and curse the AI pushers of the 2020s; this feels like Apple just picked the wrong side.
Show threadGreg KaplanJun 11, 2024

@cabel I wish they stayed away from the ai images. If they had only done the genmoji it would have been OK because I could rationalize that it was trained off of Apple’s art and not the stolen art of thousands of artists.

They sold privacy real hard but failed to address all other ethical issues with gen AI