alt Hacker NewsSiri was the first widely available AI bot but they forgot to open it to developers. The ecosystem would have grown a million fold in all these years
Never underestimate the power of a bored programmer
Siri turn on the lights
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Siri find a solution to the Riemann hypothesis
$ Siri 'List the files in this folder'
Replies
That’s been around for ages. Documentation is here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit
For major platforms: “iOS 10.0+ / iPadOS 10.0+ / macOS 12.0+ / watchOS 3.2+”
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re missing?
> Can we start with Siri for the terminal?
It already exists in macOS 27: fm(1)
It is an extremely powerful tool, but here are the basics:
# Ask the default on-device model
fm respond 'Explain this shell error in plain English: permission denied'
# Start a conversation
fm chat --instructions 'Let's talk about economics.'
# Use the larger Private Cloud Compute model
fm respond --model pcc 'Are zebras and horses related?'
# Pipe stuff to a model
echo 'What is Swift?' | fm respondI'd settle for a siri that can at least turn the lights off properly.
Google assistant on the nvidia shield left Siri in the dust years ago. Siri can't even chain basic commands in your smart home, it can't retain any kind of context (e.g. dim the lights...a bit more).
Most people do not know tools to their problems already existed before AI.
Example: "I can use AI to combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF."
$ Siri 'rename this thousand of photos in these folders describing their content and make sure to use the same name for duplicates regardless of their size'
I am waiting for this function to sort my folders
The command might have changed.
The thing is, Apple will have never lost this opportunity. The distribution advantage of the user base is so deep they can basically always implement this at will.
Apfel filled that role: $ apfel "List the files in this folder."
What about: just not Siri at all. What about that. What about MrSunshine. I would rather have my own bot that I code. But no, vendor lock in.
Amazon did exactly this with Alexa skills and it hasn’t exactly been a booming success. Turns out that all of the things you listed as examples are stuff that most consumers don’t actually want or will use.
“AI as a chat bot” has always been cool and fun in sci-fi movies, but it’s the least imaginative real world use for it. We need to move past it.
> $ Siri 'List the files in this folder'
Why in the world would I ever use this instead of just ‘ls’?