Andrew Maddox

Tag: Anthropic

  • Bloomberg: Apple Weighs Using Anthropic or OpenAI to Power Siri in Major Reversal

    Mark Gurman reports (paywall) that Apple is considering using OpenAI or Anthropic to power Siri.

    Maginative has a little more on Apple’s failures with AI:

    This isn’t just about technology. It’s about Apple essentially admitting it can’t keep up in the most important tech race in decades.

    The backstory makes this even more dramatic. Apple originally promised enhanced Siri capabilities in 2024, then delayed them to 2025, and finally pushed them indefinitely to 2026. Some within Apple’s AI division believe the features could be scrapped altogether and rebuilt from scratch.

    I have a lot of Apple products, and I find Siri’s utility to be limited to things like “play the song, Back in Black” or “call my wife.” And the Apple Intelligence presentation from WWDC 2024 remains a black eye for the company, so I welcome this news as a helpful recognition of Apple’s position in the AI race as well as a way to make their products more useful for end users.

  • TechCrunch: Congress might block state AI laws for five years

    Senators Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn include a measure to limit (most) state oversight of AI laws for the next five years as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” currently in the works. Critics (and the Senate Parliamentarian) have reduced the scope and duration of the provision to modify the measure.

    However, over the weekend, Cruz and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who has also criticized the bill, agreed to shorten the pause on state-based AI regulation to five years. The new language also attempts to exempt laws addressing child sexual abuse materials, children’s online safety, and an individual’s rights to their name, likeness, voice, and image. However, the amendment says the laws must not place an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI systems — legal experts are unsure how this would impact state AI laws.

    The regulation is supported by some in the tech industry, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whereas Anthropic’s leadership is opposed.

    I’m sympathetic to the aims of this bill as a patchwork of 50 state laws regulating AI would make it more difficult to innovate in this space. But I’m also aware of real-life harm (as a recent NY Times story profiled), so I’d be much more sanguine if we had federal-level regulation, a prospect that seems very unlikely considering the current political makeup.

  • Checking In on AI and the Big Five

    Ben Thompson writes on the Big 5 (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft) and where they stand in the AI field today.

    … [is] AI complementary to existing business models (i.e. Apple devices are better with AI) or disruptive to them (i.e. AI might be better than Search but monetize worse). A higher level question, however, is if AI simply obsoletes everything, from tech business models to all white collar work to work generally or even to life itself.

    Perhaps it is the smallness of my imagination or my appreciation of the human condition that makes me more optimistic than many about the probability of the most dire of predictions: I think they are quite low. At the same time, I think that those dismissing AI as nothing but hype are missing the boat as well. This is a big deal, even if the changes may end up fitting into the Bill Gates maxim that “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

    I tend to agree with Thompson’s predictions — change over the next decade will be significant (and hard to imagine now) and the likelihood of the dire predictions coming true is astonishingly low in the near term.

    Like Thompson, I assumed that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI would position them to lap the other companies listed here, but the Copilot product is persistently disappointing, especially when considering ChatGPT’s rising utility. Google Gemini, as a tool, is gaining capabilities, particularly as it relates to Veo and programming, although I think the Gemini-infused Google search results have too many embarrassing mistakes for it to be a useful tool today.