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I say this every time: the average person never wants to hear the letters A and I. Not because it has a negative connotation, but because they don’t care how their phone gets them an answer to “when is my dentist appointment” they just want it to do it.
Yep, by using the terms intelligence, and occasionally Apple Intelligence and not AI[1], they get to talk about these features in a way that don't trigger an automatic mental gag reflex. The fact they cottoned on to this 2 years ago is actually pretty impressive.

[1] https://x.com/ArtemR/status/2056961743142957143

"Mental gag reflex" is exactly right. I'm running two different instances of Claude Opus 4.8 on xhigh right now, and I'm absolutely fine with it because that's what _I_ want to do.

AI features on my toothbrush, toaster, refrigerator, doorbell, washing machine, word processing software, TV, whatever, without my actually asking for them first are THINGS I DO NOT WANT, and adding those features to those devices will cause me either to have go to great lengths not to use them, or - much more likely - just not to buy them at all if I can.

Is it impressive though?

I wrote this in another thread recently: AI is a technology, not a product. Consumers don't care about technologies, they care about products.

This is pretty elementary stuff. SV has a propensity for conflating technology and products, I'll give you that, but Apple's product management has always been relatively good about this kind of thing.

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At least for consumer software, AI is synonymous with annoying nagware forcing itself in your way.
I keep hearing that "the average person hates AI", but their revealed preference is different. Any time they need to make anything that takes effort a lot of people immediately turn to ChatGPT.

People don't like to consume AI-made things but they sure like to use it.

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I think you're trying to say, the term 'AI' is _associated_ with chatbots being added in places (websites mostly) where they are more of a nuisance than added value.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is AI consumer software and is a hit, albeit mostly free tier users.

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I think this is the jaded HN way of seeing AI in products. It's not reality.

I work on a popular consumer product (from well before AI existed) which is incorporating more and more AI features. When we release AI features they receive far more attention and usage than traditional features.

Users who interact with AI features are much "stickier" (more likely to still be users months from now). Free users who interact with AI features are much more likely to convert to paid users. AI features get more press, more online comments, more usage, more conversions. If this wasn't true we wouldn't be spending so much money on it.

Exactly this. I want a system that can understand basic instructions like this, in context, with all the necessary unspoken assumptions implicit in natural language and the problem domain, and get it right _every single time without fail_. A bit like AppleScript, but in natural language and smarter.

Most definitely _not_ a cleverer system that sometimes hallucinates or goes off on tangents, or sends my personal information to parties unknown.

But also because it has a negative connotation. Not with everyone, but with a lot of people. If someone says "That looks like AI", do you think they are intending to make a compliment?
Yeah that comment is making it seem like people don't care if they are using AI only the results, but they not only do care they actively hate AI and tech companies associated with it too.

There is a reason why there is a massive backlash against data center buildouts across the US.

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Exactly. Even though Siri is completely lost today, my friend asks it a number of random things, all she wants is an answer. Currently it redirects to the web, it’s enough for her. I told her “next year it’ll work!” And boom. We’re in the EU. Sad.