Apple's AI under fire

Misleading AI-powered news summary has journalists calling for ban

Author

Leander Kahney
December 19, 2024

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I’ve had some jaw-dropping experiences with AI.

The other day, I had a problem with beehiiv, the fast-growing email platform we use to send this newsletter.

Like a lot of things, beehiiv has a knowledge base where you can search for answers. But as I was about to conduct a regular search, I noticed a prompt for its new AI assistant.

With very low expectations, I typed in my rather technical query, which came out half-nonsensical because I typed it off the top of my head.

To my utter amazement, it returned a perfect answer, and what might have taken me half an hour or more of frustrating search was answered almost immediately. I was truly impressed.

I’ve noticed that Google’s AI summaries at the top of search pages are often very good, too.

But one huge problem remains. Do I trust the answers?

Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t! It’s a real problem.

And today’s top post perfectly illustrates this lack of trust. Apple is in hot water because of a highly misleading, AI-driven summary of a news story. It’s the kind of mistake a human editor would probably never make — but is baked deep into almost all AIs.

Also in today’s newsletter:

  • What’s this? You can change the size and color of your Mac’s cursor? I’ve been using a Mac for decades and never knew this! Giant bright pink cursor here we come. Actually, it’s a handy setting if you want to really tweak your Mac’s aesthetics.

  • Steve Jobs hated leaks. Today’s the day in Apple history when he mercilessly crushed one of the leading Apple rumor sites of its time, Think Secret.

  • I guarantee it: The first X post below will blow your mind!

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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One more thing ...

❝

(On his generation) We wanted to more richly experience why were we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late ’50s and early ’60s. We were going in search of something deeper.

— Steve Jobs, 2011.

Today’s poll

Is trust in AI an insurmountable problem?

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Results from yesterday’s poll: Do you own a router or other products made by TP-Link?

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