Mossberg: Can Apple win the next tech war?
As phone sales slow, can the company pivot to AI?
By Walt Mossberg
theverge.com
...But Apple could have a very hard time in the AI war that's dawning — even though it actually pioneered the first widespread, voice-controlled, cloud-based AI assistant, Siri, on the iPhone 5 years ago and is now rumored to be bringing Siri to the Mac. (In fact, former Apple CEO John Sculley pushed an AI-powered conversational assistant concept called Knowledge Navigator, complete with concept videos, way back in 1987. It envisioned a conversational digital helper with abilities far beyond any that exist now.)
There are three reasons for my doubts: first, Apple's history with cloud-based services in general has been weak and inconsistent. Second, Apple has done shockingly little to capitalize on its lead with Siri. And third, Apple's steadfast devotion to privacy and lack of a search service or social network means it doesn't have the range and volume of data its competitors hope to use to power personalized, actionable AI capabilities... |
