Why AI smart home assistants aren’t good enough

Large language models are currently the be-all and end-all solution. The technology’s versatility is part of its appeal: the use cases for generative AI seem huge and endless. But then you use these things, and not enough of them work well. And you wonder what we’re really achieving here.

on This episode of vertcastNilay returns to the show full of thoughts about the current state of artificial intelligence — especially after spending the summer trying to get his smart house up and running. But before we get to that, talk about Our new ad-free podcast option, Which launched this week! (If you’re a subscriber, go to your account settings to find feeds for all our shows.) We also talk about Apple’s new M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Proand Vision Proand wonder how important the chip bump really is.

Next, it’s time to talk about artificial intelligence. We’re talking about the case of AI assistants, which are clearly the killer consumer app for LLM students, and which no one can build well yet. ChatGPT and others are fun to use! But that doesn’t mean it has to be useful — especially not in the ubiquitous, all-knowing way that we actually need. The ideal product here is clear and exciting, but we don’t seem to be anywhere near it. Unless you’re really excited Talk to your laptop.

If you want to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first in podcast and hardware news:

And in the lightning round: