Apple’s big Siri upgrade still doesn’t have a launch date. Why AI can be hard to predict

At WWDC, Apple said it still needs time to develop its more advanced version of Siri. It’s another sign that shift to AI is unfolding differently from how other major technological advancements have played out, like the internet, social media and the smartphone.

Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developers Conference with a frank admission on Monday: The advanced version of Siri it announced at the very same conference one year ago still isn’t ready. “As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,” Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, said during the event, echoing comments from CEO Tim Cook on the company’s most recent earnings call. “This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.” In a little more than two years, AI has gone from powering what was once a niche chatbot to being a catalyst for what some tech leaders are calling a tidal wave that could be as life changing as the internet. But Apple’s Siri delay is perhaps another sign that the technology’s evolution is far more difficult to anticipate than previous major technological advancements, like the smartphone and social media. While Apple and Samsung release new mobile devices once or twice a year, AI models are constantly evolving — and are far less predictable than cyclical products. “(AI models) are launching far, far faster than once a year. These updates are actually fast and furious,” Oren Etzioni, former CEO of the nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, told CNN. “…These models can be opaque, unpredictable (and) difficult to measure because they’re so general.” And the way people embrace AI assistants might look different from how smartphones, web browsers and social media apps have shown up in our lives. In the smartphone and social media industries, major players such as Apple, Google and Meta emerged early on and cemented their position for more than a decade. But in the AI industry, being first may not necessarily always guarantee long-term success.