How much control are you willing to hand over to Apple Intelligence? [Poll]

More than a decade ago, I noted a shift that was taking place in my tech usage, with reader comments indicating I was far from alone. Essentially I started out wanting manual control over lots of processes before later opting for the convenience of allowing Apple apps and services to automate them.

I think we’re approaching another of those inflection points – this time courtesy of AI. Whenever Apple Intelligence evolves into something powerful, we’re going to have to decide exactly how much control we’re willing to hand over …

That 2014 piece seems rather quaint now! I was talking about things like manually managing the organization of my music library, and wondering why I didn’t feel ready to make the jump to streaming music instead.

Years ago, before either Google or Apple ecosystems were really deserving of the term, I managed all my device synchronisation manually: I decided what content got synced on what devices. My music too: iTunes was allowed to play it, but not to manage it – I took care of the folder structures and meta-data myself […] I’m not quite ready to give up owning my music in favor of streaming, but I’m beginning to wonder why. 

These days, I still have my music collection of course, but it mostly sits in a dusty corner of a hard drive as I stream 99.9% of my music. Indeed, the majority of the time I’m actually listening to playlists created by other people.

A decade from now, will this piece seem equally quaint? Asking ourselves how much control we’re willing to cede to AI?

Right now, there’s not much to go on. The biggest AI feature Apple has introduced so far are the writing tools, which is one area where I’ll likely never cede much control.

But we did get a glimpse of a potential Apple Intelligence future in the form of a ChatGPT-powered demo earlier this week. The tool was capable of listening to a voice request and then using several different apps to make it happen.

In the demo, it accessed Camera, Messages, and Uber apps to carry out a series of tasks. This is the type of functionality we can expect from Apple Intelligence once it’s fully functional. For example, the developer asked the AI agent to message Dan with his flight number, and then book him an Uber X to SFO.

There’s an obvious trust issue here, of course. We’ll need to be satisfied that the system is sufficiently reliable in actually doing what was asked of it. Given Siri’s current performance, it would be more likely to message Pam a light saber emoji and then book the Uber to the ESEF college in Morocco.

But beyond accuracy, there’s the trade-off between control and convenience. We don’t get control over the phrasing of the message, nor the exact pickup point for the Uber. With all of these tasks, we’re handing over control of the details to a machine which may or may not do things in quite the way we would.

In an ideal world, it will be like a personal assistant in learning more and more about us as time goes on – but that’s probably a very distant ambition at this point. Initially, at least, it will be more like a casual hire for the day, who knows little about us.

That could be especially challenging with features like automatic translation in Messages, where even a technically accurate translation may not properly capture the tone of what we wrote.

So we’re all going to have to decide how much control we’re willing to hand over to our Apple devices. Once Apple Intelligence properly launches, and assuming it’s decently accurate in understanding what we want and acting on it in a sensible if somewhat generic fashion, just how willing will you be to use it?

Please take our poll, and share your thoughts in the comments.

Image: Michael Bower/9to5Mac

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Ben Lovejoy is a British Tech writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!