Do you know about Asch conformity experiments?
Solomon Asch performed them in the 1950s. He invited individuals into the lab and asked them to judge the length of a line. He also placed 6 actors in the same room who were assigned to give the wrong answers so that the ignorant subject could hear them before he provided his own answer.
On average, 35% of the subjects followed the opinions of the actors even if their answer was obviously wrong. That is horrifying. What is even worse is that the study has been replicated numerous times.
Now, imagine a scenario in which the actors are given money immediately after giving the wrong answer, and the subject can see that too. What would be the percentage of subjects that gave the wrong answer then?
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That study hasn’t been done, but I think we are witnessing something similar unfolding in the tech space.
Marketing is everything.
If artificial intelligence were called “pattern matching and transformation,” it would not sound so cool, would it?
Alas, there is precisely zero intelligence in AI. It is just pattern matching and transformation. This is why it hallucinates so much. The farther away from its training data the query you give to the AI is, the crazier the reply you’ll get.
Public companies don’t do marketing just for consumers; they also need to attract investors. And when everyone around you starts hyping AI to attract investors, you may find yourself in a dilemma – is it OK to promise something you probably can’t deliver?
Apple (AAPL) seems stuck in this dilemma but also faces significant pressures outside AI.
Apple’s costs are rising due to tariffs.
President Trump’s threat of a 25% tariff on iPhones not manufactured in the U.S. put Apple under pressure. The company expects tariffs to add $900 million to its costs for the current quarter.
I’ve already written why large language models can’t become sentient. But Apple can’t afford to say that. They carefully dance around it by occasionally releasing a research paper on AI’s limitations, but that usually looks like a jab at the competition.
The company’s management probably feels like a person in Asch’s experiment, except that the actors are the competitors. Rivals promise stuff from science fiction, but that is still attracting investors.
Chaos created by unrealistic marketing is real.
Microsoft recently invested in an AI company that went bankrupt. The company had no AI but a huge number of humans doing the work.
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Anthropic launched its AI blog in June, seemingly planning to show that AI can replace writers. They killed this project after just one week.
It looks like AI companies are playing a game of telephone on the inside, and that is how that project got greenlit.
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Apple is held to a much higher standard by consumers than other companies. The company can’t afford the luxury of delivering subpar products.
Watching WWDC 2025 felt like punishment
In a world full of people with crippled attention spans from watching TikTok and YouTube shorts, Apple delivered an hour and a half of pure boredom.
I don’t have a problem watching long informative videos, but this one wasn’t that. Thank you, YouTube, for the video speed settings—a lifesaver.
Apple has veered off course due to pressure. Their new design language, Liquid Glass, isn’t original. Windows Aero was trendy in 2006. The Linux desktop environment KDE Plasma has featured numerous transparent/glass themes over the last 17 years.
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Yes, Apple did it with more polish. But transparency and monochrome icons ruin accessibility. They are cool-looking only if you are a child. You don’t have time for distractions if you have work to do.
As for the big AI reveal that some people were hoping for, there wasn’t one. The best feature they presented was a call translator. I am not sure how many people need it, but those who do will greatly appreciate it.
Long-time fund manager Chris Versace, wrote on TheStreet Pro “It is hard to disagree, at least for now, that Apple is taking, as some have called it, a “gap year” on Apple Intelligence, but one of the great advantages the company has is its developer community and that’s the core audience for WWDC.”
Apple used to have a slogan, “Think different.” Well, if the company thinks differently, it ain’t showing it.
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