All the ways Apple’s AI could change how you use your iPhone

Well, Zach, you might soon be vindicated. Artificial intelligence is about to breathe some sense into Siri. And that’s just a piece of Apple’s AI plan, which Josh Tyrangiel says is the first rational theory of AI for the masses, unveiled by the tech firm at its developers conference on Monday.

Most consumers do not want a trillion-parameter neural network, mostly because most “do not know what any of those words mean,” Josh writes. “They want AI that can shuttle between their calendar and email to make their day a little more coordinated. They want Siri to do multistep tasks.”

Josh explains how Apple found itself in the perfect position to incorporate notoriously unruly AI in a way that preserves the total control the firm is known for. Well, near-total control; the biggest winner here might not be Apple at all but the one outside player Apple decided to turn to for its highest-order AI tasks.

Give it a bit of time, and Zach might forsake Siri and find himself instead asking, “Hey, GPT?”

Chaser: Josh also sat down for an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who explained the ways AI will change your iPhone — and admitted where the tech is still not 100 percent.

Rules of lawfare

Is there a way to stop people from weaponizing the law to pursue their political adversaries? Is there a way to stop people from weaponizing, well, weapons to intimidate the people who enforce the law?

Let’s take the first question first. Jason Willick writes that former president Donald Trump’s conviction in his “highly unusual” hush money case is “strong evidence of the danger” of so-called lawfare — as are the many threats of legal retribution Team Trump has vowed should he win the presidency again.

Both parties, then, have a real interest in keeping political prosecution at bay. Jason suggests three guardrails:

1. Codify internal Justice Department guidelines against lawfare.
2. Restrict campaign finance prosecution to federal court.
3. Let certain politically charged jury trials move out of (very blue) D.C.

The threat of lawfare kind of takes a back seat, however, to the threat of a literal bomb — like the one with which a California man was recently convicted of menacing an FBI field office.

Attorney General Merrick Garland himself writes in an op-ed: “Heinous threats of violence have become routine in an environment in which the Justice Department is under attack like never before.”

These attacks, in case you’ve somehow missed them, are coming mostly from high-profile Republicans spreading rumors and conspiracies meant to undermine trust in the very foundation of the judicial system.

And if media reports are accurate, Garland writes, “there is an ongoing effort to ramp up these attacks.” Italics mine. Concerns? Everyone’s.

From Leana Wen’s column breaking more bad news about junk food. Even through a thick layer of Cheeto dust, these numbers stand out.

Luckily, Leana provides a few practical ways to cut down on the factory-produced offenders. They’re probably familiar: Eat whole foods, ditch soda, shop around the perimeter of the grocery store.

But her final tip is a blessed relief for those of us overwhelmed by the ubiquity of processed food (and by the occasional yen for a Snickers): “Think harm reduction, not elimination.” Given the science, every ultra-processed bit you resist counts for something. Start at the margins, then work from there.

Chaser: Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, science journalists and founders of the site Retraction Watch, write that an epidemic of research fakery threatens to overwhelm publishers. More than 10,000 papers were retracted last year alone.

More politics

To hear the media describe this election’s “double haters,” you’d think their picking which unappealing candidate they’ll vote for is about as painful as choosing between staying near your sinking boat’s electrocuting engine or swimming toward a nearby shark.

(Trump imagined this nautical pickle at length during a recent rally. As Gene Robinson asks: Is he okay?)

But these haters might actually be President Biden’s secret strength, Jen Rubin writes. She explains how the discourse around them obscures how disparately most of them feel about the two candidates, and how they could very easily end up in Biden’s column.

Chaser: The Trump-Lover Olympics have reached their final heat in a congressional contest in central Virginia, Marc Fisher writes.

Smartest, fastest

• Trump is telegraphing a new plan to neuter Congress, Catherine Rampell writes, this time by seizing spending. Oddly enough, Republicans seem fine with it.
• How much should Hunter Biden’s conviction on three felony gun charges matter? Alexi McCammond convened David Von Drehle and Chuck Lane to discuss in her latest Prompt 2024 newsletter.
• President Barack Obama tried to pivot to Asia in 2011. This time, write analysts Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, we must succeed.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

New apple update:

Anti-dementia features!

Still attracts bugs, though

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Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!