Professor Marcus, You Missed One Point about the Apple Reasoning Paper

June 16, 2025

An opinion essay written by a dinobaby who did not rely on smart software but for the so-so cartoon.

The intern-fueled Apple academic paper titled “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity” has caused a stir. An interesting analysis of the responses to this tour de force is “Seven Replies to the Viral Apple Reasoning Paper – and Why They Fall Short.” Professor Gary Marcus in his analysis identifies categories of reactions to the Apple document.

In my opinion, these are, and I paraphrase with abandon:

Human struggle with complex problems; software does too
Smart software needs lots of computation so deliver a good enough output that doesn’t cost too much
The paper includes an intern’s work because recycling and cheap labor are useful to busy people
Bigger models are better because that’s what people do in Texas
System can solve some types of problems and fail at others
Limited examples because the examples require real effort
The paper tells a reader what is already known: Smart software can be problematic because it is probabilistic, not intelligent.

I look at the Apple paper from a different point of view.

The challenge for Apple has been for more than a year to make smart software with its current limitations work reasonably well. Apple’s innovation in smart software has been the somewhat flawed SIRI (sort of long in the tooth) and the formulation of a snappy slogan “Apple Intelligence.”

This individual is holding a “cover your a**” document. Thanks, You.com. Good enough given your constraints, guard rails, and internal scripts.

The job of a commercial enterprise is to create something useful and reasonably clever to pull users to a product. Apple failed. Other companies have rolled out products making use of smart software as it currently is. One of the companies with a reasonably good product is OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Another is Perplexity.

Apple is not in this part of the smart software game. Apple has failed to use “as is” software in a way that adds some zing to the firm’s existing products. Apple has failed, just as it failed with the weird googles, its push into streaming video, and the innovations for the “new” iPhone. Changing case colors and altering an interface to look sort of like Microsoft’s see-through approach are not game changers. Labeling software by the year of release does not make me want to upgrade.

What is missing from the analysis of the really important paper that says, “Hey, this smart software has big problems. The whole house of LLM cards is wobbling in the wind”?

The answer is, “The paper is a marketing play.” The best way to make clear that Apple has not rolled out AI is because the current technology is terrible. Therefore, we need more time to figure out how to do AI well with crappy tools and methods not invented at Apple.

I see the paper as pure marketing. The timing of the paper’s release is marketing. The weird colors of the charts are marketing. The hype about the paper itself is marketing.

Anyone who has used some of the smart software tools knows one thing: The systems make up stuff. Everyone wants the “next big thing.” I think some of the LLM capabilities can be quite useful. In the coming months and years, smart software will enable useful functions beyond giving students a painless way to cheat, consultants a quick way to appear smart in a very short time, and entrepreneurs a way to vibe code their way into a job.

Apple has had one job: Find a way to use the available technology to deliver something novel and useful to its customers. It has failed. The academic paper is a “cover your a**” memo more suitable for a scared 35 year old middle manager in an advertising agency. Keep in mind that I am no professor. I am a dinobaby. In my world, an “F” is an “F.” Apple’s viral paper is an excuse for delivering something useful with Apple Intelligence. The company has delivered an illustration of why there is no Apple smart TV or Apple smart vehicle.

The paper is marketing, and it is just okay marketing.

Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, Marketing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.