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Siri says some weird things
- Pent 15y agoThis has everything I've thought to ask Siri and more... I'm very impressed. I hope Apple plans on supporting and iterating Siri rather than forgetting about it like they occasionally seem to do...
- sarbogast 15y agoI have the feeling that this will become a new meme and a few tumblr's will be created about it.
- willpower101 15y agoDamnyousiri.com/.net/.org were all bough last week sadly :'(
- alanh 15y agoAsk and ye shall receive. http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/ http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/
- ugh 15y agoDid the original Siri also do stuff like this? I think it’s a great move on the creators’ part. Building silly stuff like that into Siri creates massive amounts of goodwill. That will make it much harder to really hate Siri when it – inevitably – screws up sometimes.
- mikeash 15y agoI never tried it this extensively, but it would tell jokes and such, certainly. I once tried "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" and it gave me a list of local lumberyards.
- kunalmodi 15y agohow very un-apple, the original voice commands wouldn't even tell you the time
- aculver 15y agoMy iPhone 4 does. "What time is it?" "The time is 9:14 PM."
- redthrowaway 15y agoThese are far too entertaining to be Apple's decision. Either they were pre-existing, or a dev hid an easter egg. Regardless, I hope they stay.
- catch23 15y agomaybe they have api integration with cleverbot, the same way they have integration with wolfram alpha :)
- jahmed 15y agoAgreed, these answers sound like a mix of cleverbot and wolfram aplha.
- cubicle67 15y agoVoice recognition on the Mac has told jokes for years. No idea how far back, but definitely on Jaguar
- philwelch 15y agoI think it goes back to System 7.5.
- lukifer 15y agoDoes the choice of being unable to call 911 seem strange to anyone else? I think the risk of occasional accidental calls [1] is nothing compared to emergency situations where the user is too panicked to operate the touchscreen, or blind, or [insert your own edge case here]. Or is this solely a legal restriction on emergency services? [1] I once somehow butt-dialed 911 on my old dumbphone, which was embarrassing and terrifying. I awkwardly apologized and hung up, and there were no repercussions.
- jmonegro 15y agoAlso, they could add a confirmation layer just in case. User: Call 911 Siri: Are you sure you want to call 911? etc.
- cubicle67 15y agoUser: Call 911 (or 000 here) Siri: I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 15y agoI had the same thought. In fact, I explicitly programmed 911 into my current iPhone as a contact specifically so that I could use it with voice dialing. Maybe the same trick will work on the 4S.
- Xuzz 15y agoI believe there actually may be legal issues with having something where the user might accidentally dial 911 if the voice control interpreted their speech incorrectly. (However, Android's voice actions seemed happy to call 911 for me, although of course I didn't let the call go through.)
- ams6110 15y agoDon't know if it's like this everywhere, but here if you dial 911 they are obligated to dispatch a police officer to your location. Even if you say "sorry I meant to call 411" or whatever, or just hang up, I guess they think you might be in a situation where you somehow were able to get to the phone and call 911 but then can't talk about the emergency.
- Tiktaalik 15y agoThis reminds me of playing around with Dr. Sbaitso when I was a kid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso
- rrc 15y agoI got Dr. Sbaitso with my Creative sound card when I was little. I remember asking him all these questions about sex, then printing out the conversation. Then I panicked, thinking my parents would see it, and tore the papers up and hid them in our basement. Good times.
- aresant 15y agoAs random as some of these seem, clearly Siri has amassed a ton of input data. With the volume of people playing around with Siri I'll bet darn near every clever question has already been asked a dozen times. Heck with that amount of data pouring in Apple could hire a team of comedy writers to just hit the daily top 1000 new questions. Wonder how they are ranking the quality of the responses / satisfaction.
- Garbage 15y agoAFAIK, Siri internally asks these questions to Wolfram Alpha. And I am not sure if these questions are going into Apple's database. IMO, Wolfram Alpha is getting clever than Apple by this. :)
- alanfalcon 15y agoThat's incorrect. Wolfram Alpha's responses are specifically marked as such and aren't nearly as entertaining.
- naveensundar 15y agohttp://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+love%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+love%3F
- Enthusiastic 15y agoIf you click 'assuming it's a phrase', Wolfram says: "A strong positive emotion of regard and affection, of the kind humans sometimes express towards one another and computational knowledge engines express towards the internet."
- DanielRibeiro 15y agoNot always: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+meaning+of+life%3F http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+meaning+of+...
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- Zakuzaa 15y agoSiri is going to be a great marketing machine for Apple. People will love to show it to their friends. And it all happens on the servers, so there's no end to Siri's incremental 'intelligence'.
- mechanical_fish 15y agoit all happens on the servers, so there's no end to Siri's incremental 'intelligence'. This is why I'm amused, but not amazed. Siri presumably has an actual team of ghostwriters cranking out amusing answers to FAQs. And I can't wait for someone who has read The Diamond Age to concoct a version of Siri in which the responses are read aloud by actual human actors, who are paid Mechanical-Turk style, rather than the synthesized voice. Though the effect might actually be ugly: the human intonation will come through, but probably too well, such that every few responses "Siri's" personality seems to change.
- lukev 15y agoDamn it, now I really want Siri. Too bad I only have an iPhone 4. Pulling the original from the app store was kind of a dick move, Apple. (even though I understand the motivation)
- ak217 15y agoThis is actually super awesome and makes me want to get Siri.
- nathanwdavis 15y agoAre these responses real? My first reaction was "Funny, but I'm sure these are photoshopped".
- paul9290 15y agoToday, a friend and I have been having fun using the Android version of Siri http://speaktoit.com http://speaktoit.com (best one we tested). It understands 90 to 95% of the conversation we spoke to it. Also, it understands 8th grade humor type words and reprimands you by saying things like, "Would you talk to your mother like that?" Fun stuff for the 8th grader in all of us!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Bry789123 15y agoJust an observation I've made, but isn't this almost identical to what WolframAlpha's goals are? With the exception of handling your own personal data, they both seem to work in the same ways: Understanding natural language and interpreting massive amounts of data in different ways. I'd be interested to see how they are different underneath.
- philwelch 15y agoSiri has to have some massive AI to know where to find weed and hookers. I can't imagine them building in that sort of functionality.
- alanh 15y agoHaha :) Not sure if you’re serious or not — and no disrespect either way — but thank you for the belly laugh!
- Splines 15y agoSpoiler alert. I'm looking forward to poking around and finding some of these on my own.
- jc4p 15y agoI don't understand the Eliza one, am I missing something?
- msbarnett 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
- stan_rogers 15y agoEliza was the most fun you could have with the TRS-80 Model 1 you couldn't afford at the local Radio Shack (it was always the program running on the display model in my home town). I'd wander in, a relatively balanced teen thinking of the day a few months hence when I could actually afford a really expensive toy, and wind up leaving a borderline psychotic looking for a real, flesh-and-blood Rogerian therapist to smack but good.
- salgernon 15y agoAnd if you've got your emacs (gnu) open: M-x doctor > rms probably doesn't use Siri or any other Apple product < Does it bother you that Stallman is vivid? Not quite sure what it means by that... ( M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead used to be amusing, until yow.el got pithed )
- chime 15y agoIf anyone with 4S has some time, I'd like to know how Siri responds to: * Map from here to the nearest gas station * Map from here to the nearest gas station, avoid highways * Turn screen darker (or lower brightness) * Redial (last called number) * Turn off 3G when near home * Turn off Wifi when near work * Turn vibrate mode on when near work * Turn vibrate mode off after 6pm * Repeat song (when iPod is playing) * Open HackerNews (saved as bookmark) * Delete Safari cookies * Update AppStore apps * Which actor plays Ryan in The Office? * Alert me when battery has less than half charge
- Udo 15y agoI don't have a 4S, but some of these screenshots already reveal some stunning limitations. For example "take a photo" doesn't seem to work (on a mobile phone, wtf?) and the proper response to "I think I just killed someone" should not be "oh did you?" but something more along the lines of "do you want me to call an ambulance". On a side note, I believe Apple is making a fundamental mistake with Siri in not communicating its limitations more clearly (or at all). Sure, the marketing department probably wants to make announcements to the effect of "oh, this baby can do anything" but soon customers will find out that's not the case and be thoroughly disappointed after the novelty factor wears off. Siri is a prime example of this shortsighted marketing move because its capabilities are murky and unknown by nature. Putting out a clear bullet list of things it can do (like: make cal entries, notify, simple if-then logic, GPS data, Google lookup) would work much better in the long run.
- MaxGabriel 15y agoThe only real limitation you bring up is not being able to take a photo (I'd add reading email as well, not just texts). But there's no reason Siri has to maintain its current capabilities. Have you read reviews of people struggling with limitations? Also, Siri offers a list of suggested tasks it can perform from the iPhone itself, based on the videos I've seen. "Siri, on the other hand, feels limitless. It’s fuzzy, and fuzzy on purpose. There’s no way to tell what will work and what won’t. You must explore. I found it extremely fun to explore Siri — primarily because so many of the things I tried actually worked." -Daring Fireball Even if Gruber is an Apple fanboy, I would suspect people to react more like him than you.
- martinkallstrom 15y agoAnyone knows if Siri can keep a todo list alongside with the calendar? That would be great, actually. "Siri, what's the three most important things I need to do today?" Also, something I really need assistance with is to be aware of the time it will take me to get to the appointments I have. I always leave my office just a few minutes before I need to be somewhere, no matter if it's within walking distance or fifteen minutes by car. I'm like an infant in this regard. "Siri, let me know when I need to leave for my two o'clock appointment" would be great if it worked.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y agoIt can certainly add things to the to do list (including geolocation information - "Remind me to call my wife when I leave the office" is the much cited example).
- martinkallstrom 15y agoThanks, great! Is the semantics of a reminder and a todo the same, though? Perhaps it is. A to do list is a list of stuff you want to do at some point and mark as completed as you go along. You can probably emulate this with reminders, right?
- visakhcr 15y agoCan someone try this question? "When and where will Steve Jobs be reborn?"
- mvkel 15y agoThis stuff is pretty immature, and indicative of it being something Apple didn't build internally. It makes Siri seem gimmicky and highlights the programmed nature of the responses (instead of being more AI-like, as I had hoped). These answers serve no purpose, except for one's buddies to go "heh heh watch what happens when I tell it I'm drunk"
- hrabago 15y agoI see this as consistent with the Apple that shows a iPod Nano Mickey clock face that shows actual time on their website. http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/ http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/