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I'm skeptical about Siri. My wife got an iPhone 4S on opening weekend, and we both did the requisite amount of playing with the new feature, and it was amusing,

I'm skeptical about Siri. My wife got an iPhone 4S on opening weekend, and we both did the requisite amount of playing with the new feature, and it was amusing, but after the first couple of days she pretty much abandoned it. There are some reliability problems, but I think the main problem is that Siri still lives firmly in the AI uncanny valley. Which is exacerbated by the way that Apple presents Siri, i.e. as AI. With a clearly defined set of commands, you can be confident about what's going to work and what isn't. And if you try something that isn't a command, you relegate the failure to "oh, that's not a command." But with Siri, because it's presented as an anthropomorphized, intelligent agent, it makes the failure feel a lot more brittle and frustrating. For example, "What's my next appointment?" works, but "When's my dentist appointment?" doesn't. Why not? Well, I know why not, and you probably know. It's because it's really, really, really not AI, and unless we make some kind of breakthrough on strong AI, it's not going to be for a long time. But my wife doesn't know that. All she knows is that Siri is cool when it works, but is actually pretty stupid a lot of the time. Which means she's not reliable, which is important because Siri is most useful when it must be most reliable, like when you're in a rush. Apple will certainly continue to add commands and make Siri smarter and smarter, but this will necessarily be incremental, and that failure will always feel brittle to lay users. [edit: btw, John Siracusa talks a bit about this on the most recent Hypercritical: http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/39-quasimodo-backpack http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/39-quasimodo-backpack]

spiralganglion 15y ago
I can't shake the feeling that the Siri of today is like the app ecosystem of the iPhone 1. • That Apple has a really solid plan for this feature, and we're only seeing the very beginning of it now — the phase where we are introduced to the interface, before they blow the lid off and open it up to every imaginable use-case. • That it will be significantly improved before most people ever buy a supporting device, so the handful of customers being burned by the somewhat-lacking version 1 product are vastly outnumbered by the people who get their first taste of the mature, fully-realized vision.
- tensor 15y ago
  Unlike some of Apple's other features, UI, Apps, and operating software, Siri is not something that will be easy to improve. Siri represents the cumulative efforts of decades of computer science research by numerous public and private entities. While it's easy to add more voice actions, making advances on the underlying technologies will require additional decades of hard computer science research. Apple, having no R&D division, will not likely even contribute to this. Unless your main complaint is a lack of canned question types that it can answer, you won't likely see the fast improvements you are expecting in the next few years.
  - jerf 15y ago
    I'd also observe that "let's create an 'AI' by piling on the special cases until we have a generally-capable tool" has been tried numerous times, and it's a known failure case. After a certain point, the piled-on rules being negatively interacting with each other, and it requires one of 1. true AI (thus begging the question) or 2. treating the set of rules as one of the quirkiest programming languages ever to make effective use of it. Many people are speculating about how wonderful Siri will be in the (near) future; I'd submit that the evidence suggests that it has pretty much come out of the gate with all the power it's going to have for the foreseeable future. Natural language querying seems to have been stuck at the same plateau for a long time, just like voice recognition technology has been.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Maybe for domain independent stuff, but for a domain specific thing (like scheduling), I think heuristics could go a long way. Yes, it's like a programming language, and yes, it has quirks. Just making sure the weak AI is clear about its interpretation through explicit confirmation ("Sir, I understand that you would like to launch the missiles at Russia in 15 minutes, am I correct?" "No. Siri, please book lunch with my sisters at the Russian restaurant on the 15th.") would probably make up for a lot.
    - mikeash 15y ago
      Is voice recognition technology really on a plateau? I have highly accurate speaker independent speech recognition in my pocket now. I'm using it to dictate this response. It didn't require any training, and it's nearly perfect. I may be mistaken, but I believe this capability is relatively new. Even if it's not, it's so close to being perfect that there's little room for improvement, or so it seems. And yes, I know that all of the smart are not in my pocket, but rather in the cloud.
ajryan 15y ago
What about the feasiblity of using voice commands in a public environent, e.g. at work or on a train? I'm interested in hearing how people deal with that.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  That's definitely another issue too. My wife has specifically said that she doesn't like to do that, even in semi-private (e.g. work), because she doesn't necessarily want to say stuff about her private schedule out loud, or broadcast her next text message, or even who she's calling.
  - mattparcher 15y ago
    As you may already know, you should be able to hold the 4S up to your ear, so at least it looks like you’re talking to another human, and Siri won't speak aloud. (I have not actually used a 4S, so my apologies if I'm mistaken.)
    - kyleslattery 15y ago
      You're correct. I tried this with my girlfriend's 4S this evening—if the screen is on and you hold the phone to your ear, you will hear the ding prompting you to start speaking.
    - chaz 15y ago
      Battery life reportedly improves when this feature is turned off, due to Siri's constant monitoring of the accelerometer.
      - gujk 15y ago
        Why would it monitor constantly, and not just when you are using it, like how the phone behaves during a call with the face-disables-touchscreen?"
      - WiseWeasel 15y ago
        Minor nitpick; it's the proximity sensor which is used for this function, not the accelerometer. I can verify that my iPhone 4S is polling the proximity sensor continuously, activating Siri whenever the phone is brought to the ear, while my 3GS only appears to poll the proximity sensor during phone calls. [Edit] After further testing, it does seem to be a combination of gyroscope and proximity sensor, as you do need to perform the motion of bringing the phone to a position with its front facing somewhere between sideways and upwards and its bottom somewhere between straight down and sideways on its edge while covering the upper portion of the device to activate Siri. It does not work if you're laying down horizontally on your back or on your side, nor when you bring it to a straight vertical for example. It seems to have a fairly narrow tolerance for the angle to which the phone must be brought in order to activate Siri, that being the angle at which you naturally hold a phone to make a call while sitting or standing straight up. [/Edit]
algoshift 15y ago
IBM: Watson. Now, if Apple could buy IBM...
swlkr 15y ago
Whens my next dentist appointment works for me for some reason, but I agree when Siri fails, she fails spectacularly and it's jarring.
acchow 15y ago
With enough commands in its library, Siri will not only be indistinguishable from real AI, it will be intelligent (please see also the behaviorist view of AI, Descartes' language test and the Turing Test).
- randallsquared 15y ago
  Aside from the fact that this has been tried and not yet worked (see Lenat's Cyc, for example), having to use the Turing Test as a measure of sapience is an artifact of having no idea what sapience is. If we knew (or, once we know) what algorithm produces consciousness, we can test for that directly, and it seems unlikely to me that a giant lookup table will have an internal experience of consciousness in the way that I do.

spiralganglion 15y ago

I can't shake the feeling that the Siri of today is like the app ecosystem of the iPhone 1. • That Apple has a really solid plan for this feature, and we're only seeing the very beginning of it now — the phase where we are introduced to the interface, before they blow the lid off and open it up to every imaginable use-case. • That it will be significantly improved before most people ever buy a supporting device, so the handful of customers being burned by the somewhat-lacking version 1 product are vastly outnumbered by the people who get their first taste of the mature, fully-realized vision.

tensor 15y ago
Unlike some of Apple's other features, UI, Apps, and operating software, Siri is not something that will be easy to improve. Siri represents the cumulative efforts of decades of computer science research by numerous public and private entities. While it's easy to add more voice actions, making advances on the underlying technologies will require additional decades of hard computer science research. Apple, having no R&D division, will not likely even contribute to this. Unless your main complaint is a lack of canned question types that it can answer, you won't likely see the fast improvements you are expecting in the next few years.
- jerf 15y ago
  I'd also observe that "let's create an 'AI' by piling on the special cases until we have a generally-capable tool" has been tried numerous times, and it's a known failure case. After a certain point, the piled-on rules being negatively interacting with each other, and it requires one of 1. true AI (thus begging the question) or 2. treating the set of rules as one of the quirkiest programming languages ever to make effective use of it. Many people are speculating about how wonderful Siri will be in the (near) future; I'd submit that the evidence suggests that it has pretty much come out of the gate with all the power it's going to have for the foreseeable future. Natural language querying seems to have been stuck at the same plateau for a long time, just like voice recognition technology has been.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Maybe for domain independent stuff, but for a domain specific thing (like scheduling), I think heuristics could go a long way. Yes, it's like a programming language, and yes, it has quirks. Just making sure the weak AI is clear about its interpretation through explicit confirmation ("Sir, I understand that you would like to launch the missiles at Russia in 15 minutes, am I correct?" "No. Siri, please book lunch with my sisters at the Russian restaurant on the 15th.") would probably make up for a lot.
  - mikeash 15y ago
    Is voice recognition technology really on a plateau? I have highly accurate speaker independent speech recognition in my pocket now. I'm using it to dictate this response. It didn't require any training, and it's nearly perfect. I may be mistaken, but I believe this capability is relatively new. Even if it's not, it's so close to being perfect that there's little room for improvement, or so it seems. And yes, I know that all of the smart are not in my pocket, but rather in the cloud.

ajryan 15y ago

What about the feasiblity of using voice commands in a public environent, e.g. at work or on a train? I'm interested in hearing how people deal with that.

joebadmo 15y ago
That's definitely another issue too. My wife has specifically said that she doesn't like to do that, even in semi-private (e.g. work), because she doesn't necessarily want to say stuff about her private schedule out loud, or broadcast her next text message, or even who she's calling.
- mattparcher 15y ago
  As you may already know, you should be able to hold the 4S up to your ear, so at least it looks like you’re talking to another human, and Siri won't speak aloud. (I have not actually used a 4S, so my apologies if I'm mistaken.)
  - kyleslattery 15y ago
    You're correct. I tried this with my girlfriend's 4S this evening—if the screen is on and you hold the phone to your ear, you will hear the ding prompting you to start speaking.
  - chaz 15y ago
    Battery life reportedly improves when this feature is turned off, due to Siri's constant monitoring of the accelerometer.
    - gujk 15y ago
      Why would it monitor constantly, and not just when you are using it, like how the phone behaves during a call with the face-disables-touchscreen?"
    - WiseWeasel 15y ago
      Minor nitpick; it's the proximity sensor which is used for this function, not the accelerometer. I can verify that my iPhone 4S is polling the proximity sensor continuously, activating Siri whenever the phone is brought to the ear, while my 3GS only appears to poll the proximity sensor during phone calls. [Edit] After further testing, it does seem to be a combination of gyroscope and proximity sensor, as you do need to perform the motion of bringing the phone to a position with its front facing somewhere between sideways and upwards and its bottom somewhere between straight down and sideways on its edge while covering the upper portion of the device to activate Siri. It does not work if you're laying down horizontally on your back or on your side, nor when you bring it to a straight vertical for example. It seems to have a fairly narrow tolerance for the angle to which the phone must be brought in order to activate Siri, that being the angle at which you naturally hold a phone to make a call while sitting or standing straight up. [/Edit]

algoshift 15y ago

IBM: Watson. Now, if Apple could buy IBM...

swlkr 15y ago

Whens my next dentist appointment works for me for some reason, but I agree when Siri fails, she fails spectacularly and it's jarring.

acchow 15y ago

With enough commands in its library, Siri will not only be indistinguishable from real AI, it will be intelligent (please see also the behaviorist view of AI, Descartes' language test and the Turing Test).

randallsquared 15y ago
Aside from the fact that this has been tried and not yet worked (see Lenat's Cyc, for example), having to use the Turing Test as a measure of sapience is an artifact of having no idea what sapience is. If we knew (or, once we know) what algorithm produces consciousness, we can test for that directly, and it seems unlikely to me that a giant lookup table will have an internal experience of consciousness in the way that I do.