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> The voice recognition is ok. The natural language processing is passable. But all those are things that can be improved... These AI fields have been notoriou

by 6ren 15y ago

> The voice recognition is ok. The natural language processing is passable. But all those are things that can be improved... These AI fields have been notoriously slow to improve. Apple is great at applying new technology, e.g. the integration mentioned. They may be able to adapt somewhat with all the data gathered (pronunciation, word-usage patterns, typical requests), but I wouldn't expect significant improvements.

swombat 15y ago
I expect them to improve because there are obvious, straightforward, practical improvements they can make already. As an obvious example, the NLP is currently limited in terms of the variability of ways to add things to your shopping list. Adding more variants of that would be easy. The huge amounts of data they're gathering about what people actually use this for is indeed a huge advantage. With that kind of data, they can build a centralised dictionary of common patterns for asking just about anything. Because of Siri's practical orientation, there is no need to build a "generic NLP engine" (which is what you're, quite rightly, suggesting is slow to improve). They merely need to improve the effectiveness of the NLP engine they already have, by making it understand more common patterns. That's achievable through expert-system-like functionality that's existed for 30 years. In terms of the voice recognition, that has been progressing steadily for 30 years too, and I imagine Siri will benefit from improvements to the technology base, as others will.
- fuzzix 15y ago
  "In terms of the voice recognition, that has been progressing steadily for 30 years too, and I imagine Siri will benefit from improvements to the technology base, as others will" Will it progress to a point where ambiguity is reduced to nil? The strength of the command line abstraction is its completely unambiguous interface - do what I say. The do what I mean interface of Siri could be limited to actions with insignificant consequences - the human brain incorporates the best speech recognition available and still makes mistakes. Any speech AI performing significant actions would need to outperform the brain. edit: That is not to suggest AI speech recognition outperforming the brain is not possible. There are probably metrics and methods for disambiguating common sources of confusion which could be performed in the blink of an eye rather than the minutes, hours or weeks later you find yourself thinking "Oh, THAT'S what he said!"
  - swombat 15y ago
    The do what I mean interface of Siri could be limited to actions with insignificant consequences - the human brain incorporates the best speech recognition available and still makes mistakes. Any speech AI performing significant actions would need to outperform the brain. Or actions which can be undone. I'd be very concerned if the US army decided to use Siri to control its nuclear missiles. Less so if someone uses Siri to change their thermostat or query their fridge contents.
    - fuzzix 15y ago
      "I'd be very concerned if the US army decided to use Siri to control its nuclear missiles. Less so if someone uses Siri to change their thermostat or query their fridge contents" Indeed... A command line for non-critical parts of the world. For launching missiles? Nothing less than a bash script! ;)
    - Cushman 15y ago
      God willing we will someday have a computer which, when you tell it "Launch the nuclear missiles," is smart enough to say "No."
- 6ren 15y ago
  There's a tension: the great advantage Siri has is a constrained domain (as you note); adding patterns, services and "ways to add things" etc expands this domain. (And adding new patterns, if they amount to grammar rules, can increase the domain dramatically.) It's a tradeoff between expressiveness and error. My information is that the progress in voice recognition has been terribly slow, and in the last 10 years or so has been made mostly by limiting domains.
roadnottaken 15y ago
Agree 100%. Voice recognition doesn't seem much better than Dragon Dictate was in the 90s. I'm sure it's improving slowly, but it's still a far cry from natural or efficient. I see no indication that this will ever improve drastically but maybe I just lack vision.
6ren 15y ago
I just wanted to add that Apple can do magic - but not that kind of magic! Apple's magic is what we should all do: (1). pick a market subset (a niche) that will be really delighted by our product, both because of what they value (due to their psychology and the problems of their circumstances), and aspects of their circumstances that we can use to really make our product rock. (2). make the product do that. This is "marketing"; not in the sense of advertising what we have, nor in the sense of choosing to make what people want; but in the sense of choosing the people who will want what we want to make (though truth be told, Apple also excels at advertising, spending a fortune, winning awards etc). This is all awesome, and to be celebrated and emulated. But Apple doesn't do technology research - they beg, buy or borrow technology, and then commercialize it (e.g. desktop, touch, siri). Technology research is magic of a different order... AI research the darkest of all.

by 6ren 15y ago

swombat 15y ago

I expect them to improve because there are obvious, straightforward, practical improvements they can make already. As an obvious example, the NLP is currently limited in terms of the variability of ways to add things to your shopping list. Adding more variants of that would be easy. The huge amounts of data they're gathering about what people actually use this for is indeed a huge advantage. With that kind of data, they can build a centralised dictionary of common patterns for asking just about anything. Because of Siri's practical orientation, there is no need to build a "generic NLP engine" (which is what you're, quite rightly, suggesting is slow to improve). They merely need to improve the effectiveness of the NLP engine they already have, by making it understand more common patterns. That's achievable through expert-system-like functionality that's existed for 30 years. In terms of the voice recognition, that has been progressing steadily for 30 years too, and I imagine Siri will benefit from improvements to the technology base, as others will.

fuzzix 15y ago
"In terms of the voice recognition, that has been progressing steadily for 30 years too, and I imagine Siri will benefit from improvements to the technology base, as others will" Will it progress to a point where ambiguity is reduced to nil? The strength of the command line abstraction is its completely unambiguous interface - do what I say. The do what I mean interface of Siri could be limited to actions with insignificant consequences - the human brain incorporates the best speech recognition available and still makes mistakes. Any speech AI performing significant actions would need to outperform the brain. edit: That is not to suggest AI speech recognition outperforming the brain is not possible. There are probably metrics and methods for disambiguating common sources of confusion which could be performed in the blink of an eye rather than the minutes, hours or weeks later you find yourself thinking "Oh, THAT'S what he said!"
- swombat 15y ago
  The do what I mean interface of Siri could be limited to actions with insignificant consequences - the human brain incorporates the best speech recognition available and still makes mistakes. Any speech AI performing significant actions would need to outperform the brain. Or actions which can be undone. I'd be very concerned if the US army decided to use Siri to control its nuclear missiles. Less so if someone uses Siri to change their thermostat or query their fridge contents.
  - fuzzix 15y ago
    "I'd be very concerned if the US army decided to use Siri to control its nuclear missiles. Less so if someone uses Siri to change their thermostat or query their fridge contents" Indeed... A command line for non-critical parts of the world. For launching missiles? Nothing less than a bash script! ;)
  - Cushman 15y ago
    God willing we will someday have a computer which, when you tell it "Launch the nuclear missiles," is smart enough to say "No."
6ren 15y ago
There's a tension: the great advantage Siri has is a constrained domain (as you note); adding patterns, services and "ways to add things" etc expands this domain. (And adding new patterns, if they amount to grammar rules, can increase the domain dramatically.) It's a tradeoff between expressiveness and error. My information is that the progress in voice recognition has been terribly slow, and in the last 10 years or so has been made mostly by limiting domains.

roadnottaken 15y ago

Agree 100%. Voice recognition doesn't seem much better than Dragon Dictate was in the 90s. I'm sure it's improving slowly, but it's still a far cry from natural or efficient. I see no indication that this will ever improve drastically but maybe I just lack vision.

6ren 15y ago

I just wanted to add that Apple can do magic - but not that kind of magic! Apple's magic is what we should all do: (1). pick a market subset (a niche) that will be really delighted by our product, both because of what they value (due to their psychology and the problems of their circumstances), and aspects of their circumstances that we can use to really make our product rock. (2). make the product do that. This is "marketing"; not in the sense of advertising what we have, nor in the sense of choosing to make what people want; but in the sense of choosing the people who will want what we want to make (though truth be told, Apple also excels at advertising, spending a fortune, winning awards etc). This is all awesome, and to be celebrated and emulated. But Apple doesn't do technology research - they beg, buy or borrow technology, and then commercialize it (e.g. desktop, touch, siri). Technology research is magic of a different order... AI research the darkest of all.