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Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown

298 points by nreece 12y ago

Houshalter 12y ago
A while back I created a toy IRC bot that answers questions like this just by searching reddit and taking the top comment. It works surprisingly well for questions that are likely to have been asked before. And when it does work, the result is much better than a dry wikipedia excerpt. I then added some simple machine learning to filter search results for the most relevant threads which improved it quite a bit.
- RBerenguel 12y ago
  Interesting! Care to share some sample question that is likely to be answered by reddit? I tried it manually and can't find answers to any question I can think of right now (looks like I could be failing a Turing test any time soon)
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    You can try it at https://kiwiirc.com/client/snoonet.org##bottest https://kiwiirc.com/client/snoonet.org##bottest, if it's online just do "!ask question". Examples: >!ask what is the largest prime number? For primes of the form 2^n - 1 (known as [Mersenne primes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime)), a very fast primality test known as the [Lucas-Lehmer test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primality_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primality_...) is available. The ten largest currently known prime numbers are all Mersenne primes. >!ask what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? African or European? > !ask tell me a joke I was eating chicken tonight last night, and got a little bone in one of the fillets. So I said "Fillet? More like fill-it with bones! Haha!" Then I looked around at the empty table and quietly sobbed into my bowl.
- mrfusion 12y ago
  That might actually make a new kind of search engine. You should put it on the web?
  - jonknee 12y ago
    That would be huge--after all these years a Reddit search engine that works!
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    It's currently running on a few IRC channels on snoonet. People seem to have lost interest in it though. As I said, it only works for questions that are likely to have been posted on reddit before. Not a general search engine.
- steveeq1 12y ago
  This is called the "Take the First" heuristic. If you want to learn more about "fast and frugal" heuristics (which work surprisingly well in a lot of cases), read "Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart". It explains how to get programs to give good answers when time and processing power are limited (similar to your case). http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/0195143817/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412872974&sr=8-1&keywords=simple+heuristics+that+make+us+smart http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/0...
- pinkyand 12y ago
  Sounds interesting. Do you mind sharing how did you trained your machine learning algorithm ? It seems like an awfully hard task, since in a sense you are competing with the Google algorithm and the order it offered you.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    The reddit search engine isn't very good. It's just logistic regression with a number of features, like the percent of 1, 2, and 3-gram matches, it's score, number of comments, and if it's a selfpost.
iaw 12y ago
IBM should have an Ask Watson app. From what I've read it seems like Watson would run circles around all three of them. edit: And #12 on the front page right now appears to be essentially just that.
frik 12y ago
How do such personal agents work? I mean after the speech recognition and NLP (part-of-speech tagging, named-entity recognition, etc): Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik WolframAlpha) Do they use (scientific) ontologies or are the templates more flat and stored in a SQL database? [and web search results as fallback]
- taliesinb 12y ago
  > Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik WolframAlpha) What do you mean by a template database?
  - frik 12y ago
    NLP sentence templates: "How tall [object]?" / "[object] height" "Becoming a [job]" "How much is a [unit] of [object]?" "How old is [object]" "When is the next [event]" My question is: Do Siri/Cortana/GoogleNow use such flat templates (per topic) or do the use an IR ontology? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)
    - taliesinb 12y ago
      We don't use flat templates in Alpha. We use a full context-free grammar that turns the question into a symbolic representation of what the user wants, which can naturally involve chaining. E.g. "when was the president of the US was born". Then we execute that symbolic representation using a variety of strategies. There are funnily enough quite a few cases where we can understand the question but don't have the curated algorithms to actually answer it.
yhlasx 12y ago
All things considered, no surprises here. Extreme majority of Google's profits depend on how well their search works. Same is not true for Apple with siri, or microsoft with Bing.
w-ll 12y ago
Slightly OT, but in school I remember a teach talking about how good voice to text has gotten but was stuck, stating it was roughly about a 70% accuracy, but that we were pretty much at a wall there and haven't moved much in the last decade. Has there been any major advances in voice recognition other than just growing your speech corpus?
- th3byrdm4n 12y ago
  Just machine learning algorithms and more data.
- pkulak 12y ago
  I think it's been mostly throwing hardware at the problem. Server hardware, backed by terabytes of context data. I remember back in the day, most of the errors were the exact same errors that a human would make. Even you and I only really hear 95% or so of the words someone says. But we can fill in the rest from the context. It always amazes me when I dictate some sentence to my phone, and at the end I see one of the words change to another that sounds almost identical but makes much more sense in the entire context of the sentence.
  - teamonkey 12y ago
    Not to mention mouth shapes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ
- bane 12y ago
  I've actually taken to dictating most of my texts on Android. It's faster for me than typing or swype-style keyboards and it's really very accurate until I need to use a strange proper name it doesn't understand. I'd say it easily gets about 90% of what I say, and it figures out the correct context for words like "there" "their" "they're" and "to" and "too" so far completely correct. edit thought I'd add this. I just had a conversation with a united agent and they probably understood less than 70% of what I was saying. it was beyond frustrating I wish that I was actually talking to my phone instead.
tbrock 12y ago
It seemed to me that Cortana returned the most correct answers without any extra fluff. The google results seemed to have the same accuracy but the phone said so much extra information in that monotonic voice that the clarity of the result was lost in the noise.
- psbp 12y ago
  It makes sense that it would answer the question first and then give relevant info. Most of the factual questions that I ask would be related to a broader context.
aresant 12y ago
The article concludes that google is dramatically ahead, which is no suprise but I AM suprised, anecdotally, how good Siri is vs previous iterations on my iphone 6 and OS 8 It feels close to "good enough" for the majority of functions I actually use eg: dictate an email, get directions, lookup a contact, and dial a phone number. My sense is that Apple will nail the base functions so that most users, self included, won't notice a difference between the two.
- KobaQ 12y ago
  Thank you. Good luck for us iPhone users that we won't need to buy a new phone :-). In terms of 80 % functionality I think all three are quite close. In terms of general features I think Android is already lightyears ahead. But I need a solid day-to-day phone with consistent usablitity concepts and I'm very tempted to give WP a try as it seems to be the cleanest here. Let's see what WP 10 brings ...
- kumarm 12y ago
  50% is good enough if its done by Apple. 90% not good enough if its not done by Apple. This is how I interpret most responses when people talk about Apple.
  - modfodder 12y ago
    Well, as accurate as I feel your statement is, I'd also say sometimes it depends on the 10% missing from the products not done by Apple. If it's an important 10% that Apple has nailed (or close enough) then sometimes the 50% is more valuable than the 90%. But we all have our biases as well. (Even as an Apple user I fully expect Google to always win the Knowledge Vault race. Its in their wheelhouse more so than Apple's.)
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      > Its in their wheelhouse more so than Apple's. This is exactly why I'm shocked that Cortana's accuracy is so much lower than Siri's (under the assumption that this test is reasonably valid). They've got a world-class research arm and they've run a search engine for yeaaars, and somehow they dramatically underperform a company whose biggest fans would even admit has a spotty record when it comes to services. I guess the "time on the market" advantage is a lot more dramatic than I would've thought.
melling 12y ago
Someone submitted this and deleted it a bit before this submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202 Anyway, there I was trying to find out which speech recognition software was more accurate. How do these compare to Dragon? It seems like we're quite close to being able to actually using voice dictation without the frustration.
- dmethvin 12y ago
  I use Google's voice dictation frequently for text and email, because my fat fingers don't like onscreen keyboards. It often gets the dictation of an entire paragraph totally right. It's impressive.
b2themax 12y ago
FWIW, I just switched from Windows Phone to iOS -- from the 1020 to iPhone6+. Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker to find results. I haven't noticed any discernable difference in their query results. And actually, for one of the my most used queries - "What is the weather today?" -- I dont even use it on iOS because the stock weather app is disappointing, I use Yahoo. Cortana telling me the weather was much more usable. Siri is just so freaking slow, that I rarely use her.
- bphogan 12y ago
  That's really interesting to me, because my daughter (6yo) asks Siri that question about 10 times a day on the 5S and the answer comes back in about a second. Whether we're on LTE or wifi. I wonder if there's other factors at play.
  - b2themax 12y ago
    I believe Cortana would get that info back in less than a second. It seems Siri takes more than a second for me just to activate, before it even begins listening... Maybe this is an iOS 8 issue for the time being...?
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker to find results. I haven't used Cortana, and have only had disappointing experiences with Siri (after coming from Google Voice Search); how does the performance on Google Voice Search Compare? I wonder if the performance rankings are just a complete reversal of the quality rankings; If so, I wonder who's closest to the sweet spot?
  - b2themax 12y ago
    I haave used Google Now briefly with the Moto X. It is definitely faster than Siri in my experience. Speed is so important when it comes to these virtual assistants. I sincerely believe Siri is the worst of the bunch, which really stinks because I expected a lot more from a 900$ iPhone.
masterjack 12y ago
Oh awesome, let's see... how many atoms are there in the universe? "The number of atoms in the entire observable universe is estimated to be within the range of 1078 to 1082." Thank you Google! http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+universe http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+uni...]
- inopinatus 12y ago
  Try it on Wolfram Alpha. Actually, they all seem to me pretty limited compared to the answers you get from Wolfram Alpha. Also c.f. the responses to one of their test questions, "how much is a quarter cup of butter?". Google makes fun of the inquiry. Wolfram Alpha gives you a thorough nutritional profile, and links to variations based on international cup sizing and different types of butter.
  - yincrash 12y ago
    I'm not sure the query is really easily understandable. How much it costs? I assume it's to figure out which marking to cut on the stick wrapper?
  - nemothekid 12y ago
    Google isn't making fun of the inquiry, it simply bring up the relevant snippet from the provided web page. The result Google also gives you is wrong (since its also a just a snippet).
  - oculus42 12y ago
    Wolfram Alpha is amazing at discerning the intention of the question. In the article, the question "How old is the Lincoln Tunnel" struck me as incorrectly formatted for the parser (I know, that's the point), so I asked Siri, "When was the Lincoln Tunnel built." The Wikipedia article on the Lincoln Tunnel was returned. Wolfram Alpha was listed under other sources, so I chose that. The response? "1937"
    - taliesinb 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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walterbell 12y ago
Who owns the key patents for voice recognition - AT&T, Nuance, IBM? When will they be expire and be available for use in open-source speech recognition? Edit: some data at http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-version-of-Siri?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-ver... & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  This just remind me that patent terms are too long ... but perhaps save that for all the other threads complaining about the IP systems across the world. Move along, nothing to see here.
- syllogism 12y ago
  Actually I think most of the work has been done in academia --- certainly that's where the recent deep learning stuff has come from. So, I don't think the important stuff is patented. (In general it's very hard to lock down ML improvements under patent. Once we can do it one way, and understand a little bit about what's working, we can usually replicate that performance with another technique.) The big problem for open source speech recognition is training data.
  - melling 12y ago
    First, these are two different problems to solve. Voice recognition and deep learning are different fields. Is training really the issue for voice recognition? It has been a problem that has almost been solved for over a decade. Last year I saw this impressive use of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, running in a VM on a Mac, that pretty much worked to code by voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI The developer mentioned that he didn't have any luck with Sphinx. Xah Lee summarized the talk here: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html
    - walterbell 12y ago
BigChiefSmokem 12y ago
I would rank Cortana as the best and Siri as the worst.
goronbjorn 12y ago
Jane > all three
rayiner 12y ago
I think this analysis is kind of pointless. Who asks their phone trivia questions? You want directions, reminders, etc. Siri seems a lot smarter about following spoken context in that situation.
- HelloMcFly 12y ago
  I can't speak extensively for Siri (infrequent use on my iPad) or Google Now (no Android), but I've never had to repeat an instruction to Cortana for a reminder or directions. Not repeating myself when giving voice instruction is essentially my holy grail.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    I haven't tried cortana. Google now is really awful at being a personal assistant because it doesn't keep much context.
    - wutbrodo 12y ago
      I haven't used Siri in ages; what kind of context does it keep? I know that Google Voice Search will do coreference across consecutive queries (i.e. resolving "it" and "him" accurately).
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Just tried this: Me: "Siri, find me a target." <finds several targets> Me: "Directions." Siri: "Which target?" Me: "Third one." <gives directions to third one in list> Also: Me: "Siri, find me restaurants." <lists restaurants> Me: "Review for Blue Duck Tavern" <lists review> Me: "Other restaurants" <lists restaurants> Me: "Reservation for Founding Farmers." Google Now will do some coreferences, but Siri is almost modal. You can talk to it like an assistant instead of trying to formulate everything as a search query. I had a Nexus 5 almost a year before getting my 6+, and I was always jealous of how much more practically useful Siri was on my wife's iPhone 5.
diafygi 12y ago
My test for when these are truly advanced: "What's going to be on my ballot?" Can Watson even answer this?
sytelus 12y ago
There were not random queries. In fact, they were picked because we felt they were likely to trigger a knowledge panel. For a good believable test your sampling methodology is very important. In fact, you want to have a random sample that is free of biases instead of somebody cherry picking queries. Perhaps you may do random weighted sample of queries with weights = frequency which represents usage pattern more closely. In any case, it's very important to describe your sampling methodology or otherwise this kind of testing has little value.
- apendleton 12y ago
  Out of curiosity, how would you propose taking a random sample of all possible questions?
  - pkrs 12y ago
    I don't think it's possible, people on different platforms issue different queries partially due to marketing and insiticts on what works and what doesn't. Also commands that already sort of work lead to more queries issues lead to better quality.
  - sytelus 12y ago
    If you want to do this kind of test with more discipline, you would give out random phones to randomly selected N people who have never used any of these services before. Then log each query they do for a week or two. Afterwards you can run same queries through all 3 services, generate results and do human judgement on mechanical turk about which one is the best. The science of measuring these stuff is complex and I've omitted many complexities here, for example, you want to do multiple judgement for same query, you need someway to measure judgement quality itself, you need great judgement guidelines that covers edge cases etc. Usually in organizations that work with big data, you will find competent measurement team building tools for these kind of measurements with years of investment.
deleted 12y ago
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msoad 12y ago
Some query patterns I use in Google that you might be interested in Translate {words} to {language} My flights My schedule My packages What time is at {city}? How tall/old/heavy is {important person}? {description of a photos} in my photos (like 'ocean in my photos') Note: if you have G+ photos. description doesn't need to be typed in the photo meta info compare {food} and {food} (nutritions)
- balladeer 12y ago
  > How tall/old/heavy is {important person}? This! My love affair with Google Now started with exactly this query. Me and my friends were debating over Hina Rabbani Khar's height[1]. [1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=How+tall+is+Hina+Rabbani+Khar https://www.google.co.in/search?q=How+tall+is+Hina+Rabbani+K...
- nolok 12y ago
  time in {city|country} 123 {currency} in {currency}
- msoad 12y ago
  alarm for 5 minutes
  - cheald 12y ago
    "Wake me at 6 AM" "Remind me to check my air filter when I get home"
guardian5x 12y ago
One of the killer features of Cortana is that she gets back to you if she wants additional information. You can almost have something like a dialogue. I don't think that test has taken that into account at all.
- tdicola 12y ago
  When you're looking for the answer to something quickly why would you want to have a back and forth game vs. just getting the answer immediately?
  - nostromo 12y ago
    Questions are often ambiguous. "What's the population of New York?"
    - tdicola 12y ago
      Google Now tells me the population of New York city, which is probably what most people want to know. If I wanted to know New York state I ask it again what is the population of New York state and it tells me. This is far better than every single query for what's the population of of New York asking to clarify if you mean city or state IMHO.
      - surreal 12y ago
        The second question doesn't even have to be "What is the population of New York State" – a follow-up of just "How about the State" / "I meant the State" is transformed on-screen into "What is the population of New York State" (despite "New York" and "population" not being mentioned the second time). Similarly "where's the nearest Chili's" followed by "phone them", for example.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Siri did that from day one.
twvance 12y ago
Can someone tell me which Android phone they used in the video?
- mortalkastor 12y ago
  There's no Android phone, Google Now is running on an iPhone 5(s).
chetanahuja 12y ago
Even though the study (albeit informal) did not include personal assistant functionality, that's where Google Now (as manifested in an Android phone connected to a google account) really shines, in that like a real personal assistant, it brings you relevant information before you even ask. Around this time last year, I used to be startled by a timely reminder on the home screen widget about the next thing I was about to do (reminder to leave now for a meeting across town scheduled for a half hour from now, or automagic notification about a flight cancellation etc). But by now, I'm so used to this functionality that I feel slightly annoyed if I actually have to ask for such information (which is almost always a voice query to my phone at this point).
- ironcrucible 12y ago
  I used to be a heavy Android user until I bought my first Windows Phone about six months ago. So far, Cortana has been one of the biggest[1] reasons I haven't switched back to Android, despite what feels like a lack of commitment and focus from Microsoft[2]. Her location-based and people-based reminders have been a killer feature for me. I can open Cortana and say "Next time I talk to my mother, remind me to ask her for her cheesey corn recipe". Then, next time I open the messaging app to text my mother, or open the email app to email her, or when the phone's GPS realizes I'm over at her house, Cortana will show that reminder[3]. It also works for location-based reminders: "Next time I'm at the hardware store, remind me to buy softener salt". It's been about six months since I've last used Android, but I don't think Google Now could do these types of reminders when I switched. [1]. Two other reasons: I much prefer "Live Tiles" to widgets or app buttons, and the Lumia line's cameras blow most other phones out of the water. [2]. According to the /r/WindowsPhone subreddit, Microsoft tends to update their apps on Android and iOS long before they update them on Windows Phone. Additionally, apps on the other two platforms tend to be more feature-complete. This is all anecdotal though, so take it with a grain of salt. [3]. http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB http://imgur.com/fll3uCi http://imgur.com/fll3uCi
  - Toddarooski 12y ago
    Google Now does do location-based reminders. I've never tried the "Next time I'm talking to my mom" thing, though.
changshaman 12y ago
What about IBM's Watson? I don't understand why Watson is not used to provide knowledge center to general users. Is it because it's too powerful so that only enterprises need it?
Quequau 12y ago
I just wish there was some way to have this sort of functionality, without handing over all that data to various companies who in turn use it in unpredictable ways so that they can monetize the service.
mrfusion 12y ago
Side note; It's frusterating how long it takes Siri to launch. sometimes I feel like I'm holding down the home button for 5 seconds before Siri comes up. And usually I'm trying to decide between a one sentence typing task or asking Siri to do it. The five second wait really throws off my time "profit margin".
wil421 12y ago
I havent used Cortana but in my experiences Siri has been much more accurate in guessing what I said. Google now on my S4 is horrible when I try to use it. Most of the time I have to talk like a robot to get something right. That being said I really like Google Now but the accuracy of speech to text is what killed it for me.
- gtk40 12y ago
  That's interesting. What accent do you have? I am consistently surprised at how well my S3 reads my voice. It can get it even when I am tired and half-pronouncing words or even singing them (at least with "What does the fox say"). But I also generally use it at my apartment (very quiet) and I have a pretty standard American accent.
  - wil421 12y ago
    My accent is "standard American" if you met me you wouldnt be able to tell where I was from unless I said certain words. I'm from the South but by no means do I have any sort of Southern drawl. I use it frequently in the car so maybe the background noise is affecting it.
escapologybb 12y ago
Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even then she is not too bad. And now that Apple has hooked her into much more of iOS in iOS 8, it means that more of the OS is open to me than before just by simply using my voice. And the "Hey Siri!" feature is one of the best accessibility features they've added so far.
- eddieroger 12y ago
  I never considered using Siri this way, which feels strange to me since I've spent a lot of time thinking about the other Accessibility features of iOS (mostly VoiceOver). Have you ever written up your experiences with iPhone accessibility? I'd be interested to read it.
  - escapologybb 12y ago
    You know, I haven't got round to it just yet but I definitely will do. My blog[0] is focused on using robotics to help quadriplegics like me, and that generally has some accessibility stuff on it. Will definitely post some iOS-based stuff now I know there is interest in it though! [0]:https://robotsandcake.org/ https://robotsandcake.org/
  - jonknee 12y ago
    > I never considered using Siri this way In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches.
    - escapologybb 12y ago
      > In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches. I wouldn't want to put words into his mouth, but I would suggest he meant using Siri as a disability aid. Might be wrong though! :-)
allanjenn 12y ago
ibm's Watson would knock em' out instantly if it were incorporated in a mobile platform https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672 https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I think these results were slightly biased because questions seemed to have been chosen to trigger Google search infobox results. BTW, I worked with Knowledge Graph last year when I consulted at Google. It is an incredibly nice project. The team, who helped me when I needed help, was great - constantly improving the platform. I am also using the IBM Watson APIs right now while helping another customer, so I feel like I am getting a broad view of what is available. I expect that Knowledge Box, Cordova, Siri, IBM Watson, etc. are all going to get much, much better in the coming years and will change the way most people use computing devices. Exciting times!
- rey12rey 12y ago
  Cortana?
- pinkyand 12y ago
  How does Watson compares to the Google technology in your opinion ?
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    I think they are very different. Knowledge Graph builds on linked data and semantic web technologies to encode knowledge that is served on an efficient scalable platform. IBM Watson is a system for ingesting large amounts of text and for then allowing natural language queries on the information in the text. Both are valuable properties.
mmastrac 12y ago
As an Android user, I've found that Siri tends to be generally better than Google Now. I don't usually ask my phone for trivia, but rather to do something. Most of the time I'll get routed to a search query when I'm looking to command the phone instead. This is somewhat frustrating if you don't know the magic incantation to make Google Now do what you are asking it to do. Siri's engineers have done a better job anticipating the various forms of the commands and handling nearly all of them.
- ark15 12y ago
  I am an Android phone user, past iPhone user and current iPad user and my experience has been the exact opposite. Google Now always understands me better than Siri. When Siri fails for me, I sometimes ask my 7 year old to talk the same thing to Siri and she gets better results. My daughter has a more 'American' accent than me so I have concluded that Android is better at hearing through accents than iOS. (I haven't yet read the original article but wanted to quickly comment since our observations are completely opposite) EDIT - iOS tablet user = iPad user.
emersive 12y ago
I recently bought an iPhone 6, and have really started using Siri for the first time. And Siri has actually surprised me in a good way at how well she understands what I say. I don't do anything too crazy with her. Set alarm at x time, remind me to do x when I get home, Call so and so, send text message to x. I work on a UX team of three. One of our guys has a MotoX, One guy has a Windows Phone, I have an iPhone 6, and based off of what happens at work it seems that Google Now and Siri are slightly more functional. This is from merely observations, but it seems like Google Now is faster than Siri. And Siri is better at accurately hearing/understanding the words you say.
joyeuse6701 12y ago
As a huge halo fan, it makes me happy that Cortana is slowly becoming a well known name =). Having said that, I'd really like to give her a try, I would hope that it would exceed google now on my moto x which for the most part has been very useful while driving.
beams_of_light 12y ago
Anecdotal I know, but it's strange that so many responses in this thread find Siri more useful than Google. I use an iPad and a Galaxy S3, and when I ask Siri questions, more of than not, she fails to give me an answer or provide meaningful search results. I can ask Google to find me any retail business locally and get proper results, call them with voice commands, etc. Siri chokes on a lot of those requests.
boyaka 12y ago
In regards to understanding voice input, I have been thoroughly impressed with Google's ability to do this ever since I started using their 1-800-GOOG-411 service. I didn't get my first smartphone with data until 2009 (Droid), so the service was really handy for me before that. I'm sure it also gave Google a ton of data to help them improve their capabilities (even mentions that in the Wikipedia article [1]). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411

298 points by nreece 12y ago

A while back I created a toy IRC bot that answers questions like this just by searching reddit and taking the top comment. It works surprisingly well for questions that are likely to have been asked before. And when it does work, the result is much better than a dry wikipedia excerpt. I then added some simple machine learning to filter search results for the most relevant threads which improved it quite a bit.

RBerenguel 12y ago
Interesting! Care to share some sample question that is likely to be answered by reddit? I tried it manually and can't find answers to any question I can think of right now (looks like I could be failing a Turing test any time soon)
- Houshalter 12y ago
  You can try it at https://kiwiirc.com/client/snoonet.org##bottest https://kiwiirc.com/client/snoonet.org##bottest, if it's online just do "!ask question". Examples: >!ask what is the largest prime number? For primes of the form 2^n - 1 (known as [Mersenne primes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_prime)), a very fast primality test known as the [Lucas-Lehmer test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primality_test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas%E2%80%93Lehmer_primality_...) is available. The ten largest currently known prime numbers are all Mersenne primes. >!ask what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? African or European? > !ask tell me a joke I was eating chicken tonight last night, and got a little bone in one of the fillets. So I said "Fillet? More like fill-it with bones! Haha!" Then I looked around at the empty table and quietly sobbed into my bowl.
mrfusion 12y ago
That might actually make a new kind of search engine. You should put it on the web?
- jonknee 12y ago
  That would be huge--after all these years a Reddit search engine that works!
- Houshalter 12y ago
  It's currently running on a few IRC channels on snoonet. People seem to have lost interest in it though. As I said, it only works for questions that are likely to have been posted on reddit before. Not a general search engine.
steveeq1 12y ago
This is called the "Take the First" heuristic. If you want to learn more about "fast and frugal" heuristics (which work surprisingly well in a lot of cases), read "Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart". It explains how to get programs to give good answers when time and processing power are limited (similar to your case). http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/0195143817/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412872974&sr=8-1&keywords=simple+heuristics+that+make+us+smart http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Heuristics-That-Make-Smart/dp/0...
pinkyand 12y ago
Sounds interesting. Do you mind sharing how did you trained your machine learning algorithm ? It seems like an awfully hard task, since in a sense you are competing with the Google algorithm and the order it offered you.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  The reddit search engine isn't very good. It's just logistic regression with a number of features, like the percent of 1, 2, and 3-gram matches, it's score, number of comments, and if it's a selfpost.

iaw 12y ago

IBM should have an Ask Watson app. From what I've read it seems like Watson would run circles around all three of them. edit: And #12 on the front page right now appears to be essentially just that.

frik 12y ago

How do such personal agents work? I mean after the speech recognition and NLP (part-of-speech tagging, named-entity recognition, etc): Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik WolframAlpha) Do they use (scientific) ontologies or are the templates more flat and stored in a SQL database? [and web search results as fallback]

taliesinb 12y ago
> Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik WolframAlpha) What do you mean by a template database?
- frik 12y ago
  NLP sentence templates: "How tall [object]?" / "[object] height" "Becoming a [job]" "How much is a [unit] of [object]?" "How old is [object]" "When is the next [event]" My question is: Do Siri/Cortana/GoogleNow use such flat templates (per topic) or do the use an IR ontology? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)
  - taliesinb 12y ago
    We don't use flat templates in Alpha. We use a full context-free grammar that turns the question into a symbolic representation of what the user wants, which can naturally involve chaining. E.g. "when was the president of the US was born". Then we execute that symbolic representation using a variety of strategies. There are funnily enough quite a few cases where we can understand the question but don't have the curated algorithms to actually answer it.

yhlasx 12y ago

All things considered, no surprises here. Extreme majority of Google's profits depend on how well their search works. Same is not true for Apple with siri, or microsoft with Bing.

w-ll 12y ago

Slightly OT, but in school I remember a teach talking about how good voice to text has gotten but was stuck, stating it was roughly about a 70% accuracy, but that we were pretty much at a wall there and haven't moved much in the last decade. Has there been any major advances in voice recognition other than just growing your speech corpus?

th3byrdm4n 12y ago
Just machine learning algorithms and more data.
pkulak 12y ago
I think it's been mostly throwing hardware at the problem. Server hardware, backed by terabytes of context data. I remember back in the day, most of the errors were the exact same errors that a human would make. Even you and I only really hear 95% or so of the words someone says. But we can fill in the rest from the context. It always amazes me when I dictate some sentence to my phone, and at the end I see one of the words change to another that sounds almost identical but makes much more sense in the entire context of the sentence.
- teamonkey 12y ago
  Not to mention mouth shapes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FefFfvriAwQ
bane 12y ago
I've actually taken to dictating most of my texts on Android. It's faster for me than typing or swype-style keyboards and it's really very accurate until I need to use a strange proper name it doesn't understand. I'd say it easily gets about 90% of what I say, and it figures out the correct context for words like "there" "their" "they're" and "to" and "too" so far completely correct. edit thought I'd add this. I just had a conversation with a united agent and they probably understood less than 70% of what I was saying. it was beyond frustrating I wish that I was actually talking to my phone instead.

tbrock 12y ago

It seemed to me that Cortana returned the most correct answers without any extra fluff. The google results seemed to have the same accuracy but the phone said so much extra information in that monotonic voice that the clarity of the result was lost in the noise.

psbp 12y ago
It makes sense that it would answer the question first and then give relevant info. Most of the factual questions that I ask would be related to a broader context.

aresant 12y ago

The article concludes that google is dramatically ahead, which is no suprise but I AM suprised, anecdotally, how good Siri is vs previous iterations on my iphone 6 and OS 8 It feels close to "good enough" for the majority of functions I actually use eg: dictate an email, get directions, lookup a contact, and dial a phone number. My sense is that Apple will nail the base functions so that most users, self included, won't notice a difference between the two.

KobaQ 12y ago
Thank you. Good luck for us iPhone users that we won't need to buy a new phone :-). In terms of 80 % functionality I think all three are quite close. In terms of general features I think Android is already lightyears ahead. But I need a solid day-to-day phone with consistent usablitity concepts and I'm very tempted to give WP a try as it seems to be the cleanest here. Let's see what WP 10 brings ...
kumarm 12y ago
50% is good enough if its done by Apple. 90% not good enough if its not done by Apple. This is how I interpret most responses when people talk about Apple.
- modfodder 12y ago
  Well, as accurate as I feel your statement is, I'd also say sometimes it depends on the 10% missing from the products not done by Apple. If it's an important 10% that Apple has nailed (or close enough) then sometimes the 50% is more valuable than the 90%. But we all have our biases as well. (Even as an Apple user I fully expect Google to always win the Knowledge Vault race. Its in their wheelhouse more so than Apple's.)
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    > Its in their wheelhouse more so than Apple's. This is exactly why I'm shocked that Cortana's accuracy is so much lower than Siri's (under the assumption that this test is reasonably valid). They've got a world-class research arm and they've run a search engine for yeaaars, and somehow they dramatically underperform a company whose biggest fans would even admit has a spotty record when it comes to services. I guess the "time on the market" advantage is a lot more dramatic than I would've thought.

melling 12y ago

Someone submitted this and deleted it a bit before this submission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202 Anyway, there I was trying to find out which speech recognition software was more accurate. How do these compare to Dragon? It seems like we're quite close to being able to actually using voice dictation without the frustration.

dmethvin 12y ago
I use Google's voice dictation frequently for text and email, because my fat fingers don't like onscreen keyboards. It often gets the dictation of an entire paragraph totally right. It's impressive.

b2themax 12y ago

FWIW, I just switched from Windows Phone to iOS -- from the 1020 to iPhone6+. Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker to find results. I haven't noticed any discernable difference in their query results. And actually, for one of the my most used queries - "What is the weather today?" -- I dont even use it on iOS because the stock weather app is disappointing, I use Yahoo. Cortana telling me the weather was much more usable. Siri is just so freaking slow, that I rarely use her.

bphogan 12y ago
That's really interesting to me, because my daughter (6yo) asks Siri that question about 10 times a day on the 5S and the answer comes back in about a second. Whether we're on LTE or wifi. I wonder if there's other factors at play.
- b2themax 12y ago
  I believe Cortana would get that info back in less than a second. It seems Siri takes more than a second for me just to activate, before it even begins listening... Maybe this is an iOS 8 issue for the time being...?
wutbrodo 12y ago
> Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker to find results. I haven't used Cortana, and have only had disappointing experiences with Siri (after coming from Google Voice Search); how does the performance on Google Voice Search Compare? I wonder if the performance rankings are just a complete reversal of the quality rankings; If so, I wonder who's closest to the sweet spot?
- b2themax 12y ago
  I haave used Google Now briefly with the Moto X. It is definitely faster than Siri in my experience. Speed is so important when it comes to these virtual assistants. I sincerely believe Siri is the worst of the bunch, which really stinks because I expected a lot more from a 900$ iPhone.

masterjack 12y ago

Oh awesome, let's see... how many atoms are there in the universe? "The number of atoms in the entire observable universe is estimated to be within the range of 1078 to 1082." Thank you Google! http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+universe http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+uni...]

inopinatus 12y ago
Try it on Wolfram Alpha. Actually, they all seem to me pretty limited compared to the answers you get from Wolfram Alpha. Also c.f. the responses to one of their test questions, "how much is a quarter cup of butter?". Google makes fun of the inquiry. Wolfram Alpha gives you a thorough nutritional profile, and links to variations based on international cup sizing and different types of butter.
- yincrash 12y ago
  I'm not sure the query is really easily understandable. How much it costs? I assume it's to figure out which marking to cut on the stick wrapper?
- nemothekid 12y ago
  Google isn't making fun of the inquiry, it simply bring up the relevant snippet from the provided web page. The result Google also gives you is wrong (since its also a just a snippet).
- oculus42 12y ago
  Wolfram Alpha is amazing at discerning the intention of the question. In the article, the question "How old is the Lincoln Tunnel" struck me as incorrectly formatted for the parser (I know, that's the point), so I asked Siri, "When was the Lincoln Tunnel built." The Wikipedia article on the Lincoln Tunnel was returned. Wolfram Alpha was listed under other sources, so I chose that. The response? "1937"
  - taliesinb 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

walterbell 12y ago

Who owns the key patents for voice recognition - AT&T, Nuance, IBM? When will they be expire and be available for use in open-source speech recognition? Edit: some data at http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-version-of-Siri?share=1 http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-ver... & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
This just remind me that patent terms are too long ... but perhaps save that for all the other threads complaining about the IP systems across the world. Move along, nothing to see here.
syllogism 12y ago
Actually I think most of the work has been done in academia --- certainly that's where the recent deep learning stuff has come from. So, I don't think the important stuff is patented. (In general it's very hard to lock down ML improvements under patent. Once we can do it one way, and understand a little bit about what's working, we can usually replicate that performance with another technique.) The big problem for open source speech recognition is training data.
- melling 12y ago
  First, these are two different problems to solve. Voice recognition and deep learning are different fields. Is training really the issue for voice recognition? It has been a problem that has almost been solved for over a decade. Last year I saw this impressive use of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, running in a VM on a Mac, that pretty much worked to code by voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI The developer mentioned that he didn't have any luck with Sphinx. Xah Lee summarized the talk here: http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html
  - walterbell 12y ago

BigChiefSmokem 12y ago

I would rank Cortana as the best and Siri as the worst.

goronbjorn 12y ago

Jane > all three

rayiner 12y ago

I think this analysis is kind of pointless. Who asks their phone trivia questions? You want directions, reminders, etc. Siri seems a lot smarter about following spoken context in that situation.

HelloMcFly 12y ago
I can't speak extensively for Siri (infrequent use on my iPad) or Google Now (no Android), but I've never had to repeat an instruction to Cortana for a reminder or directions. Not repeating myself when giving voice instruction is essentially my holy grail.
- rayiner 12y ago
  I haven't tried cortana. Google now is really awful at being a personal assistant because it doesn't keep much context.
  - wutbrodo 12y ago
    I haven't used Siri in ages; what kind of context does it keep? I know that Google Voice Search will do coreference across consecutive queries (i.e. resolving "it" and "him" accurately).
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Just tried this: Me: "Siri, find me a target." <finds several targets> Me: "Directions." Siri: "Which target?" Me: "Third one." <gives directions to third one in list> Also: Me: "Siri, find me restaurants." <lists restaurants> Me: "Review for Blue Duck Tavern" <lists review> Me: "Other restaurants" <lists restaurants> Me: "Reservation for Founding Farmers." Google Now will do some coreferences, but Siri is almost modal. You can talk to it like an assistant instead of trying to formulate everything as a search query. I had a Nexus 5 almost a year before getting my 6+, and I was always jealous of how much more practically useful Siri was on my wife's iPhone 5.

diafygi 12y ago

My test for when these are truly advanced: "What's going to be on my ballot?" Can Watson even answer this?

sytelus 12y ago

There were not random queries. In fact, they were picked because we felt they were likely to trigger a knowledge panel. For a good believable test your sampling methodology is very important. In fact, you want to have a random sample that is free of biases instead of somebody cherry picking queries. Perhaps you may do random weighted sample of queries with weights = frequency which represents usage pattern more closely. In any case, it's very important to describe your sampling methodology or otherwise this kind of testing has little value.

apendleton 12y ago
Out of curiosity, how would you propose taking a random sample of all possible questions?
- pkrs 12y ago
  I don't think it's possible, people on different platforms issue different queries partially due to marketing and insiticts on what works and what doesn't. Also commands that already sort of work lead to more queries issues lead to better quality.
- sytelus 12y ago
  If you want to do this kind of test with more discipline, you would give out random phones to randomly selected N people who have never used any of these services before. Then log each query they do for a week or two. Afterwards you can run same queries through all 3 services, generate results and do human judgement on mechanical turk about which one is the best. The science of measuring these stuff is complex and I've omitted many complexities here, for example, you want to do multiple judgement for same query, you need someway to measure judgement quality itself, you need great judgement guidelines that covers edge cases etc. Usually in organizations that work with big data, you will find competent measurement team building tools for these kind of measurements with years of investment.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

msoad 12y ago

Some query patterns I use in Google that you might be interested in Translate {words} to {language} My flights My schedule My packages What time is at {city}? How tall/old/heavy is {important person}? {description of a photos} in my photos (like 'ocean in my photos') Note: if you have G+ photos. description doesn't need to be typed in the photo meta info compare {food} and {food} (nutritions)

balladeer 12y ago
> How tall/old/heavy is {important person}? This! My love affair with Google Now started with exactly this query. Me and my friends were debating over Hina Rabbani Khar's height[1]. [1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=How+tall+is+Hina+Rabbani+Khar https://www.google.co.in/search?q=How+tall+is+Hina+Rabbani+K...
nolok 12y ago
time in {city|country} 123 {currency} in {currency}
msoad 12y ago
alarm for 5 minutes
- cheald 12y ago
  "Wake me at 6 AM" "Remind me to check my air filter when I get home"

guardian5x 12y ago

One of the killer features of Cortana is that she gets back to you if she wants additional information. You can almost have something like a dialogue. I don't think that test has taken that into account at all.

tdicola 12y ago
When you're looking for the answer to something quickly why would you want to have a back and forth game vs. just getting the answer immediately?
- nostromo 12y ago
  Questions are often ambiguous. "What's the population of New York?"
  - tdicola 12y ago
    Google Now tells me the population of New York city, which is probably what most people want to know. If I wanted to know New York state I ask it again what is the population of New York state and it tells me. This is far better than every single query for what's the population of of New York asking to clarify if you mean city or state IMHO.
    - surreal 12y ago
      The second question doesn't even have to be "What is the population of New York State" – a follow-up of just "How about the State" / "I meant the State" is transformed on-screen into "What is the population of New York State" (despite "New York" and "population" not being mentioned the second time). Similarly "where's the nearest Chili's" followed by "phone them", for example.
Tloewald 12y ago
Siri did that from day one.

twvance 12y ago

Can someone tell me which Android phone they used in the video?

mortalkastor 12y ago
There's no Android phone, Google Now is running on an iPhone 5(s).

chetanahuja 12y ago

Even though the study (albeit informal) did not include personal assistant functionality, that's where Google Now (as manifested in an Android phone connected to a google account) really shines, in that like a real personal assistant, it brings you relevant information before you even ask. Around this time last year, I used to be startled by a timely reminder on the home screen widget about the next thing I was about to do (reminder to leave now for a meeting across town scheduled for a half hour from now, or automagic notification about a flight cancellation etc). But by now, I'm so used to this functionality that I feel slightly annoyed if I actually have to ask for such information (which is almost always a voice query to my phone at this point).

ironcrucible 12y ago
I used to be a heavy Android user until I bought my first Windows Phone about six months ago. So far, Cortana has been one of the biggest[1] reasons I haven't switched back to Android, despite what feels like a lack of commitment and focus from Microsoft[2]. Her location-based and people-based reminders have been a killer feature for me. I can open Cortana and say "Next time I talk to my mother, remind me to ask her for her cheesey corn recipe". Then, next time I open the messaging app to text my mother, or open the email app to email her, or when the phone's GPS realizes I'm over at her house, Cortana will show that reminder[3]. It also works for location-based reminders: "Next time I'm at the hardware store, remind me to buy softener salt". It's been about six months since I've last used Android, but I don't think Google Now could do these types of reminders when I switched. [1]. Two other reasons: I much prefer "Live Tiles" to widgets or app buttons, and the Lumia line's cameras blow most other phones out of the water. [2]. According to the /r/WindowsPhone subreddit, Microsoft tends to update their apps on Android and iOS long before they update them on Windows Phone. Additionally, apps on the other two platforms tend to be more feature-complete. This is all anecdotal though, so take it with a grain of salt. [3]. http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB http://imgur.com/fll3uCi http://imgur.com/fll3uCi
- Toddarooski 12y ago
  Google Now does do location-based reminders. I've never tried the "Next time I'm talking to my mom" thing, though.

changshaman 12y ago

What about IBM's Watson? I don't understand why Watson is not used to provide knowledge center to general users. Is it because it's too powerful so that only enterprises need it?

Quequau 12y ago

I just wish there was some way to have this sort of functionality, without handing over all that data to various companies who in turn use it in unpredictable ways so that they can monetize the service.

mrfusion 12y ago

Side note; It's frusterating how long it takes Siri to launch. sometimes I feel like I'm holding down the home button for 5 seconds before Siri comes up. And usually I'm trying to decide between a one sentence typing task or asking Siri to do it. The five second wait really throws off my time "profit margin".

wil421 12y ago

I havent used Cortana but in my experiences Siri has been much more accurate in guessing what I said. Google now on my S4 is horrible when I try to use it. Most of the time I have to talk like a robot to get something right. That being said I really like Google Now but the accuracy of speech to text is what killed it for me.

gtk40 12y ago
That's interesting. What accent do you have? I am consistently surprised at how well my S3 reads my voice. It can get it even when I am tired and half-pronouncing words or even singing them (at least with "What does the fox say"). But I also generally use it at my apartment (very quiet) and I have a pretty standard American accent.
- wil421 12y ago
  My accent is "standard American" if you met me you wouldnt be able to tell where I was from unless I said certain words. I'm from the South but by no means do I have any sort of Southern drawl. I use it frequently in the car so maybe the background noise is affecting it.

escapologybb 12y ago

Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest. I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is immeasurably better with her. Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails, send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day. She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but even then she is not too bad. And now that Apple has hooked her into much more of iOS in iOS 8, it means that more of the OS is open to me than before just by simply using my voice. And the "Hey Siri!" feature is one of the best accessibility features they've added so far.

eddieroger 12y ago
I never considered using Siri this way, which feels strange to me since I've spent a lot of time thinking about the other Accessibility features of iOS (mostly VoiceOver). Have you ever written up your experiences with iPhone accessibility? I'd be interested to read it.
- escapologybb 12y ago
  You know, I haven't got round to it just yet but I definitely will do. My blog[0] is focused on using robotics to help quadriplegics like me, and that generally has some accessibility stuff on it. Will definitely post some iOS-based stuff now I know there is interest in it though! [0]:https://robotsandcake.org/ https://robotsandcake.org/
- jonknee 12y ago
  > I never considered using Siri this way In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches.
  - escapologybb 12y ago
    > In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation and simple searches. I wouldn't want to put words into his mouth, but I would suggest he meant using Siri as a disability aid. Might be wrong though! :-)

allanjenn 12y ago

ibm's Watson would knock em' out instantly if it were incorporated in a mobile platform https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672 https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I think these results were slightly biased because questions seemed to have been chosen to trigger Google search infobox results. BTW, I worked with Knowledge Graph last year when I consulted at Google. It is an incredibly nice project. The team, who helped me when I needed help, was great - constantly improving the platform. I am also using the IBM Watson APIs right now while helping another customer, so I feel like I am getting a broad view of what is available. I expect that Knowledge Box, Cordova, Siri, IBM Watson, etc. are all going to get much, much better in the coming years and will change the way most people use computing devices. Exciting times!

rey12rey 12y ago
Cortana?
pinkyand 12y ago
How does Watson compares to the Google technology in your opinion ?
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I think they are very different. Knowledge Graph builds on linked data and semantic web technologies to encode knowledge that is served on an efficient scalable platform. IBM Watson is a system for ingesting large amounts of text and for then allowing natural language queries on the information in the text. Both are valuable properties.

mmastrac 12y ago

As an Android user, I've found that Siri tends to be generally better than Google Now. I don't usually ask my phone for trivia, but rather to do something. Most of the time I'll get routed to a search query when I'm looking to command the phone instead. This is somewhat frustrating if you don't know the magic incantation to make Google Now do what you are asking it to do. Siri's engineers have done a better job anticipating the various forms of the commands and handling nearly all of them.

ark15 12y ago
I am an Android phone user, past iPhone user and current iPad user and my experience has been the exact opposite. Google Now always understands me better than Siri. When Siri fails for me, I sometimes ask my 7 year old to talk the same thing to Siri and she gets better results. My daughter has a more 'American' accent than me so I have concluded that Android is better at hearing through accents than iOS. (I haven't yet read the original article but wanted to quickly comment since our observations are completely opposite) EDIT - iOS tablet user = iPad user.

emersive 12y ago

I recently bought an iPhone 6, and have really started using Siri for the first time. And Siri has actually surprised me in a good way at how well she understands what I say. I don't do anything too crazy with her. Set alarm at x time, remind me to do x when I get home, Call so and so, send text message to x. I work on a UX team of three. One of our guys has a MotoX, One guy has a Windows Phone, I have an iPhone 6, and based off of what happens at work it seems that Google Now and Siri are slightly more functional. This is from merely observations, but it seems like Google Now is faster than Siri. And Siri is better at accurately hearing/understanding the words you say.

joyeuse6701 12y ago

As a huge halo fan, it makes me happy that Cortana is slowly becoming a well known name =). Having said that, I'd really like to give her a try, I would hope that it would exceed google now on my moto x which for the most part has been very useful while driving.

beams_of_light 12y ago

Anecdotal I know, but it's strange that so many responses in this thread find Siri more useful than Google. I use an iPad and a Galaxy S3, and when I ask Siri questions, more of than not, she fails to give me an answer or provide meaningful search results. I can ask Google to find me any retail business locally and get proper results, call them with voice commands, etc. Siri chokes on a lot of those requests.

boyaka 12y ago

In regards to understanding voice input, I have been thoroughly impressed with Google's ability to do this ever since I started using their 1-800-GOOG-411 service. I didn't get my first smartphone with data until 2009 (Droid), so the service was really handy for me before that. I'm sure it also gave Google a ton of data to help them improve their capabilities (even mentions that in the Wikipedia article [1]). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411