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Siri is the Next Big Thing

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Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#31

Post by Tichy »

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #23
Tichy wrote: post #6

Is Siri really more than a little bit of sugarcoating on top of stuff others have been doing for years (Google, Wolfram Alpha)? I suspect it is doing ok for some tasks (calendar), but that is about it. For example on Android people have been calling contacts by saying their names for a quite a while already.

Android user here who frequently uses the voice commands. The primary differences I see between what we have and what Siri offers are: - More built-in app integration (like GPS). "Remind me to call Jennifer when I leave work" wouldn't compute. The Wolfram Alpha integration is also a nice touch. - Improved contextual awareness. "Is it going to rain today?" or "I'm in the mood for Italian" don't work for me. I have to…

Still, I think those are only some special cases (weather, calendar). Admittedly they are nice, but I doubt they are an AI revolution.

Also I suppose it is kind of a "desktop search" for the mobile phone. Google can not search your contacts and calendar (it could, but the Google search is not really tied into it yet, I suppose).

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#32

Post by Tichy »

yalimgerger wrote: post #26
baggachipz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, please, tell me what Siri is besides the combination of voice recognition and a smart search engine? Because I don't see anything else.

It can work without special commands and gets context of a conversation.

So does Google, I am pretty sure it remembers your previous searches and knows therefore that if you are searching for "Paris" you mean the city and not "Paris Hilton" (or vice versa).

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#33

Post by baggachipz »

mhashim wrote: post #28
baggachipz wrote: post #9

What a blindingly ignorant rant. A couple breathless prognostications that really annoyed me: "If A.I. knows about insurance, will you ever google for it?" Uh, all the "A.I." is doing is googling it. So basically Siri will use speech-to-text (which I've had on my Android phone for years) and put it in the google search box for me. Then it will read the first result. Zippity-doo-da. "We will teach it how to use Excel.…

Yaaa....I think this flew over your head. You are saying that, for example, Wolfram Alpha is like Google. They are completely different: One gives you links that you still have to go through to reach what you need and one gives you a direct answer. Even Woz said in his interview on TC...we don't need search engines, we need answer engines. To say Siri is a search engine with voice to text is a great mistake. Voice re…

And I think that my post flew over your head. Wolfram Alpha and Google are different, sure, but at the end of the day they're simply algorithms that take requests, process the data to find the best answers they know how, and return results. That's it. To call those, Siri, or anything else more than that is intellectually dishonest.

Siri might be a great interface, and I bet it's really handy to be integrated into applications. I'm not hating on the concept or the product; it just annoys the hell out of me when people pretend it's something it's not. It shows a lack of understanding about how these things work.

Remember the hype about the Segway? "Walking is obsolete!" some people proclaimed. It turns out people didn't end up liking it because it made them look like lazy idiots. Do you really envision having a conversation with your phone, saying things like "I feel like Italian food today"? I don't. If I feel like Italian food, I'm going to ask my handy device where I can get some. And my phone does that without the "magic" of Siri.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#34

Post by Game_Ender »

baggachipz wrote: post #29
baggachipz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, please, tell me what Siri is besides the combination of voice recognition and a smart search engine? Because I don't see anything else.

Kind of like how I just typed "When is thanksgiving day?" and Google told me the date. It understood my question and gave me the answer. How does Siri differ?

Try "will it rain tomorrow", or "should I wear a coat tomorrow"? Siri is an answer engine that tries to determine the meaning of your query and answer it. Google in recent years has started to add those capabilities to it's search interface, but it is not there yet.

Siri is much more like Wolfram Alpha or IBM's Watson then a standard search engine.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#35

Post by [deleted] »

mikeash wrote: post #27
Geee wrote: post #13

No matter how innovative company Apple is, I wouldn't give them credit just because they bought Siri and integrated it into iOS. I somehow find it odd that no one was talking about Siri before Apple's blessing, although it has existed for many years. It has been constantly evolving, and would have without Apple. There's lots of information about Siri available and the vision and goal of the project has been clear all…

Taking an impressive but not all that practical technology demo and integrating it into devices that are going to be in millions of people's hands deserves some credit. The major part of the credit goes to those who developed the technology, of course, but identifying the technology as practical for the masses and getting it out to them is important too.

[deleted]

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#36

Post by Tichy »

mikeash wrote: post #27
Geee wrote: post #13

No matter how innovative company Apple is, I wouldn't give them credit just because they bought Siri and integrated it into iOS. I somehow find it odd that no one was talking about Siri before Apple's blessing, although it has existed for many years. It has been constantly evolving, and would have without Apple. There's lots of information about Siri available and the vision and goal of the project has been clear all…

Taking an impressive but not all that practical technology demo and integrating it into devices that are going to be in millions of people's hands deserves some credit. The major part of the credit goes to those who developed the technology, of course, but identifying the technology as practical for the masses and getting it out to them is important too.

So they basically deserve credit for being rich and having sold lots of devices. OK.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#37

Post by baggachipz »

alexholehouse wrote: post #21
baggachipz wrote: post #9

What a blindingly ignorant rant. A couple breathless prognostications that really annoyed me: "If A.I. knows about insurance, will you ever google for it?" Uh, all the "A.I." is doing is googling it. So basically Siri will use speech-to-text (which I've had on my Android phone for years) and put it in the google search box for me. Then it will read the first result. Zippity-doo-da. "We will teach it how to use Excel.…

While I agree with you in principle, I feel like the conceptual use cases you're imagining implement current practices with basically a speech to text. What the author is suggesting is that it would be beyond this, skipping out the step where you determine how you do something, but instead telling Siri what you want to do. For example, with excel I'm not sure he envisaged something like "A5 is 20, A6 is 30" and so on…

Ahh, but the devil is in the details. In the given example, "Take my taxes from this pdf and put them into a spreadsheet", it sounds really nice. However, consider this: Anything that you can't tell a person to do, you won't be able to tell this system to do. If you task a person with "taking your taxes and putting them into a spreadsheet", they're going to ask, "how?" "What's the purpose?" "What do you want the spreadsheet to look like?" "Do you want everything from your taxes on one sheet?" The list goes on and on.

So, while the idea seems really nice, the idea that this or any A.I. implementation will be the kind of insane revolution the OP is predicting is laughable.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#38

Post by lrm242 »

Tichy wrote: post #6

Is Siri really more than a little bit of sugarcoating on top of stuff others have been doing for years (Google, Wolfram Alpha)? I suspect it is doing ok for some tasks (calendar), but that is about it. For example on Android people have been calling contacts by saying their names for a quite a while already.

Siri has been in development for quite some time. Prior to spinning out, it was a DARPA funded research project at SRI. Give the guys credit. They didn't just slap down a bunch of glue to tie together Google and voice recognition.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#39

Post by podperson »

Geee wrote: post #30
incremental wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google deserve no credit for Android since they bought that? I presume Apple has done some work on Siri since they bought it over a year ago...

I'd like to credit all those researchers in the original CALO project, and all the hardworking AI scientist all over the world, who have made the evolution of AI to a concrete product possible. If we begin to talk about artificial intelligence revolution, Apple has nothing to do with it in my opinion.

And we mustn't forget Maxwell, Ada Lovelace, Euclid, Plato, Roger Bacon, and the medieval monks. It's always important to trace back credit for any product from Apple to someone who isn't Apple.

Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing

#40

Post by podperson »

Tichy wrote: post #6

Is Siri really more than a little bit of sugarcoating on top of stuff others have been doing for years (Google, Wolfram Alpha)? I suspect it is doing ok for some tasks (calendar), but that is about it. For example on Android people have been calling contacts by saying their names for a quite a while already.

I've never been able to get squat out of Wolframe Alpha. Even on things that seem like it should be right up its alley ("compare health care costs in Texas to Wisconsin" -- "no data available" -- Oh really?)
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