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How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

nytimes.com

51–60 of 84 posts

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#51
post #27

Fascinatingly, I tried asking Siri "Siri, will you mary me?" and her response was: "I sure have received a lot of marriage proposals recently!" For the first time, I was genuinely impressed with Siri's pseudo-intelligence/wit. (Can we assume someone on the Siri team at Apple read this article?)

Very minor spoiler alert re: the film Her ... anyone who's watched that film will instantly recognise a reference there, intentional or not.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#52
post #35

This is a great article that highlights some things people have been thinking about for a while (starting with Isaac Asimov), but haven't been much of an immediate concern until now: namely the nature of artificial intelligence and our relationship with it. We could consider the emergence of a friendship like this a milestone, a bit like when chess AI got good enough to beat a typical club player, but wasn't quite re…

When phones' personal assistants (every company seems to want to have theirs these days) become orders of magnitude more advanced, we may be able to tell them to "check on our vacation booking" and they will know to search through our emails and calendars and connect the dots, so in those tasks they will be more advanced. There will probably be more services tied more deeply into them- for example, you'll be able to…

>>24 year old student: "Hey, remember that problem on the Trigonometry 402 final from my senior year that I asked you to solve the equations for back in college?" Digital assistant: "Oh yes! Here it is."

Maybe I'm just being naive from my layman's perspective, but that did not seem that far ahead. It's fairly objective to pinpoint "Trigonometry 402 final from my senior year" in time, and, if the same AI was already there, there's no reason for it not to remember, unless we're systematically deleting stuff to save space.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#53
post #17
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me that the new Halo game is 65 GB.

Texture mapping has come a long, long way. It's a shame AAA game mechanics haven't kept up, but, hey, that's a hard problem. (I just bought Alien: Isolation the other day, and found it disappointing -- silly me, thinking I'd bought a game I could play as I pleased, rather than a movie which would punish me for trying to step outside the predefined narrative it wanted to relate.)

Play Thief Gold or Deus Ex, if you want that.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#54
post #42
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When phones' personal assistants (every company seems to want to have theirs these days) become orders of magnitude more advanced, we may be able to tell them to "check on our vacation booking" and they will know to search through our emails and calendars and connect the dots, so in those tasks they will be more advanced. There will probably be more services tied more deeply into them- for example, you'll be able to…

> The second reason that such systems are extremely unlikely to emerge is that even if it would be doable technically, it would be extremely expensive to a company. And there would be literally no demand for it, because the overwhelming majority of people don't care about talking to robots. They already don't have enough time to spend with their children, partners, friends, parents... why would anyone waste time with…

Because the TV show has no bugs, no "I'm sorry, I didn't understand why you said, rephrase" in the middle of your rant against whatever, and creates the same experience for everyone who watches it, so that people can discuss amongst themselves.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#55

This is a great article that highlights some things people have been thinking about for a while (starting with Isaac Asimov), but haven't been much of an immediate concern until now: namely the nature of artificial intelligence and our relationship with it. We could consider the emergence of a friendship like this a milestone, a bit like when chess AI got good enough to beat a typical club player, but wasn't quite re…

I wonder if governments will try to mass manipulate us by forcing AIs to be somewhat political, and be that "friend" that tells us we should vote a certain way.

Considering that every single of these personal assistants comes from private companies, ads are much more likely. I also like that political is a dirty word now.

Not to mention what you "fear" is already true, it's called Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#57
post #27

Fascinatingly, I tried asking Siri "Siri, will you mary me?" and her response was: "I sure have received a lot of marriage proposals recently!" For the first time, I was genuinely impressed with Siri's pseudo-intelligence/wit. (Can we assume someone on the Siri team at Apple read this article?)

That "marry me" special case was in the news just after it was launched, it's not pseudo-intelligance at all, just the wit of Apple employees.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When phones' personal assistants (every company seems to want to have theirs these days) become orders of magnitude more advanced, we may be able to tell them to "check on our vacation booking" and they will know to search through our emails and calendars and connect the dots, so in those tasks they will be more advanced. There will probably be more services tied more deeply into them- for example, you'll be able to…

>>24 year old student: "Hey, remember that problem on the Trigonometry 402 final from my senior year that I asked you to solve the equations for back in college?" Digital assistant: "Oh yes! Here it is." Maybe I'm just being naive from my layman's perspective, but that did not seem that far ahead. It's fairly objective to pinpoint "Trigonometry 402 final from my senior year" in time, and, if the same AI was already t…

I think the point is that differentiating between the first and the second is very difficult to do. And communicating to someone not technically inclined why it can respond to question A and not question B would be very frustrating.

Re: How Apple’s Siri Became One Autistic Boy's B.F.F

#60
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with most applications, it could be a lot smaller. But storage is so cheap and abundant that size is no longer really a constraint. Consequently, engineering for size is no longer a priority.

4 games would use up the "fair" and "more than enough" bandwidth cap my ISP set :-/ It's either OK internet with caps or vDSL that doesn't really work

Depends where you live.

I'm in the UK I pay for 100/10 I get 200/20 and I have zero bandwidth caps.

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