The only way we're going to achieve AI in the short term is by loosening the definition of the phrase, for example to include a new generation of complex automatons. I look forward to AI meaning about as much as "cloud" does today.
Siri is the Next Big Thing
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Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#12I don't understand how this article rose to the top page of HN... it's not telling us anything that's interesting, new, or news in any way. Artificial intelligence has been around since the dawn of computers (think Clippy), helping us do our shit. In fact, AutoCAD is a bunch of 'artificial intelligence' that's letting you draw vectors and write code in a more intuitive way (ok, not exactly and technically, but you know what I mean)
It seems like the author of this article has never in their life seen a computer do anything more than push numbers, but machine learning and AI have been around for at least a decade. This is just a very mainstream case of very well developed AI.
Saying that 'this is the start of a revolution' is not only ill-advised, but totally baseless. What's the innovation? What has changed in what was previously possible? For a revolution to occur, there needs to be an innovation that causes expansion of technological capabilities. Although Siri is (supposedly) great, it does not represent an expansion of technological capability. Just because the team behind Siri spent years building out a great voice activated AI system does not mean that we all can now do it. Computers have not become smarter... they are the same as they ever were. People have not realized a more efficient way to create AI... it's the same as before.
I'm truly surprised that such a shallow and misguided article made it to the popular page in a community like this.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#13No 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 along.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#14Is the AI winter really over? Or is Siri simply the practical application of machine learning and NLP which we've manage to derive from off-shoots of AI research? I think it will be some time yet when I can make a natural language query and have an AI agent fetch relevant data, sort it, and present it contextually. Or sketch an idea for a building and have an AI do all the hard work of creating the blueprints. In the…
I think it is. I view Siri as Apple II of personal computers. Siri crosses the threshold and I believe the race is on.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#15Is 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.
The iPhone has had voice commands such as "Call x" since 2009. This is something different.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#16No 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…
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...
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#17What 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.…
No, no and god no. Siri is not voice recognition. It is not even in the same universe as the voice control in Android.
And yes of course A.I. will use one or more search engines to look information up. But Google might not necessarily be one of them and consumers will not care two cents as long A.I. gets the job done. My point it that A.I. will fly over Google's moat unless it is Google's A.I.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#18Can anyone point me to write ups of Siri's implementation and history? I know Siri was previously a product on the iPhone, so I'm wondering what company created the the technology, and if they perhaps had a more open attitude in discussing their technology than we might hear from Apple and whether they might have some blog posts to look through, etc.
It was originally not a product for iPhone. That was the spin-off. It was originally CALO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#19It's interesting that the Printing Press didn't make the list of previous revolutions, because I think this highlights two different ways of thinking about intelligence (and thus AI). We can either build AI systems that give us a correct answer 95% of the time and we don't care how they got it, or we can build systems that have some sort of designed thinking (ie we understand our own thoughts and try and replicate th…
Hi, Author here. I think you make an excellent point. I think the revolution will start from small things where it is OK to make an error. Stuff like Siri does. Then it will move on to productivity tools or the like...where it is still OK to make a mistake. And A.I. will improve really fast, like the PC has improved. I think in 5-10 years we won't believe what we have accomplished. I think Siri crosses an important t…
Google Translate uses AI.
It uses currently translated text to predict translation of strings that you provide.
Re: Siri is the Next Big Thing
#20Is 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.
It is. What's impressive about Siri is not the speech recognition (although it's pretty good) but rather two new elements that I haven't seen done as well on another consumer device:
1. Interpreting the meaning of your request
2. Remembering and using context
Siri has been a standout in those areas since before the Apple acquisition. Most people are surprised at just how naturally you can talk to your phone. It's doing more complex work than just passing the request on to Wolfram Alpha.
However, Google has a lot of impressive work in this space, too. I don't think it's long before android phones are this good--they are practically there already.
It's classic Apple: they didn't invent it, but they look like they'll get credit for being the first to popularize it and bring it to the mass market.