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Why does Siri seem so dumb?

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Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#71

Post by shostack »

soylentcola wrote: post #60
captainmuon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Android really answer questions? The only one I know to work is "How high is Mount Everest?". For everything else, it just reads the first sentence of the Wikipedia article, or presents a search. I'm using a German phone, so an English one might work better. But mine doesn't even know "What color is the sky?"

The thing that always impresses me about Google Now and their voice parsing in general isn't so much about speaking answers back to spoken queries but just how good it can be at guessing what you mean. My favorite example was a couple of years ago when I was at a bar. There was a song on the jukebox ("Coffee Pot" by Cajmere) which, for reference, is a house music song with a repeated vocal sample that says "It's time…

I find all of the voice responses from both to be tediously slow. I'm a fast speaker, and I like it when people speak at a fast pace with me.

I like that Google seems to just display information for may of the responses vs. trying to cram in some overly long witty reply or verbatim reading of the text that takes too long to speak back.

Having some sort of speed/succinctness setting would be helpful in that regard.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#72

Post by shostack »

givinguflac wrote: post #9

My wife is exactly the customer that's given up on asking Siri questions and uses it for timers. I can agree that Google does a better job at answering questions, but I don't like that Google requires access to just about everything in my life to be at all worthwhile, which is generally why I avoid google services. I realize I'm a minority but I don't like their all or nothing approach to slurping my data.

The eye-opener for me was the movie Her. That take on personal assistants was amazing, but it seemed to have with it the assumption of personal privacy between you and the assistant, and unbridled access to ALL of your data.

So a good exercise is to rewatch that movie, and in each scene where the assistant does something useful or cool, take a moment to reflect on what sort of data they would need access to, and how that data might be used.

I think where things get murky is that the movie didn't really touch on the company behind it at all, and if anything it almost gave the impression of being more like Apple than Google. As such, it neatly skirted today's concerns where the clear leader in the space (Google), is an advertising company that monetizes it's users' data and is constantly raising privacy concerns.

It is a fine line to walk, but ultimately everyone will need to weigh the decision in their mind as to the right balance of privacy and convenience.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#73

Post by t0mbstone »

Apple and Google are both shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on keeping their voice products within walled gardens.

Amazon is doing an amazing job of allowing the community to extend the voice functionality of their Amazon Echo. You can build an app that does just about anything you want and release it on their Amazon Echo store. There are already hundreds on there, and it's only a matter of time before someone releases a truly conversational A.I. integration for it.

My family uses our Amazon Echoes (all 6 of them, scattered strategically around the house) for hundreds of little things throughout the week. I control all of my lights, my thermostat, my entire home theater (via custom voice activated scripts). I even use it to make my tempurpedic bed vibrate ("Alexa, turn on bed vibration"). I use Echo for timers, and my morning alarm to wake up (which also triggers my bed vibration). I use it to query wikipedia subjects, perform quick math calculations, order new paper towels...

If you gave me a couple of hours, I could even whip up an Alexa integration that would let me open my garage door and remote start my car in the morning ("Alexa, turn on my car's air conditioner")! It would just be an Alexa command that triggered a custom script which would log into the web interface for my car link and would click the remote start button. Easy. I love building this sort of thing.

The possibilities are endless when you have an open, extensible platform. I don't understand why Apple and Google are being so dumb and close-minded, and still don't understand this!

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#74

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

x1798DE wrote: post #65
trdrake wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, here we are arguing over what that utterance means, but we're blaming Siri for not doing the right thing...

I don't think anyone's saying that the question "who is x" ever means "give me the contact information for x". They are just arguing as to whether or not Siri's counter-intuitive behavior may be a reasonable response, given that it's a computer and not a human. This is not a hard question for humans.

It's a very hard question for humans. Back in the 70s AI had already worked out that conversations take place in "frames" which include a a ton of implied state. It turns out that state is essential to make sense of human conversations, because words and constructs have different meanings in different frames.

Even simple questions like "Who is..." has many different interpretations. A human will understand the context. An AI won't, because you can't derive the context from the words themselves. It's a function of social setting, physical setting, relationship, previous conversations, and so on.

At the moment conversational interfaces are more like a Bash shell with a speech recogniser on the front. The shell needs a precisely formed command and has almost no concept of state or context at all. (I think Siri actually has some, but not much.)

So it's completely unrealistic to expect CIs to be able to do this today. It will only be possible when NLP gets a whole lot more sophisticated and starts tracking context and state - although even that will still be a hard problem, because social state is defined as much by location, physical surroundings, time of day, and custom as by the words being used.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#76

Post by eridius »

dkyc wrote: post #2

"It also can’t distinguish between the question of “who is” a person and a request for that person’s contact card. For instance, I have a contact card for Apple CEO Tim Cook. When I ask, “Who is Tim Cook?” Siri shows me the contact card, not his bio." Tech reporter humblebrag of the year.

I'm not convinced this one should even be considered a failure with Siri. If I have a contact card for someone, it's perfectly reasonable to be given that contact card when I ask who they are. If I want to see a wikipedia article, I should just ask for the wikipedia article in the first place!

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#77

Post by dx034 »

captainmuon wrote: post #13
givinguflac wrote: post #9

My wife is exactly the customer that's given up on asking Siri questions and uses it for timers. I can agree that Google does a better job at answering questions, but I don't like that Google requires access to just about everything in my life to be at all worthwhile, which is generally why I avoid google services. I realize I'm a minority but I don't like their all or nothing approach to slurping my data.

Does Android really answer questions? The only one I know to work is "How high is Mount Everest?". For everything else, it just reads the first sentence of the Wikipedia article, or presents a search. I'm using a German phone, so an English one might work better. But mine doesn't even know "What color is the sky?"

The German version is much worse than the English one. It's worth switching the phone language to English to try it there.

It's not that different with Siri, they always brag with features in English, localization takes a while and has much less resources allocated it seems.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#78

Post by dx034 »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #32

> When I asked, “What is the weather on Crete?” Siri gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which — while I’m sure it’s great — isn’t what most people mean Most of the narrative about Apple's maps products has simply been "Apple bad, Google good" and hasn't looked much deeper than this (with the exception of Justin O'Beirne's cartographic commentary, which is remarkably detailed though much of it is…

Route information with Siri doesn't seem to be useful even if they know the location. I asked Siri (in central London) how to get to heathrow the next day. It just opened apple maps and showed me how to walk there. I guess I used maps for in pedestrian mode before, but that answer was absolutely useless.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#79

Post by chetanahuja »

The difference between Siri and Google Now is the real downfall of iPhone (at least for me). I have enough comfort level with Google Now today that I feel comfortable just flinging any question at it when I'm in hands-free mode (say, when driving) and expect a useful answer of some sort. Trying Siri on friend's or colleagues phones, it's always a frustrating experience.

And this doesn't even include the automatic actions taken by Google Now. Alerting me about travel times, flight delays, sports scores etc. etc. without even being asked. Ultimately, in Google's vision, the phones are rapidly becoming just a tiny window (no Microsoft.. not you), into all the knowledge and power that actually resides on the cloud. Not so much for Apple, whose core competency is, and has always been, in hardware design and supply chain management.

Re: Why does Siri seem so dumb?

#80

Post by chetanahuja »

smrtinsert wrote: post #48
logfromblammo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the occasions when I have witnessed it, every attempt my spouse makes at using Siri in an ordinary, reasonable way always ends in cursing and shouting. It reminds me in many ways of the handwriting recognition on the Newton--which is to say it appears to be only a hairsbreadth from absolutely useless.

The most frustrating part of it for my wife is that she has great enunciation and I'm a mumbler.

Also, accents. Google sells phones all around the world and has worked very very hard to get training data from everywhere. For example, it has no trouble with my Indian accent at all. Siri... She's very American.
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