Why Siri is important
At the recent iPhone 4S reveal by Apple, there followed a flood of commentary about how gimmicky the new “humble personal assistant” named Siri, was. Many pushed it aside as just a piece of fun, or a geek-toy, or something to play with and forget about. Why was Apple devoting so much time to it? Because Apple, and its late visionary genius, Steve Jobs (RIP), always has their eyes set 10-20 years ahead of the tech world. This is why they reveal device after device that is ahead of its time, pushing technology and culture into an exciting new future. At the risk of screams of fanboi, how interesting would tech be without Apple? It pioneers, drags others screaming into the future in its wake.
So back to Siri. It’s been around for a while in the form of an app, until Apple bought up its creators, seeing it for the revolutionary product that it is. “But we’ve had voice recognition for some time”, you cry. “The android phones have had this before Apple”. True, and that’s a good thing, but Siri is more. I saw a live demo of the equivalent technology on a droid phone and it sucked. It didn’t recognize anything that was said, and insisted that all attempts to ask about the weather translated to “Play songs by Foreigner”. OK, if you insist. No, it didn’t manage to actually play anything by Foreigner either. Less impressive than phone voice recognition systems. And this was the phone’s owner, so you can’t claim that it was my crazy British accent that fooled it. The live demo of Siri by Apple on 10/4/2011 was flawless and highly intuitive. They say it wasn’t faked, so I hope they are right about that.
So what’s so good about voice recognition? This is more. “Do I need an umbrella today?” That’s much more complicated a question than “What’s the weather like?” or “Say operator for an operator”. There is AI behind Siri. It has to translate what we say into a question it can actually answer. I can’t wait to find out the level of its sophistication. “Schedule a lunch appointment for me and Dave on Friday”. That’s pretty cool. Not only does it follow the conversation to know which of the many Dave’s in my contact list that I have been talking to, but it can assemble the pieces of data in that sentence into a real action: A schedule appears in my Calendar, for 12:00 Friday and flagged as Lunch with Dave.
Apple states that Siri is Beta. This tells us that a) it might be a little flakey, b) they have high hopes for extending its capability. But the important point: This is the beginning of the future of technology. This is the first real and practical step toward that sci-fi future when we talk to all our devices in natural language and they respond. This could be as influential as the mouse. More so, because this is hands-free technology. This finally detaches us from a physical connection to our computers and devices. You think this is a gimmick? Tell me that again when in 10 years we freely talk to every device around us.
But there’s more. As tiny a step as it is, this is also a foray into AI. This “humble personal assistant” is our first step to a real digital assistant, someone to guide us through the world, a colleague, a friend, a muse. Am I going too far into the realms of fantasy? Imagine someone in the 1950’s encountering a smartphone. They would have laughed at the concept of a tiny, spectacularly powerful computer with miniature colour television screen, that was also a phone that you could use anywhere in the world and put in your pocket. Wow! Think about it. And welcome to the future.
“Siri… I want to dictate a post. Send it to my blog, Facebook and tweet it please.”
(Siri icon Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved)
