Gary Morgenthaler, a partner at the venture capital firm Morgenthaler Ventures in Menlo Park, California, was the first VC investor in Siri and was a Siri board member until Apple acquired it, as well as an investor and board member of Nuance Communications, the voice recognition software company whose technology also is used by Siri. Both companies were spun out of the research institute SRI International.talked with Bloomberg about Apple Inc.’s Siri speech-recognition software.
Dow Jones recently had a conversation with Morgenthaler about why voice is the new user interface and what he wants to invest in next.
Q. Why is Siri such a big deal?
A. First there was the mouse, then gestural and now this. Conversational interface is the third advancement in user interface. Theres a lot of excitement around this because people see its a whole new way of interacting with computers thats easier and more efficientits a more human way of connecting with computers.
Gary Morgenthaler says that within two to three years, Siri will respond as fast as a human, except where network service is poor. People are realizing that once you try this, there’s no going back. Within two to three years, you can expect Siri to respond as fast as a human, except where network service is poor.
Q. How do we push forward from here? How does Siri become the default UI platform?
A. Today, Siri is limited to 15 use cases: texting, email, calendars, notes, reminders, music, directions, web search, etc. These use cases are mostly Apple internal that make the iPhone 4S more productive and easier to use. What’s left to be done is to open it up to the 200,000 developers. The real revolution will be when Apple opens it up and developers begin building applications on it.
Q. So what will you be investing in?
A. Perfunctory speech applications are dead. It seems a given that you will be able to talk with your Macintosh and your iPad in the future using Siri. But why not Apple TV? Why shouldn’t you be able to request entertainment services at home from your couch and have Siri intermediate and provide those services for you?
More broadly, it’s easy to imagine myriad uses for Siri in your car and for other devices in your home. Why shouldn’t you be able to speak to them in ordinary language to elicit information, services and transactions? Now that Siri exists, these extensions of the technology seem inevitable.
Morgenthaler talks with Emily Chang and Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Thank you Darpa for yet another life changing technoly and thank you Apple for recognizing it and blazing the trail to commercializing it.
Rather, thank you, Cold War. ;))
lol indeed.
Thank you mother russia! 😉
Thanks to both USA and USSR, and, before that, to Karl Marx. 😉
It will go far when the developers get a chance to devlelop for it. The uses are mind blowing.
I learned that govt likes to look at comic books or Hollywood films for ideas in high technology. Particularly defense and weaponry.
Siri could easily be like Jarvis in Ironman, Hal in Space Odyssey, the “computer” in Star Trek…etc etc etc. Bye bye mouse for those menial tasks and requests. It’s an amazing leap I don’t think people get the implications of this. :-/
I thought Siri was imagined and created by, err, umm, er people?
Siri is underrated is an understatement.
I agree.
I think the proper term is “Siri is not yet finished and this is just the beginning.. and it is GOOOOOOOD.”
Obviously, Apple is not going to spread use of Siri to all of house parts, cars and so on, it is not Apple’s business.
So competing to Siri technologies will. For example, Google bought an AI company for itself, too — so they might take the thin-spread approach with this.
That is OK. The ‘guts’ of siri are available to anyone and I think that as Siri wows the world we’ll see others step up and start integrating this technology into all sorts of products we use.. and we’ll see some new novel uses of the technology also.
Siriguts ?
Sorry I should have been more clear.
The core of Siri, the artificial intelligence part was a Darpa project. The same guys that gave us the Internet undertook a massive AI research project.
The AI is available to about anyone who registers with SRI. They have a whole set of software components available that are the core tech of Siri.
Obviously if you were a non-US citizen from a place like Yemen they might turn you down and not give you a license. lol.
How about Korea? (;
Imagine Google AI in your car?
You: “car, I need gas” reply: “I have found 3 gas stations near you. May I suggest the Exxon station? It has great Gas”
You: “car, I’m hungry” reply: “I have found 10 places to eat near you. MacDonald’s is having a special today on Big Macs.”
There’s nothing ‘obvious’ about Apple’s plans for Siri.
Apple’s biggest platform is mobile computing.
A car (among other things) is a ubiquitous mobility device.
Apple is long overdue in the vehicular world.
‘The best is yet to come’ …. among SJ’s last public statements.
If I’m a car company, I would be standing outside Tim Cook’s office waiting for a chance to partner with Apple to use Siri. People would drive just to use it.
So this where the rumored 7″ iPad will be installed. Imagine the car monitor being an iPad LTE with Siri. You could run GPS, listen to music from iCloud, dictate documents into Pages or Notes, view calendar events, etc. all by voice. On the road is the perfect place to say “i’m hungry” or “I need gas”.
I really wish people would get away from this ‘listen to music from iCloud crap. IT IS NOT A STREAMING SERVICE! Got that? The point is to have access to your own music library and download from it to your device via iCloud, providing you have a data connection. That last bit is crucial. I can only think that those who whitter on about a streaming iCloud music never ever get out further than their own city limits. News flash people; the ability to listen to streaming music diminishes to almost zero away from urban areas. The UK is a small, crowded island, but I lose 3G, and even Edge in my workplace, even with two cell towers around a kilometre either side of it. There are places a few miles away where cell coverage is absolutely zero. These places are called ‘countryside’, they have no urban infrastructure and thus cell towers are pretty widespread. What the fuck is the point of a streaming music service in a vehicle doing 50-60mph when you might only ever hear intermittent bits of songs? It’s bad enough when the radio cuts out in fringe transmission areas, trying to stream music that requires a strong data connection in order to get that music from a data farm somewhere in North Carolina, or wherever Apple’s built it would be an exercise in driving customers into a red homicidal rage. It would me. That’s why I plug my iPhone or 80Gb iPod into my car stereo and enjoy uninterrupted music. Sheesh!
” Imagine the car monitor being an iPad LTE with Siri. You could run GPS, listen to music from iCloud, dictate documents into Pages or Notes, view calendar events, etc. all by voice. On the road is the perfect place to say “i’m hungry” or “I need gas”.
I bet if you stutter or if you are an inner city school drop out who speaks Ebonics you are screwed in this new world.
But not Ford; they’re already axles deep in Microsoft and SYNC.
YES – companies will be AT the DOOR of APPLE wanting to INTEGRATE with the SIRI service.
MY PREDICTION is
ONSTAR… voice over (actual human beings) will be losing their jobs THANKS to SIRI.
BTW – there is an ONSTAR app available – SIRI can do more.
http://www.onstar.com/web/portal/connectionsexplore?tab=2
THIS replacement of ONSTAR with SIRI or an interaction of the SIRI service to ONSTAR might express MILLIONS of dollars in savings to the company – but at the same time – render it USELESS.
COMPANIES need to INTEGRATE to SIRI
Some of the naysayers and doubters responses (i.e., Andy Rubin, Google) to SIRI remind me of when the Macintosh first came out in 1984 and DOS users where making fun of the Mac’s icons and the use of a mouse. – “Real computer users type in commands to a computer.” Well, we know what became of that.
Although there is some sort of visceral, geeky self-satisfaction in using the Terminal.
😀
Understood. Kinda like still changing the sparkplugs on your car engine (if you can still find them). 🙂
and when the iPhone came out it was “People want real keyboards on their phone”.
“…within two to three years, Siri will respond as fast as a human…”
He must not know many humans. Siri is already faster!
Siri was the monumental and significant upgrade to the iPhone missed by most people. The implications are HUGE. Modest upgrade indeed.
MDN: What is the black border below the ad at top in your iPad app that takes up a lot of screen space reducing readable area by quite a bit? Can you remove it? Also typing into the comments area was slow and behaving very sluggishly. I just upgraded to iOS5 on my original iPad and wondered if the MDN app has been upgraded?
Also can you put a way to go back one screen level instead of having to reload the entire screen again in the iPad MDN app? Attempting to write this on my iPad I mistyped the e-mail address and it went to an error screen telling me to re-enter but no way to get back to do so without losing everything so I had to type this all over again, on my iMac.
Been wanting ‘back’ arrow forever. No idea why it’s not there. The MDN browser is not very useful without it!
Just as I have been saying, Siri is the Killer feature of an AppleTV..
The pain in TV’s is: 1. The remote 2. The Software 3. The wires
All things Apple has shown a propensity for fixing/re-imagining, etc..
I would amend the author’s comments to say that voice is the 4th UI (out of the 6 that there will eventually be):
Command line
Mouse
Touch (not gesture – see below for why)
Voice
Gesture (in 3-dimensional space – a la “Minority Report”)
Thought-based (the ultimate and final UI – a la “Firefox” – the Clint Eastwood movie; not the browser)
A minor point: in addition to your list of UI’s, don’t forget PUNCH CARDS.
I was using them back in the 60’s to communicate with a FORTRAN machine. A command line interface would have been (and eventually was) a huge improvement.
How time marches on!
I remember doing some LOTTO 649 style programming i my DAYS.
PUNCH CARDS were REPLACED with LEAD MARKED cards — used in the late 80’s to program BASIC on COMMODORE computers.
Let’s also not forget that Siri is still beta software. I’m sure Apple has designs for having Siri being able to control everything on your iPhone, including apps, but in typical Apple fashion, Apple is making sure Siri works well for the basic functions first before expanding its reach.
What will interesting will be Google’s and Microsoft’s response to Siri. I just don’t see how they could come up with anything close to Siri for at least 1 year (longer for Microsoft), unless it was already in the works.
Their response so far is denial.
Microsoft has taken years to catch-up to Apple with Windows 8 to challenge the iPhone and iPad. Both Google and Microsloth have merely followed APPLEs lead. NOT INNOVATED. NOT ENOUGH… and in all there ways to COPY they forgot VOICE.
THE BIGGEST LAST LAUGH STEVE has DONE to all these FOLLOWERS is FOOLED them all by KEEPING – SIRI the ultimate NEXT STEP.
There are other Speech Recognition and Speech Control software developers out there. SRI has been one of the BEST.
Lets hope – that none of them can catch up fast enough.
BOOM!
Siri is our own mini R2D2. Amazing.
Siri and Bluetooth 4 – Imagine the possibilities:
Linked to your car gives you detailed performance and maintenance info and scheduling, speed advise, fuel level, speed trap warnings, GPS tie in to route planning for fuel savings, fastest route, points of interest, landmarks, guided tours, Mobil history lessons on vacation, proximity to contacts…. All at little cost when integrated with the computing power of your iDevice.
Linked to your home for security, comfort, entertainment, maintenance, sprinkler system, monitoring, pet care, and other systems.
linked to co workers and professional equipment and tools…. Endless possibilities….
Intelligent monitoring, control, and feedback from all these systems with preferences SIRI learns from you on one powerful device linked to to many others with reduced computing requirements could increase services while reducing infrastructure costs.
You don’t need a computer everywhere if everything is linked to you through your iDevices that are all linked through the iCloud.
Your car is where Siri will be found to be most useful, that and parties. 😉
Think of the cost of the new iPhone as being less than the cost of getting a ticket for texting while driving. (or a new front bumper)
SIRI already expresses use far beyond only a car.
ONCE you see that the next IPHONE — and see that it will lock and LISTEN – there is no longer need for the damn BlueTooth Ear piece.
A mobile smartphone is far better to have then a device stuck on a dashboard of a car. Or the back of a airplane seat.
Apple shall integrate SIRI into home security and automation to the house – control your lights and lock your doors etc.
How – you might ask – WELCOME the NEW TV from APPLE.
COMBINED TECHNOLOGIES of
SIRI / iMAC / APPLETV / HOME NETWORKs / DISPLAYS
SO yes – 3rd party partnerships will come KNOCKING at Apples Doors.