“Apple’s legendary co-founder Steve Jobs has a posthumous hit on his hands with the launch of the iPhone 4S, which was unveiled one day before his death on Oct. 5,” Andy Goldberg writes for Deutsche Presse-Agentur. “[Steve Jobs] bet that one single innovation in the Apple 4S would be enough to silence detractors, establish the new phone as another must-have device and perhaps forge itself as Apple’s secret weapon in its death-battle with Google.”
“That weapon goes by the name of Siri: Apple’s new combo of voice recognition and artificial intelligence that is the closest that humankind has yet seen to the kind of digital servants long portrayed in Hollywood fantasies, like the computer HAL in the classic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,'” Goldberg writes. “Like HAL, Siri is both smart and sassy. In the U.S. it is female, in Britain it is male.”
MacDailyNews Take: Siri is a she. She should have a female voice everywhere.
Goldberg eports, “”Tim Bajarin, the doyen of technology analysts, believes that the all-knowing digital assistant is also a Trojan horse, linking its users to huge databases that will allow Apple to circumvent the search engines of rivals like Google and Microsoft’s Bing to bring information to its customers. He likens the introduction of Siri to Jobs’ championing of the mouse and the touch screen — two watershed moments in the history of computing. ‘Jobs and the Apple team have given something to the world that it will look back on and regard as the next major user input technology: voice and speech. But we will also realize that the real breakthrough is in Siri’s applied artificial intelligence (AI),’ Bajarin commented. ‘Use of voice coupled with AI on a consumer product like the iPhone is going to change the way consumers think about man-machine interfaces in the future.'”
“Analysts are already speculating when Siri will be integrated into other Apple products,” Goldberg reports. “They are salivating at the prospect of a Siri-enabled Apple TV, a device that some believe could hit the market next year and grow to become even bigger than Apple’s iPhone success in a $100 billion per year sector.”
Read more in the full article here.
I have to hope that Siri’s back-end (hmmm!) is connected to an analytics tool that is examining every single interchange with “her” (and yes, it is a she). With billions of data points, they can grow her intelligence at an incredible speed–assuming they can absorb and make use of that much information….
Well, perhaps for the Yanks Siri may be a she, but for people from the old continent, I’m not surprised it is a he; after all, who in their childhood didn’t dream of having a butler named Jeeves…
“assuming they can absorb and make use of that much information….”
that billion dollar data center comes to mind.
Siringularity. There, I said it again.
The singularity is still a ways off. We haven’t even come to fully understand how the human brain works. Until that happens don’t expect to see computers become smarter then we are.
Siri is smart for a computer, no doubt. As far as actual biological intelligence she’s in some ways smarter then insect intelligce but stupider in other ways.
The first artificial intelligence on our planet. Siri is an interface that gets better each day, just by being used by millions.
This large amount of detailed feedback about the user satisfaction gives a good picture of what apple will be capable of in the near future. Apple becomes the company of an era, that will take us to the beauty of technology.
#occupysiri 😛
@ MDN
Siri says that she has “not been assigned a gender”
Dude, Siri is a computer program. It is an it, not a he or a she.
Of course, I just call it, “Baby.”
The minimization trend Apple is pursuing lately is interesting.
First they eliminated the physical keyboard with the iPhone and iPad.
With Siri, they’re eliminating direct physical interaction altogether.
The Dick Tracy wristwatch isn’t too far away.
Jo,
My eyes aren’t that good any more, the wristwatch will have too small a screen. The iPhone is just right. In essence, it IS the Dick Tracy prognostication of mobile face to face communication.
In fact, it is the combination of that mobile communication with Lazarus Long’s Doris the air car, in miniature!
Did you miss the Apple patent for micro cell antenna that can be used on, say, a watch? It was on here yesterday.
That still wouldn’t help my EYES! I don’t care how small the antenna is…
Do not expect Siri to be ported to anywhere else in the nearest future. It will stay a high-end iPhone exclusive for some time for marketing reasons.
(Of course, Siri coming to elsewhere is inevitable, but it will not happen soon just yet.)
I hope that Apple would find a way to end Google’s ads empire. Google is very strong in on-line advertising. For every site you visit there would dozens of Google’s ads peppered about the page. Many a times these ads are pesky and distracting. And it encourages page-clicking baits from unethical operators. Is this the only model for online advertising and will Google rule the advertising kingdom forever? I don’t think so, if one is willing to think outside of the box.
There is one model that Apple should explore. Let’s examine the Yellow Pages model of advertising. Apple can have a default Yellow-Page button on every partner’s site that, when clicked by a reader, will lead to a portal that indexes every types of businesses (public, private or government), classified advertising such as Jobs, Vehicles for Sale, House for Sale, etc. according to category or alphabetical order. When one clicks on an entry it will take one to another page where the particular product would be advertised in its full glory. This page could be designed by Apple with inputs from the advertiser concerned. Of course the more elaborate the page is, the pricier would be the cost to the advertiser as against a few-lines personal advertisement. Apple could design a payment mechanism to pay to partners that carry the default Yellow-Page button on their sites based on successful transaction, and collect charges from advertisers for done deals. Apple could also charge a nominal annual fee for every listing, based on real estate the advertiser would choose to have in the portal. This would be huge for information gathering.
Then tie this system to Siri or iAds that will intelligently bring direct any advertisement to a user without the pesky intrusion of a Google’s model of serving advertisement. If readers can be left in peace reading news or any other information without encountering ads on a page, it would be a boon. If readers want advertisement or further product information, they can just click the Yellow-Page button. Apple would be credited with another industry changing innovation.
Apple can buy an existing online Yellow Page and then overhaul its user interface to tie in with Siri and iAds; alternatively, Apple can start from scratch. Apple has to cut the root of the evil Google’s money tree by outsmarting Google.
What’s the heck, how could I contact Apple with this silly idea instead of bitching it out publicly to every Tom, Dick and Harry.
Android was an awkward, ill-planned shot across the bow of Apple’s business, raising the ire (and attention) of Steve Jobs toward Google as a competitor.
Siri is Steve Jobs’ response – a direct broad-side to the underbelly of Google’s core business of advertising.
It may also be one of Steve Jobs’ last enduring gifts to the consumer – access to information without in-your-face, intrusive advertising, which adds to the constant overload of information our brains have to work to filter out.