Apple's Beats brand in April unveiled the Powerbeats Pro, a redesigned wire-free version of its popular fitness-oriented Powerbeats earbuds.
Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'
The Verge's Walt Mossberg today wrote a critical article on Apple's Siri personal assistant, exploring the service's shortcomings, mistakes, and inability to answer some simple questions that competing products have no problem with.
Entitled, "Why does Siri seem so dumb?", Mossberg's article, covers several questions Siri couldn't answer, ranging from queries about political candidates to the date of the World Series to the weather in Crete. In each instance, Siri failed to provide the desired information, while Google Now, Google's Siri competitor, was able to answer every single question correctly.
In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major party candidates for president and vice president of the United States. Or when they were debating. Or when the Emmy awards show was due to be on. Or the date of the World Series. When I asked it "What is the weather on Crete?" it gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which -- while I'm sure it's great -- isn't what most people mean when they ask for the weather on Crete, the famous Greek island.According to Mossberg, Apple has fixed many of the above Siri shortcomings thanks to his feedback, and has "stressed" to him that the company is "constantly improving Siri." Apple says it focuses more on tasks like placing phone calls, sending texts, and finding places rather than "long tail" questions, which aren't as popular with iPhone and iPad users. Mossberg speculates that such questions aren't popular anymore because people "just give up" on asking Siri these types of things due to failed responses.
Mossberg also outlines several failures with Siri's cloud-based services, from searching through iMessages to locating photos to finding calendar appointments, drawing the conclusion that Apple has "wasted its lead" with Siri, which is now forced to compete with services from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Mossberg believes that Siri "seems stagnant" and is "too limited and unreliable" compared to other services.
Though it may not seem like it, Apple has been putting a lot of effort into improving Siri. Back in August, Apple executives Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, and Phil Schiller explained that machine learning techniques have cut Siri's error rate by a factor of two, improving understanding. Since 2014, Siri and other on-device features, like the QuickType keyboard, Spotlight, autocorrect, Maps, and more, have been powered by a neural net-based system that is able to provide users with more personalized responses and actions.
Recent rumors suggest Apple aiming to improve Siri's functionality even further in an effort to build the personal assistant into an Echo-like Smart home device that would do things like control smart home accessories. Apple is also said to be working on an "Invisible Hand" initiative that would allow users to fully control their devices through a Siri command, something that could debut within three years.
Mossberg's full article on Siri, which is well worth reading, can be accessed over at The Verge.
Tags: Siri Guide, theverge.com
[ 422 comments ]
Top Rated Comments
(View all)
36 months ago
Yup. I want Siri to tell me the answer, not direct me to a website to search for an answer. Siri is way behind imo.
36 months ago
Siri sets my alarms every night, and adds items to my Grocery list in Reminder. That's it. Apart from that, things like "Call my dad" completely confuzzles her where she tries to call ME... yet "Call my father" works fine. No logical sense whatsoever.
I've pretty much given up on Siri because 99% of the time, anything out of the ordinary (timers, reminder items) seem to just get me a snarky, useless response which triggers my nerd rage. :D
I've pretty much given up on Siri because 99% of the time, anything out of the ordinary (timers, reminder items) seem to just get me a snarky, useless response which triggers my nerd rage. :D
36 months ago
The worst part of Siri is not that it being dumb, it's that you have no way to point out its dumbness, via continued conversation!
No real person can guarantee to understand everything at first sight, they get them eventually by piecing together the information collected during the whole conversation.
Me: I want to visit Liz' house.
Siri: There is no one named Lucy in your contacts.
Me: Her full name in my contact is Lizzy Romi.
Siri: I am sorry I don't understand what you mean.
No real person can guarantee to understand everything at first sight, they get them eventually by piecing together the information collected during the whole conversation.
Me: I want to visit Liz' house.
Siri: There is no one named Lucy in your contacts.
Me: Her full name in my contact is Lizzy Romi.
Siri: I am sorry I don't understand what you mean.
36 months ago
Spot-on, Walt.
I already tweeted his article to Tim Cook. Siri needs to finally graduate from Kindergarten.
I already tweeted his article to Tim Cook. Siri needs to finally graduate from Kindergarten.
36 months ago
In my case he is totally right about "people just gave up" to ask Siri more advanced questions, I just assume it wouldn't be able to answer that.
36 months ago
Siri's good for simple things like "Remind me to..." or "wake me up at..." but that's really just voice commands which tech has been able to do since the early 2000s. When Forstall announced Siri he said "the ability to understand what you mean and act on it...that's the breakthrough" and Siri has never been able to do that to me. It just recognized certain phrases.
I'm shocked at what Siri can't do. I can imagine some common stuff that Siri still can't do like:
* "What time is XXXX on TV tonight?"
* "What channel is XXXX on?"
* "How much is XXXX on Amazon?"
* "Check for new emails."
* "When was my last email from X?"
* "Text XXXX about [subject] in one hour."
* "What's the best way to go to work this morning."
Some of those things are fairly advanced but with Apple's tight software integration and 5 years of Siri use I would think Apple could have taken it farther. And all this is ignoring the accuracy rates of speech recognition.
------
Some super cool things that could leverage app integration would be thinks like:
* "Order my usual pizza from X."
* "Open X files and send them as a PDF to XX"
* "Back up my system to Time Machine and then put the computer to sleep."
* "Retrive [file name] from my last time Machine backup."
* "Copy [folder name] to iCloud Drive
I'm shocked at what Siri can't do. I can imagine some common stuff that Siri still can't do like:
* "What time is XXXX on TV tonight?"
* "What channel is XXXX on?"
* "How much is XXXX on Amazon?"
* "Check for new emails."
* "When was my last email from X?"
* "Text XXXX about [subject] in one hour."
* "What's the best way to go to work this morning."
Some of those things are fairly advanced but with Apple's tight software integration and 5 years of Siri use I would think Apple could have taken it farther. And all this is ignoring the accuracy rates of speech recognition.
------
Some super cool things that could leverage app integration would be thinks like:
* "Order my usual pizza from X."
* "Open X files and send them as a PDF to XX"
* "Back up my system to Time Machine and then put the computer to sleep."
* "Retrive [file name] from my last time Machine backup."
* "Copy [folder name] to iCloud Drive
[ Read All Comments ]
Elevation Lab, known for its line of popular iPhone charging docks, today released the FamilyCharger, a multi-charging setup designed to allow you to charge all of your devices in one place.
The...
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming macOS Catalina update to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the second public beta and a day after seeding the fourth developer...
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming tvOS 13 update to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the second public beta and day after seeding the fourth developer beta of...
Apple today began selling an updated version of the Rotor Riot wired game controller for iPhone and iPad through its online store. The new model features a redesigned directional pad, a built-in...
Los Angeles FC fans can now order food and drinks ahead of time directly on their iPhones at the Banc of California Stadium.
The MLS team has partnered with artificial intelligence platform...
An escalating trade war between Japan and South Korea could make Chinese manufacturer BOE Technology a "strong contender" for OLED display orders from Apple, according to industry sources who...
iPhone loyalty has hit its lowest level since 2011 and Samsung has been the main benefactor, claims a new survey conducted by trade-in service BankMyCell.
The survey, cited by CNET, tracked...
Sky: Children of the Light, by Journey developer thatgamecompany, is now available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Its release follows last year's launch of the beta version of the game, titled...
