Screen Shot 5Apple's senior director of Siri, Alex Acero, will speak at the AI Frontiers conference in San Jose, California, this coming November.

The event brings together specialists in the fields of robotics, natural language processing, virtual assistants, autonomous driving, and more, with speakers from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Uber.

As part of a panel exploring the role of personal assistants, Acero will about how deep learning informs the way Siri works on Apple devices. From the AI Frontiers online schedule:

Siri brought personal assistants to the mainstream after its introduction in 2011 in the iPhone. Deep learning is powering many components in Siri: trigger word detection, large vocabulary recognition, text-to-speech, machine translation, and natural language understanding. In this talk I will show a few examples of how deep learning is used in Siri.

Also on Acero's panel are Amazon Alexa director Ruhi Sarikaya and Google research scientist Dilek Hakkani-Tur.

Acero arrived at Apple in 2013 after spending two decades at Microsoft, where he oversaw research into computer vision, speech, neuro-linguistic programming, machine learning and translation, amongst other areas. His work on Siri takes in speech recognition, speech synthesis, and machine translation.

The AI Frontiers conference takes place from November 9 to November 11. For more information on the event and scheduled speakers, check out the AI Frontiers website.

Top Rated Comments

Kabeyun Avatar
79 months ago
In other news, a kindergartner is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the nuances of Shakespeare.

/s
Sry, but afaic Siri is where Apple falls completely flat.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Shunnabunich Avatar
79 months ago
What natural language processing? Siri appears to rely on a limited set of pre-defined phrases that accept variables, and if you stray outside of those you get booted straight to a web search or she answers some unrelated question. Siri is Eliza with operating system tie-ins.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SBlue1 Avatar
79 months ago
What? There is a SENIOR DIRECTOR for Siri???? What the hell is he doing all day?? I thought they let the interns do the Siri jokes.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
KGBguy Avatar
79 months ago
My dog is smarter than Siri. It is a great idea, but, today Siri has a very long way to go to be useful. Dealing with it is nothing but a head ache.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RickInHouston Avatar
79 months ago
Speech title: natural language processing is HARD.
Google seems to be handling the difficulty quite well.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
foobarbaz Avatar
79 months ago
In other news, a kindergartner is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the nuances of Shakespeare.

/s
Sry, but afaic Siri is where Apple falls completely flat.
Apple is behind in many areas and the way they fix it is usually this:

Work in secret on a replacement for 4 years while everybody complains they’re not doing anything.

That’s how they fixed their file system, their programming language and apparently their maps.

Of course, there are times when they are really not doing anything (Mac Pro), so we can’t know …

The point is, don’t judge that guy on what’s shipping today. (Wait five years, then you may … )
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iPhone SE 4 Vertical Camera Feature

iPhone SE 4 Production Will Reportedly Begin Ramping Up in October

Tuesday July 23, 2024 2:00 pm PDT by
Following nearly two years of rumors about a fourth-generation iPhone SE, The Information today reported that Apple suppliers are finally planning to begin ramping up mass production of the device in October of this year. If accurate, that timeframe would mean that the next iPhone SE would not be announced alongside the iPhone 16 series in September, as expected. Instead, the report...
iPhone 17 Plus Feature

iPhone 17 Lineup Specs Detail Display Upgrade and New High-End Model

Monday July 22, 2024 4:33 am PDT by
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Generic iPhone 17 Feature With Full Width Dynamic Island

Kuo: Ultra-Thin iPhone 17 to Feature A19 Chip, Single Rear Camera, Semi-Titanium Frame, and More

Wednesday July 24, 2024 9:06 am PDT by
Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today shared alleged specifications for a new ultra-thin iPhone 17 model rumored to launch next year. Kuo expects the device to be equipped with a 6.6-inch display with a current-size Dynamic Island, a standard A19 chip rather than an A19 Pro chip, a single rear camera, and an Apple-designed 5G chip. He also expects the device to have a...
iPhone 16 Pro Sizes Feature

iPhone 16 Series Is Less Than Two Months Away: Everything We Know

Thursday July 25, 2024 5:43 am PDT by
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
icloud private relay outage

iCloud Private Relay Experiencing Outage

Thursday July 25, 2024 3:18 pm PDT by
Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service is down for some users, according to Apple’s System Status page. Apple says that the iCloud Private Relay service may be slow or unavailable. The outage started at 2:34 p.m. Eastern Time, but it does not appear to be affecting all iCloud users. Some impacted users are unable to browse the web without turning iCloud Private Relay off, while others are...