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The magic of Siri

qubit

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I've played around with it for a bit on a friend's iPhone and I have to confess there's definitely something to it. It's ability to understand you is uncanny. Given the incredible difficulty of designing such a system and the resources that have been poured into it over the last 40-odd years, who'd have thought it would be Apple that would make an advance like this in artificial intelligence?

Hence, this editorial of someone that uses it daily is interesting.

After a month of using Siri, the new voice-controlled "personal assistant" available on the iPhone 4S, I've decided it may be time to add voice control to the list of paradigm-shifting ways to interact with a computer -- right behind the mouse, keyboard and, more recently, touch gestures. While voice control remains far from perfect, the ease of use and instant results Siri delivers may be just enough to shift people's habits. It's certainly changed mine.

Controlling computers using voice commands has been a promised fantasy for years. Though various companies have tried, none has delivered something easy, convenient, or reliable enough to work well for most users. Apple's Mac OS has had voice commands built in since the mid-1990s, and I recall Windows booths at CompUSA staffed by Dragon Dictation engineers wearing awkward headsets, as OS/2 Warp gathered dust on the shelves.

In fact, most phones have been able to do voice-controlled contact and number dialing since before the arrival of smartphones. Despite widespread availability, voice control never gained traction because the effort required to get it to work right wasn't worth it for most people. Voice control -- from the old Speakable Items in Mac OS to the method of dialing contacts on older cell phones -- always required specific phrasing that sounded more like a command than natural speech.

"Dial 5-5-5-5-5-5-1-2-3-4" -- enunciating each word and number -- is a lot harder to do on a regular basis than to simply say "Call mom."

Now we just need the competition to catch up.

PC World
 
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I have tried Siri, but it doesn't recognise "Asian English". Unless they can finally recognise my speech pattern, Siri is quite useless to me.
 
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I've played around with it for a bit on a friend's iPhone and I have to confess there's definitely something to it. It's ability to understand you is uncanny. Given the incredible difficulty of designing such a system and the resources that have been poured into it over the last 40-odd years, who'd have thought it would be Apple that would make an advance like this in artificial intelligence?

Hence, this editorial of someone that uses it daily is interesting.



Now we just need the competition to catch up.

PC World


Apple didn't man, another company did and Apple bought them, siri was for sale IN the app store before :laugh:


I've had a play with it as well and found it to be a combination of a chat bot and voice activations nothing amazing/ground breaking.
 
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I have tried Siri, but it doesn't recognise "Asian English". Unless they can finally recognise my speech pattern, Siri is quite useless to me.

It cannot comprehend a Scottish accent either.

Mostly seems the same as shouting at a Kinect except with an iphone there isnt any real need to use voice commands because your not far away from the device; example: i could tell my xbox to shutdown but with an iphone in my hand id just be aswell pressing the button.

Id feel like a wally if i used Siri on a bus :laugh:

EDIT: Speed dial and leaving voice recordings might be handy but nothing "OH WOW I MUST HAVE THIS" because i can already do everything.
 
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It cannot comprehend a Scottish accent either.

Yeah but not even humans can so its a moot point.

Siri seems cool, I've never witnessed it in person, but it looks like it can really bear the title of voice recognition software.
However it only works well in English, for example the German version has its fair share of troubles, related to grammar and syntax.

Nevertheless, its a cool concept that seems to work well, and they should continue perfecting it.
 
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Apple didn't man, another company did and Apple bought them, siri was for sale IN the app store before :laugh:


I've had a play with it as well and found it to be a combination of a chat bot and voice activations nothing amazing/ground breaking.

Ah, that explains it. I thought it was unlikely that they would develop something like this.

Well, it might be a trick, but it's a damned good one and good enough to be useful.
 
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Yeah but not even humans can so its a moot point.

Siri seems cool, I've never witnessed it in person, but it looks like it can really bear the title of voice recognition software.
However it only works well in English, for example the German version has its fair share of troubles, related to grammar and syntax.

Nevertheless, its a cool concept that seems to work well, and they should continue perfecting it.

Pffft not all Scots talk like teuchters. Im sorry but my experiences with Siri have been rubbish, Apple fanboys tout it up and i cant think of many practical applications. Someone please prove to me its usefulness in the setting of a smartphone and prove its not a gimmick.
 

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Pffft not all Scots talk like teuchters. Im sorry but my experiences with Siri have been rubbish, Apple fanboys tout it up and i cant think of many practical applications. Someone please prove to me its usefulness in the setting of a smartphone and prove its not a gimmick.

I know you didn't direct your comment to me, but for the record, I'm about as anti-Apple as you can get, yet I was impressed with the way Siri worked. It might be a trick, but it's a very good one!
 
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Pffft not all Scots talk like teuchters. Im sorry but my experiences with Siri have been rubbish, Apple fanboys tout it up and i cant think of many practical applications. Someone please prove to me its usefulness in the setting of a smartphone and prove its not a gimmick.

Handy in a car, but then again there's other apps you can get for voice controls in car.
 
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I asked Siri "what is the best android phone?" She said, would you like me to search the web, I said "no, just tell me," and the bitch ignored me.
 

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I asked Siri "what is the best android phone?" She said, would you like me to search the web, I said "no, just tell me," and the bitch ignored me.

I would have loved her to have said Samsung or something! :laugh:
 
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Yeah that was a question in general to anyone.

Lots of cars have voice activated commands with bluetooth built in and there are hands free kits. I dont see how Siri is special in that regard. Voice commands have good uses but in regards to a smartphone i think the uses are limited, i dont think the software is all its touted to be. I dont know the general user experience so i can only go by my own feedback and it cant really understand my Glaswegian accent.

If it works great for you and you find lots of uses for it then its 'good value' for you but not me. Its not really artificial intelligence either its just things mapped to a certain function, it doesn't make its own choices.
 

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Yeah that was a question in general to anyone.

Lots of cars have voice activated commands with bluetooth built in and there are hands free kits. I dont see how Siri is special in that regard. Voice commands have good uses but in regards to a smartphone i think the uses are limited, i dont think the software is all its touted to be. I dont know the general user experience so i can only go by my own feedback and it cant really understand my Glaswegian accent.

If it works great for you and you find lots of uses for it then its 'good value' for you but not me. Its not really artificial intelligence either its just things mapped to a certain function, it doesn't make its own choices.

That last bit there is the crux of it, isn't it? It sounds like a very clever trick, but one that works well enough to be useful.

It's a shame about the accent problem. I guess that's where a true AI would have faired considerably better. Mind you, I often stumble with strong accents, Scottish included, so that must make me... :eek:
 
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