I use Siri the most when I'm driving and want to put an album on; I'd say it fails > 70% of the time to understand simple commands of something like "Play Wildflowers by Tom Petty" or "Play Ryan Adams". Unbelievable.
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Apple Exec Overseeing Siri Departs Role
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I use Siri the most when I'm driving and want to put an album on; I'd say it fails > 70% of the time to understand simple commands of something like "Play Wildflowers by Tom Petty" or "Play Ryan Adams". Unbelievable.
Exactly! I can even ask google assistant on iOS to play CNN on TuneIn Radio and it will launch the app TuneIn and start playing CNN on iOS just fine. I can't do the same with Siri because she is dumb. Once TuneIn supports Shortcuts I'll still have to teach her something Google Assistant can do with on iOS without any shortcut support whatsoever.
For now, I'll have to remember that I should ask Siri to play CNN on TuneIn Radio if I feel like listening to Radiohead on Apple Music.
I wish my grandfather were alive so you could watch him roll his eyes at your challenges. Incidentally, most of these modern problems, like sleep deficits, are side effects of the same technology products you're hoping will solve those things.
Google can answer a lot more questions and it can do follow up questions. I have all 3 and the google assistant is the best by far out of them all. Not saying that Siri is terrible because it isn’t and I use it everyday but I won’t deny how good the google assistant is.
I think one of the problems with Siri is that you get a different version on different devices and I think the HomePod is the most limited of them all. I hope to see feature parity in the future.
I don't get it. If I want the temperature to be changed I'll just ask it to raise the temperature. If I want it to react to specific statements of how I'm feeling then I'll set that up separately. I don't tell a person I'm cold if I want the heat turned up, I ask them if they can turn on the heat. If you tell Siri you are feeling down, does she just start playing music to make you happy, maybe she'll tell you a joke, turn on your favorite movie on the tv? Seems way too unpredictable.
Google's assistant is like having Siri plus a whole wikipedia of the internet available to you. This is what I really want from Siri. I just picked a subject, water, and asked Google random questions from my head...some of them are ridiculous like can a dog drink salt water but it actually gave me a great response. Not one of the below questions that I asked did it not have a response for.
- how much water should you drink a day?
- Is it safe to drink a gallon of water a day?
- Is it better to drink hot or cold water?
- where does the water glass go on the table?
- Should you drink water when you wake up?
- Is bottled water better for you than tap?
- what is sparkling water? (ONLY ONE SIRI COULD ANSWER)
- what happened in Flint with water?
- Is Flint water safe to drink?
- Is coke made from water?
- does drinking water work for a hangover?
- how long does it take ice to melt?
- can dogs drink salt water?
- does water always boil at the same temperature?
- what are popular songs about water?
- why should you not drink water in Mexico?
- is saliva the same as water?
- can i drink rainwater?
- can i drink river water?
- how much water do people drink each year?
- Do people mix beer with water?
- why is my tap water green?
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No wonder Siri still sucks - this guy has been job shopping for the past year
I agree that Google can answer a lot of general knowledge questions that Siri might be able to. That points to Apple’s handicap: it doesn’t have its own search engine. Apple needs to remedy that if it’s going to want to compete on the AI stage. Right now, it’s able to pull from Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia but it has to build its own search engine. It’s so critical that I’ll make a confident prediction that we’ll see an Apple search engine sooner or later.
Siri does do follow up questions. I ask them all the time. “How old is Barack Obama? Who’s his wife? How old is she?” all returned the correct answers from Siri.
Looks like Google just updated and is now answering the question directly on both the assistant app and on my Google home mini. This happened just hours ago too. Siri still prompts you to ask another question.
I’ve yet to find a question the assistant can’t answer and some of them have been quite obscure.
As for turning up the heating I agree I would just say turn up the heating. However if you wanted to be more conversational you could always have a custom phrase of I feel cold and the google assistant could turn turn up the heating.
I pointed that one out because it shows Siri’s intellectual flexibility and contextual awareness. You can say it’s cold in here and Siri knows what you mean. I don’t suggest that you’ll use that phrase every time you want to warm up your home, just that you can use different expressions, naturally and there’s a good chance Siri will know what to do. That’s important because people don’t have to learn how to control your home; it’s natural. And that’s how we’re going to get to human-like interactions.
I just asked Google Home: “warm it up in here” and she replied “sorry, I don’t understand”. I said the same to Siri and she turned up the temperature. What this shows is that Siri actually is getting the foundations right. Google has access to more information. Ultimately, being smart is being able to interpret communications and solve problems, not just store the most information.
Apple has the foundations right, they just need to start building access to more information and that might mean building their own search engine.
I hate to tell you, but a bunch of those questions have no answer. If google is answering you it’s lying.
Agreed.
Routinely use Siri (iPhone) to start a timer when cooking in the kitchen. Pretty straight forward, right? Have a gigabit connection coming into the house and all too often she’s stuck at “communicating”. And while I’m at it, why can’t she turn off a timer? Never seems to fail: hands covered in whatever, timer alarm is blaring, she won’t silence the damn thing. Seems that would be pretty basic.
Please provide an example. First you said Siri couldn't do follow up questions, then I showed you it could and now Google is just better. Ok...
Whomever was overseeing siri should have been fired long ago. There is simly no excuse for siri’s awful performance. I have 6 homepods purely for the amazing sound. In each room there is a pair of homepods is an amazon product for alexa use. Siri is next to worthless.
Bill Stasior, who has been heading up Apple's Siri team since 2012, recently left his role as the leader of the voice assistant group, reports The Information.
Stasior was recruited from Amazon in 2012 to oversee Siri following the departure of Siri co-founders Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus. Cheyer and Kittlaus had joined Apple when the company originally purchased Siri in 2010, but did not stay long.
According to The Information, Stasior has stepped down from his role as leader of Siri but has not left Apple. The change in leadership is part of a restructuring effort by John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, who has taken over the Siri team.
Giannandrea, who has been pushing the Siri team to "focus more on long-term research" rather than incremental improvements, will be looking for a replacement for Stasior.
Giannandrea joined Apple in April 2018 as chief of machine learning and AI strategy, and at the time, it was reported that he would be overseeing both the Core ML and Siri teams. Ginnandrea was later promoted to SVP in December 2018.
Prior to joining Apple, Giannandrea spent eight years at Google, and in the time before that, he founded two companies, Tellme Networks and Metaweb Technologies.
Giannandrea's hiring came amid widespread criticism of Siri, which has shortcomings in comparison to AI offerings from companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Apple made serious strides improving Siri in 2018 under Giannandrea's leadership, building out the capabilities of the AI assistant with features like Siri Shortcuts in iOS 12.
Article Link: Apple Exec Overseeing Siri Departs Role
I have both. Sometimes I ask Siri a question on the HomePod and then ask a follow up and it either says it can’t do it on HomePod or it gives the wrong answer completely. The google assistant is much better at this. I have HomePods because of the sound quality and because of the integration with my Apple devices and I like them but I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s better than the google assistant.
Do you know who John Giannandrea is?
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Ah. Finally an intelligent post.
The three leading systems (leaving Cortana and Bixby out as they have much smaller audiences) each have different domains. Google has the entirety of the web and as such sees more data than god. Amazon has those things you search for on their sites (and a much smaller data set from developers). As such, some can answer questions that others cannot. Additionally, Siri is hamstrung by Apple's insistence on privacy, something not top of mind for Alexa or Google Assistant. If you are looking at something objective (and not personal anecdotal stuff) like word error rate, Google likely leads, then Siri, then Alexa.
John Giannandrea, the fellow now leading Apple's efforts, ran all of Google search and AI. Speech was one of the divisions that reported into him. Now Apple has him. They've made big strides in the months he's been there. I wouldn't bet against this guy.
Thanks for pointing that out.
I would say that my biggest problems with Siri have to do with Siri getting the voice recognition screwed up. It seems like I’m fine for most voice to text applications somehow but once I start asking for a particular merchant or Aventador (Vendor) or some weird words like Ben door (Vendor). It gets a bit frustrating
I’m looking for a particular restaurant so I asked for a particular restaurant name and it sends me to across the United States 2000 miles away sometimes.
Anyway the types of mistakes that Siri is making should be something about someone who cares and someone who uses Siri should be able to fix I could petition for a job but I don’t really want a job.
Did this person even read the article? Bill Stasior was hired to head up Siri from Amazon in 2012 (aka Alexa). Literally was an Alexa exec in charge for the last 7 years.
Be more specific. Which specific question are you taking about that has no answer?
I think it’s more about how you use it and what you expect from a personal assistant at this point... I use both.. but I find I’m useling Siri a lot more.
The advantage of google assistant is that it can answer more complex ‘encyclopedia’ questions. For my purposes, when I want to do that kind of ‘research’ I just use a browser and Google it - Answers for question that usually have ‘Why’s’ mainly can’t always be trusted. In general this comprises 1% of what in a PA for.
For quick factual questions, “what’s the population of...”, or “inches to centimeters” or math questions, both device/services I find the same. These questions comprises less 5% of what I need PAs for at this time...
90+% of use for PAs *for me* is to do stuff that I’m to lazy to do - convenience purpose.
Turn off all the lights in the basement.
Set the scene to Movie mode (changes color/dims various lamps and lights in the room, and changes the right volume)
Is the garage door open?
Home automation stuff is where I find PAs really useful.
The PA makes things convenient. Instead of me getting up all the time.
This is where I find Siri superior to Google assistant...mainly because of the device (not the service) allows me to speak naturally (without shouting)... Google assistant is too frustrating when it plays the wrong music and I have to shout at it to stop!
I find HomePod with Siri really good with just talking naturally with.
The downside is that I like to use Homekit where possible... and ecosystem of HomeKit much smaller and more expensive.
Just my experiences, ymmv.
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Apple should just pay Google to use the assistant as the exclusive AI on iOS.....and cancel the 9 billion Google pays them yearly for google search to remain safaris primary search engine and allow Googles Assistant to become the official iOS AI as well as Androids lol but wishful thinking....and still keep Google as the primary search engine.
Siri is done in my eyes...and useless.
Actually, I used Siri for lots of dictation, and it works mostly when I need it to. I also like to use Siri hands-free with my iPhone and other iOS devices, which is completely convenient for me for making a quick note, sending a message, or even changing a song. Personally, Siri is a very large part to my iOS experience.
So I do look forward for the changes when they are coming, hopefully in iOS 13. I think John Giannandrea was hired to completely overhaul the A.I. performance, and I think those changes are rightfully coming soon.
So I do look forward for the changes when they are coming, hopefully in iOS 13. I think John Giannandrea was hired to completely overhaul the A.I. performance, and I think those changes are rightfully coming soon.