Hey Siri, How Old Am I? Some iPhone Users Given the Wrong Age [Fixed]

[sander48k]

I think I found the culprit.

class User {
    
    public:
        int getAge() {
            // NOTE: increase at start of new year. don't forget.
            int current_year = 2022;
            int age = current_year - this.birthday.tm_year;
            return age
        }
}

 

[testcard]

If you don’t know how old you are you probably shouldn’t be left in charge of a smartphone. 😉

 

[Powerbooky]

There's another bug with numbers. I've created a Shortcut routine for my HomePod where Siri determines if my iPhone needs charging. If it is below 50% Siri on HomePod has to speak some text in which it tells me the actual value.
On version 15.2 this worked fine, but on 15.3 the condition is ignored: it always speaks the text and the charge is a very long amount of digits that doesn't resemble the battery percentage showed on the iPhone itself.

 

[Solomani]

48 year old woman: "Hey Siri, how old am I?"

Siri: "You are currently 28 years old."

48 year old woman: "Siri, I love you so much!"

 

[DominikHoffmann]

Siri gives the date of my son incorrectly. He has a March birthday and is 9 currently, but Siri says he is 10.

 

[Madonepro]

I would be seriously worried if I needed to ask Siri my age, LOL.

Sadly it's the Millenial/Gen Z who have the attention span of a gnat.

 

[JWD]

Wrong age for me, not the only thing Siri gets wrong unfortunately ?

 

[alexandr]

Siri doesn't know my age. I'm thinking of all the "Happy Birthday"s that I've missed

 

[Killbynumbers]

Speak for yourself! I forgot how old I am all the time! ?

It took me a few seconds to think about it to realize that Siri was wrong about my age. Getting older sucks, especially when you forget song lyrics that you knew for 46 years.

 

[katbel]

I never asked before, but after reading this article of corse I asked.
Siri: I don’t know your age.
Right answer! Never tell a woman her age ?

 

[erinsarah]

This means you either didn't link your own contact, or haven't entered your own birthday on your contact card. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/add-your-contact-info-iph18b749db1/ios

Granted that is the correct answer, but it kind of blows my mind that Siri doesn't know how old I am. I bet Alexa does.

 

[erinsarah]

"Hey Siri, add ketchup to the shopping list..."
Who's speaking???

"Hey's Siri, Watch TV"...<previously created shortcut>
I've sent some results to your iPhone

God, I wish they would fix these problems!!!

My wife and I have had a weekly zoom-based trivial pursuit game with the extended family each week. The question reader (on Zoom) asked a question where the beginning of the sentence must have sounded like "Hey Siri", because our HomePods sitting behind the couch answered the question before we could.

And for what it's worth, she answered correctly.

 

[CarlJ]

Apple has steadfastly stuck to the notion of "we want Siri to respond like, and be treated like, a human assistant", rather than giving her anything in the way of specific syntax, encouraging people to ask questions that they would ask of another human, with the developers racing to "build out the back-end" to handle this properly.

But being able to answer in a natural sounding voice with proper grammar, with a touch of snark on occasion, isn't the only thing - or even the main thing - that would make her seem human... it's all about the content of the answers she gives.

Siri has repeatedly shown that the developers can be astonishingly naive about what to do with the sentences that Siri correctly hears and parses. They want you to treat her sort of like a person, but she frequently gives answers that, if you got them from a real person, you'd either roll your eyes and walk away, or, if they were your actual paid assistant, you might consider firing them for being incompetent (especially when it happens over and over). She'll show that she has all the information needed, and she at least pretends to have understood the question, but then she gives an answer that looks a lot like the developers had one use case in mind at that point, and gave zero consideration to the possibility of there being any other questions that could end up in the same place, so they don't bother trying to really understand the question, they just run with their guess.

I've had this conversation more than once - same sort of naiveté about time as the birthday question in the story:

• "Hey Siri, how long until sunset?"
• "Sunset will be at 5:20pm today."
• "Hey Siri, how long until 5:20pm?"
• "It's one day until then."
• "Hey Siri, how many minutes until 5:20pm?"
• "It's 47 minutes until then."

So she knows when the sun is setting today, she knows what time it is now, she can calculate the offset, but when she gets the question "how long until sunset?", even though she recognizes the various parts of the question, she pretends you asked "when is sunset today?". And then, if you ask how long until a particular time, and that time is very close to now, she assumes you're asking about that time tomorrow. Sure, if I asked how long until 5:20pm, and it was 5:45pm, then "tomorrow" might be a legit, though unhelpful, answer, but if you're in the same hour, you need to consider the order of the events (and from a developer standpoint, this isn't rocket science). And "how long until sunset" is not an incredibly obscure question - it's not in the top ten, but I wouldn't be surprised if its in the top thousand.

Also, there's also a special place in hell for the developer who has Siri responding about 10% of the time to "Hey Siri, set reading" (a homekit scene that merely requires the HomePod mini to send a predefined JSON message to the Hue Hub), with something to the effect of, "Sorry, Carl, I can't contact your iPhone, please make sure it's on the same WiFi network" - yes, dammit, the HomePod and the iPhone are on the same WiFi network (and they're all in the same room), and you DO NOT NEED my iPhone in order for you, the HomePod, to send a message to the Hue Hub.

 

[CarlJ]

My wife and I have had a weekly zoom-based trivial pursuit game with the extended family each week. The question reader (on Zoom) asked a question where the beginning of the sentence must have sounded like "Hey Siri", because our HomePods sitting behind the couch answered the question before we could.

And for what it's worth, she answered correctly.

My niece has discovered that when I'm on FaceTime with her, she can command Siri on my HomePod mini to set timers. I'm still a bit astonished that that works.

 

[kc9hzn]

Thing is, age calculation is actually a culturally dependent thing. Some places don’t use years lapsed (like in the west, where zero doesn’t count) but instead use ordinal years (first year, second year, third year, etc.). Siri is technically correct in South Korea, for instance, where they use a variation of years lapsed but increment the number at the beginning of the calendar year.

 

[avmsam]

If i ask Siri when is my moms birthday it says the correct day & month but says the year 2023. Wtf

The correct year is in the contacts for my mom. Dunno what bug Siri has going on right now.

 

[Fraserpatty]

I think the real problem here is that you have to ask Siri how old you are. Get yourself to the doctor because you might be having a medical emergency!

I know you are joking, but this is an attempt to see how accurate Siri is. If it is so totally inaccurate and inconsistent about a fact that it ought to be able to accurately ascertain from contacts then how can you trust it to be accurate and consistent about some thing that you don’t know and that is important. Or to have any role in the Apple car?
Apple really needs to concentrate more heavily on Siri, it’s just that whether Siri is good or bad is not going to dictate whether a person buys the iPhone, so they spend their time and money on the camera etc. Understandable I guess, but as a lady in her 70s I need a virtual some thing I can depend on every time.
Siri should say, on 10 July you will be 50. Or something like that. That would be correct in every culture. And it’s a fact ascertainable from contacts.

 

[Fraserpatty]

The heck with knowing my birthday. Whatever happened to Siri being able to search your photos? Now all it does is give me the search page. This on an iPad Pro 11 inch third generation. It used to be able to do this. Also it used to be able to add some thing to an existing note. Now all it does is open notes. These are the things that bum me out.

 

[DaveN]

If you don’t know how old you are you probably shouldn’t be left in charge of a smartphone. ?

Wrong. If you don't know how old you are, you probably need a smartphone.

 

[Razorpit]

Siri this month has “forgotten“ who my wife is, repeatedly tells me it doesn’t have contact x, y, or z, and today my HomePods don’t recognize my voice to add stuff to my own grocery store list. ? I’m supposed to turn voice recognition on somewhere in the Home app but it doesn’t tell you where and I haven’t been able to find it in the few minutes I looked for it.

I’m an Apple nerd and if I’m having issues fixing stuff like this, I really feel for the common person. Apple better hope Alexa is just as bad.

 

[Reggaenald]

For real? iOS and macOS are bugs galore, including Siri, and some health and accessibility features are still missing/buggy, but this gets a headline? MacRumors, you’ve become the BuzzFeed of Apple blogs.

 

[DocMultimedia]

My age became correct when I asked Siri today, but she seemed to respond in a rather sarcastic tone when she answered. At least I'm back to my actual age.

 

[stevet]

If you have to ask Siri, then how do you know it's wrong?