i bet siri won't work as good as they make it out to be

[Geckotek]

To be fair the current voice stuff on iphone isn't that great. I'm expecting this to be an incremental improvement, but not mind blowing. Quite happy to see how it goes though.

One more time for those not paying attention:

Siri is NOT voice recognition! Siri is an AI that happens to use voice recognition.

The current iPhone voice recognition will be replaced by Nuance, the company that produces the Dragon line of products. And the current voice recognition Nuance is doing is impressive. It's not 100%, but better than any voice recognition I've ever used.

 

[Jazwire]

LOL, best reply of the day!

Yes, if you normally speak like:

"yo dawg I , I need ax you sumphing , hows do I find girlz"

Don't expect a clear answer.

 

[Ars Diaboli]

One more time for those not paying attention:

Siri is NOT voice recognition! Siri is an AI that happens to use voice recognition.

The current iPhone voice recognition will be replaced by Nuance, the company that produces the Dragon line of products. And the current voice recognition Nuance is doing is impressive. It's not 100%, but better than any voice recognition I've ever used.

I really don't think it is an AI. Not quite at that level yet. I do believe it to be a virtual intelligence though.

 

[djransom]

Everybody should know by now that Apple doesn't release a feature until they get it working perfectly (i.e. cut/paste, MMS)

*looks @ Mobile Me*

 

[The Phazer]

Fully disagree. jobs wouldn't have let it leave the stable if it didn't work properly.

Then how come the existing voice control feature in the iPhone works so badly?

Ask it to play a song and it dials an international number. Ask it to phone the wife and it tells you the time.

I'm talking about features within iOS.

No OS starts out smooth.

Same again. Resume? Crap. Versions? Worse. Mission Control? Disaster.

Siri is NOT voice recognition! Siri is an AI that happens to use voice recognition.

The current iPhone voice recognition will be replaced by Nuance, the company that produces the Dragon line of products. And the current voice recognition Nuance is doing is impressive. It's not 100%, but better than any voice recognition I've ever used.

Yes, but Siri as a feature it utterly dependent on good voice recognition. And Nuance might be better than others, but that's still a disturbingly high failure rate, especially when in sub optimal conditions or when the person speaking has an accent.

Phazer

 

[Geckotek]

I really don't think it is an AI. Not quite at that level yet. I do believe it to be a virtual intelligence though.

It comes from DARPA's CALO project run by the Artificial Intelligence center at the Standford Research Center. I guess if you want to get down to it, they call it a "cognitive system". Siri is one result of this project.

The DARPA PAL program (the Personalized Assistant that Learns) focused on improving the way that computers support humans through the use of cognitive systems—that is, systems that reason, learn from experience, and accept guidance in order to provide effective, personalized assistance.

https://pal.sri.com/Plone/framework

----------

Yes, but Siri as a feature it utterly dependent on good voice recognition. And Nuance might be better than others, but that's still a disturbingly high failure rate, especially when in sub optimal conditions or when the person speaking has an accent.

Phazer

What's a disturbingly high failure rate?

 

[Pheo]

One more time for those not paying attention:

Siri is NOT voice recognition! Siri is an AI that happens to use voice recognition.

The current iPhone voice recognition will be replaced by Nuance, the company that produces the Dragon line of products. And the current voice recognition Nuance is doing is impressive. It's not 100%, but better than any voice recognition I've ever used.

Apple are calling it Siri. Joe Consumer doesn't give a monkies whether it is some AI Natural Language processing to figure out what you want, or voice recognition, or whatever. They care if they can talk to their phone and it does what they want, and the accuracy level therein. I read about the distinction, but have chosen to talk about Siri as its easier than calling it Nuance@AppleiPhone4S + Siri NLP AI. Sorry about that.

PS, luckily I'm not someone with limited vision, therefore no need to enlarge things. Thanks for being so accomodating though!

 

[Darthdingo]

welcome to the world of advertising

Yes.

Reminds me of screen shots for a PC game, on the game box at the store, it looks stunning and beautiful, then you install it, and say hey WTF this game looks cheeseball, and not like those pic's

 

[flatfoot99]

i bet siri won't work as good as they make it out to be
anyone agree

Not sure... but if it does work as good as they say, it will change everything.
Imagine the possibilities of siri on your mac or appleTV 3 or running your home automation... Turn on tv, turn lights off in kitchen, whats on channel ?, turn the heat up 2 degrees...
very exciting times!!!! Too bad my iphone is not available for an upgrade til november!

 

[Rodimus Prime]

My Galaxy S2 sure did do speech to text VERY well. If it will at least do this, I will be happy. I am afraid many lonely people will be disappointed as they might expect it to substitute for a friend!

you are one of many people who are confusing speed to text and siris.

Siris is not voice to text. Siri just takes a string in natural language and uses that for commands. Nuance provides all the voice to text powered part. It is two very separate technologies. Google's voice to text is more or less just as good as Nuance. Only reason Google is not licencing the technology from Nuance is they hired a former VP from there who worked on it so they were able to get around all the patents. It is near impossible to get good voice to text with out hitting a good chunk of Nuance patents.

 

[dccorona]

Source: Engadget.

I think it's going to work great.

Somewhere else (TIMN, maybe?) said that they used it and spoke much less robotically then demonstrated in the keynote, and it still worked perfectly.

they probably were very careful in the demo so as not to risk looking foolish by it not working, but in actuality it is capable of understanding more natural language

 

[wratran]

Siri is just a market gimmick
It will never work in a normal background noise condition.just like any voice command software

Maybe Apple should include the "cone of silence" from " get smart"

 

[Geckotek]

Siri is just a market gimmick
It will never work in a normal background noise condition.just like any voice command software

Maybe Apple should include the "cone of silence" from " get smart"

Have you tried it? I've been quite surprised at how well it works.

I think a lot of people are forgetting the noise cancellation mic Apple added on the iPhone 4. This seems to kill the effect of background noise.

And once again we are now discussing Nuance, not Siri.

 

[mloffa]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I have a feeling there is going to be tons of frustration. Pretty much the same when I call up my local Water or Electricity supplier.

"Hello. To ensure you reach the correct department, please say your postcode."
"SW2 4HS"
You said F…S…4…Y…9…8… If this is correct, please press 2 or 0 to try again…"

Presses 0 and tries again…

"You said G…8…T…4…2…O…If this is correct, please press 2 or 0 to try again…"

Presses 0 and you try again…

"I'm sorry we did not recognise your input. Thank you for calling Thames Water… Goodbye."

"Aaaaaaaaarggghhhh!!!"

Why did I read this whole thing in the Moviefone guy's voice?

 

[rmlred]

anyone agree

 

[Diiiiips]

Siri is just a market gimmick
It will never work in a normal background noise condition.just like any voice command software

Maybe Apple should include the "cone of silence" from " get smart"

One of the blogs that spent a brief amount of time with the new phone last week said they tried Siri in the hall where there was a lot of noise obviously from other reporters, etc and said it still worked perfectly.

It might have been Engadget I read it on.

 

[sumone]

I really don't understand how people can defend something they have never used...

 

[mloffa]

I really don't understand how people can bash something they have never used...

Fixed that for ya.

 

[Diiiiips]

Through reading other people's reviews of it?

I've never driven a Ferrari but from what people say it's an awesome drive. See?

 

[b166er]

I'm guessing it will work ok based on the demo during the keynote. It didn't falter once. That's saying something that they had the balls to test a beta product in a room full of people.

 

[Futhark]

http://www.stuff.tv/video/vidcasts/apple-iphone-4s-siri-demo

 

[emir]

*looks at lion*

i've downloaded lion the day it was released and it's almost 3-4 months now, not even a single problem.

 

[lilo777]

It is only in beta, so it can become a lot better than it currently is.

Vice recognition in general has been in beta forever. There is no reason to believe that all of a sudden Apple has solved the problem. They are not even known for working in this area.

 

[Djs621]

Siri`

Maybe i'm just drunk off the Apple Kool Aid but I think Siri will be even BIGGER than Apple or everyone else is making it out to be.

AI is something companies have been attempting for decades and never got it right. One thing we can all agree on is that Apple doesn't put out crap and if Siri works as advertised it will be a huge breakthrough.

Also, this skepticism reminds me of when the Ipad was introduced and we all know how that turned out.

 

[sumone]

Through reading other people's reviews of it?

I've never driven a Ferrari but from what people say it's an awesome drive. See?

That's not always accurate. I have read great reviews on many products that fell significantly short of expectations. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon defending tech that hasn't even been released to the public yet. The only people who should do that are the marketers and advertisers. Situations like this remind me why these folks get paid so much, still not too late to change my major.