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Siri Co-Founder Suggests Apple is 'Looking for a Level of Perfection They Can't Get' With Assistant

turtle777 said:
Here’s my most recent Siri fail experience:


Me: "Hey Siri, play Sting on HomePod".
Siri starts playing Sting on my iPhone.

Me: "Hey Siri, play Sting in Living Room".
Siri starts playing Sting on my iPhone.


For the love of Pete, Apple. WTF ?

:mad::eek:

-t
Click to expand...

Simple solution dude: in step 2, go to your living room and then Sting will be playing there.

Sheesh, what do people expect? Apple tech to "just work"?

Everyone should "think different"... which apparently means liking everything exactly as Apple has decided everything shall work... or not work.


Take 2: in the second request Siri is working exactly as it's supposed to work. Whatever room you were in when you were making the request is the room in which you are living- your "living room" at that point in time. Thus Siri got it right and you are wrong for apparently thinking a room where you are not at in the moment is a 'living' room. It's not. ;)
 
brofkand said:
.. Hey Google has nearly perfect voice recognition by comparison, in addition to being more fully featured.
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Well not entirely the same thing .... but Apple's voice recognition (VR) has completely hit the crapper. I used to be able to reliably dictate messages into text or email with nary a correction needed. Either I had a stroke and people are too nice to tell me or Apple has switched something as that is no longer the case. It is to the point as to not be worth the effort to try. If Siri is stumbling, I can would believe it if poor VR had something to do with it :-/
 
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Different Worlds said:
I have a different view of this.

Apple reads the forums, the reviews, the tech journalists opinions. They don’t have their heads buried in the sand. I think they have chosen to concentrate on getting Siri to be good at doing things that they believe people actually want to do. Half of the things that Siri and other assistants can do, are hardly ever used by the majority of people.

Consider that most people aren’t as tech savvy as those of us who read this forum or read tech journalism. They probably don’t know or care wether Siri can or cant do some of the things that are often complained about in Tech media. Apple ignores the noise because half of it really is just hot air. I use Siri every single day in my car with CarPlay and its great. I use it to check the weather, to send a message, play music and make reminders. It does all of those things incredibly well in my opinion. Other people will use Siri in other ways and I’m sure they get what the need, some people may not.

Does that mean I think Siri is perfect? No. But I do think that in the long term, Apple is taking the right approach. Protect our privacy, and find a better way. Yes they could toggle privacy off as some have suggested. But that isn’t better, it’s just easier. Siri will take time to reach the level that the more tech savvy would like but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s better to be best rather than first. Siri was the first to be well known to consumers but others who have rushed in to follow have compromised on privacy to do it. I don’t think you have to choose. You can have both, if you take the time to do it right.
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Yes and No. Why cannot Siri get basic stuff right that requires no “tech savvy”? If I am driving and ask Siri a question why do I get a list on the screen. When I ask about a business I am close to or the nearest location and I get replies (if not a list) based on my home, not where I am. It does some things very well. It does far many more half assed. Except for the stale smart assed comments.
 
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Last night, my son asked Siri who had won the most Super Bowls. First attempt resulted in her replying with who had won each division this past season. Second attempt, she responded with the results of the most recent Super Bowl. On the third attempt, she said: 'Sorry, I can't answer that on HomePod". :rolleyes:
 
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dude-x said:
An Apple engineer told me that the reason why Siri (and other ML services) from Apple is a bit behind because there is very little information sharing from all the teams. So if Photos uses ML and Siri uses ML, they are reinventing the wheel twice. Unlike Google which shares all the code that's ever written with its engineers.

Enforcing privacy is not really an issue.
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Well if some guy on the internet heard from some other guy then it MUST be true.
 
Porco said:
I don’t use it, I don’t want it, I wouldn’t even care if it was better than its rivals at everything it tries to do. I don’t want to use speech as a UI. I prefer to just keep speech for people, animals and maybe occasionally shouting at the TV (but without the expectation or desire for a response from it).
Click to expand...

Key question: does your TV process that shout better than Siri? ;)
 
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jonnysods said:
I really think it comes down to privacy. Siri doesn't invade your privacy like Google Now does, so it can't help you as well as Google Now did when I used it for 6 brief months with a Nexus 4. Google just knew things about, it was creepy but so helpful.

I honestly think Siri would improve with one toggle in Settings. Invade Privacy? Yes/No
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Privacy has nothing to do with things like reading Wikipedia information and conveying it to the user. Siri usually can’t even find basic information for me. When she does, she doesn’t read it out, she just says “Here, have a look.” Uh...if I wanted to just stare at my screen I wouldn’t have used Siri, I would have googled it myself.
 
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DynaFXD said:
Well not entirely the same thing .... but Apple's voice recognition (VR) has completely hit the crapper. I used to be able to reliably dictate messages into text or email with nary a correction needed. Either I had a stroke and people are too nice to tell me or Apple has switched something as that is no longer the case. It is to the point as to not be worth the effort to try. If Siri is stumbling, I can would believe it if poor VR had something to do with it :-/
Click to expand...
No, it’s not you. I spent several years at a headquarters job where a I had to speak in clear, unaccented English to people from all over the country who would have had a hard time understanding me if I couldn’t turn my typical southern twang off like a light. I also entered a hobby in which I spoke to robots on a regular basis and had to sequence my commands and inquiries into an order the simple robots could respond to. I retained all of these skills for effective interaction with Siri for a few happy years until it all started to fall apart around a couple of years ago. I am dead certain I did not change how I was speaking to Siri. But I know she’s certainly changed in how she responds to me.

I have lost track of when I first noticed Siri failing to respond to me like she used to. But the decline in her voice recognition skills is something my whole family and I have noticed.

My mother has almost paralleled Siri’s decline in communication skills as she’s grown increasingly hard of hearing and refuses to get fitted for a hearing aid. My mother still retains her intellect, but if she keeps thinking I am saying something completely different from what I actually attempted to communicate, her responses and contributions veer off into strange directions. The similarities between what is happening with my mom and with Siri are striking. The results are eerily similar.

Of course it is one thing to know and understand what’s occurring in the case of communication with my mother. It’s quite obvious she needs a hearing aid. With Siri, any number of factors could have been changed that contribute to the decline you and I have noticed.
 
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djlythium said:
The other day, while my Watch was charging, I asked on my phone, “Hey Siri, what’s the Apple Watch battery at?”, to which she responded “The Apple Watch battery level is at 56%.”

Yesterday, I did the same thing, and she pointed me to information about the Apple Watch battery on Apple’s website.

What?! How did she get dumber over time, when the opposite is supposed to happen?

My overall impression is that Apple can dramatically improve Siri without compromising privacy, but it would infringe on patents. So, both Siri and Apple are in a sandbox of sorts, trying to operate with such tight constraints. Until Apple either creates a new, proprietary, algorithm, or purchases a company with such tech, we’ll only see small improvements in Siri’s capabilities.
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This is my main issue with it as well. Why Apple doesn’t crowdsource her learning by making her correctable I don’t understand. “No, Siri, I meant XYZ.” And then have it 1) do what you asked and 2) learn from that by sharing it’s new knowledge with Apple’s Siri servers and using crowdsourced corrections to change her behavior. She’d go from dumber than a brick to the smartest assistant out there in 24 hours.

How many times have you yelled at Siri when it said a person’s name or place name incorrectly and corrected it? We do it naturally.

Just think about how toddlers learn, it’s the same way; we correct them over and over. The advantage Siri has is several billion people correcting it at once so it ought to learn incredibly quickly.
 
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JosephAW said:
The activation phrase should be customizable. Then only newbies and our parents would be saying "Hey Siri".
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I agree with this - by having a customizable activation phrase it’s also like a second level of security. I’d love to see multi user voice recognition and custom activation phrases. It would bring a better level of security... it would also prevent our homepods from responding “okay (my name)” when my wife is the one talking to it. Also as a side note... how is HomePod not using the nickname or phonetic names when it says my name back to me in response like it does on my iPhone. It’s like it’s mocking me every time it says my name wrong!
 
I dunno I totally agree with this guy. They totally nailed the surprise element. I’m constantly surprised at some of the things Siri thinks it hears compared to what I actually say.
 
sounds like the Siri design team is not getting any new funding this year
 
Arcus said:
Right now I just want it to be as good as the Google Assistant. Why the hell it cant just read me the Wikipedia article I dont understand!
Click to expand...
Google is really good. Notifications for weather, traffic conditions before I leave work, football results. All without me doing anything.
 
Different Worlds said:
I have a different view of this.

Apple reads the forums, the reviews, the tech journalists opinions. They don’t have their heads buried in the sand. I think they have chosen to concentrate on getting Siri to be good at doing things that they believe people actually want to do. Half of the things that Siri and other assistants can do, are hardly ever used by the majority of people.

Consider that most people aren’t as tech savvy as those of us who read this forum or read tech journalism. They probably don’t know or care wether Siri can or cant do some of the things that are often complained about in Tech media. Apple ignores the noise because half of it really is just hot air. I use Siri every single day in my car with CarPlay and its great. I use it to check the weather, to send a message, play music and make reminders. It does all of those things incredibly well in my opinion. Other people will use Siri in other ways and I’m sure they get what the need, some people may not.

Does that mean I think Siri is perfect? No. But I do think that in the long term, Apple is taking the right approach. Protect our privacy, and find a better way. Yes they could toggle privacy off as some have suggested. But that isn’t better, it’s just easier. Siri will take time to reach the level that the more tech savvy would like but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s better to be best rather than first. Siri was the first to be well known to consumers but others who have rushed in to follow have compromised on privacy to do it. I don’t think you have to choose. You can have both, if you take the time to do it right.
Click to expand...
Wow! Dude, such nonsense.

Siri lacks contextual understanding; that is, cannot follow simple, chained requests, where context is resolved from prior requests.

It is, in best of cases, a verb-first, command-at-a-time assistant (Siri, <verb> <noun>). And it fails to execute these commands when tagged with simple prepositional phrases (Siri, <verb> <noun> <prepositional phrase>)

Keep telling you that its failings are all about privacy, as it has been stated clearly that this is a false narrative (see OP).

It is simply embarrassing. More so when Apple has embedded Siri on all their new widgets as a primary UX proxy.
 
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"It just works"

I get really frustrated with siri that i never use it. Sometimes i will give it a try to see if any improvements have been implemented and it appears not. Voice recognition blows as it always get a word wrong throwing the whole sentence off.
 
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turtle777 said:
Me: "Hey Siri, play Sting on HomePod".
Me: "Hey Siri, play Sting in Living Room".
Click to expand...

I think the problem is that iPhone Siri cannot yet control a HomePod. Although Siri can control other HomeKit devices, and the HomePod is a HomeKit device, it doesn't yet have that functionality. So you're asking it to do something it's not yet capable of.
 
prasand said:
I think the problem is that iPhone Siri cannot yet control a HomePod. Although Siri can control other HomeKit devices, and the HomePod is a HomeKit device, it doesn't yet have that functionality. So you're asking it to do something it's not yet capable of.
Click to expand...

Well, Siri should then reply truthfully:

"Dude, I cannot yet control the freaking HomePod you bought guided by a false promise."​
 
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Often I’m cooking, painting, cleaning, changing a dirty diaper—something where I cannot use my hands. “Hey Siri, what time is it!” “I’ve searched the web for what time is it.” “Hey Siri, add mayonnaise to my groceries list.” “I’ve added May of eggs to your groceries list.”
If privacy is what is holding Siri back, I would gladly give up some level of privacy if it can tell me the f***ing time or understand some basic words.
I also hate the “humorous” quips when giving an answer. When I use my echo dot for lights, it just works. Siri has to think about it and then tells me it’s done (that is, if it understood anything I said).
 
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turtle777 said:
In other words, there is no excuse why Siri should suck. Other than Apple not wanting to make it better.
Click to expand...

What incentives are there for Apple to improve Siri when customers keep making excuses for how bad she is?

Maybe the glimmer of hope is the fact that Apple are now riding on Google Cloud and perhaps that is part of a larger plan to leverage Google AI and services.
 
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