Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'

[chfilm]

It's a shame they passed on buying that predescessor of Siri that the original creators built...

But honestly, Siri delighted me recently when she was able to order me a cab to my home address in Germany via mytaxi.
She understood me right away at first try and all I had to do was hit an "accept" button once. Quite nice.
If they could add to do list apps next like "things" or "but me a pie" it would be super amazing. Just say "add milk to my buy m a pie list" and you have it on your shopping list. So hoping for it...

 

[CavemanUK]

I would like Siri to just be consistent. It annoys the hell out of me that if i ask a question more than once i can get a completely different response. Even though Siri has heard the exact same phrase.

For example,

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"I don't know how to do that"

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"Here's what I found on the internet for 'Turn on my Bedroom Light'"

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"Ok, Your Bedroom Light is on"


This happens more often than not

So frustrating

 

[2010mini]

Its a fact even Tim Cook cant deny. Siri is stuck where it started.

Seems like everyone at Apple is denying it so far. The entire Siri team left because of how dreadfully slow Apple is to develop Siri.

 

[Drag'nGT]

I wish that it didn't take Walt Mossberg and other intense criticisms of Apple and Siri to spark the teams there to address the huge shortcomings that exist. I fear that Apple's big issue is that it isn't a search engine like Google. The access Apple may have to this type of info could very well be what it's problem is.

 

[Hanzu Lao]

Try this in Siri...

Set timer, 4, minutes.

No matter how well your phrase it or pause between words, it is unable to parse it.

Worked the first time.

 

[baryon]

What Siri would be useful for would be asking for directions, but since it only works with Apple Maps and not Google Maps, you can't even do that. Apple Maps is about as dumb as Siri itself, not being able to resolve even the simplest of addresses — something that Google had long figured out in the first beta of Google Maps.

"Get directions to Tulip street, 2nd district, 1134"
"Here are you directions to 2nd street, Antarctica, 2456"

When I'm asking for directions, I usually shouldn't have to say that they should be in MY CITY dammit, not in any random location on Earth that happens to sound vaguely similar! But no, you always have to specify the country, city, and everything or else who knows what will happen. Meanwhile, Google Maps just works, every time, knowing what I mean like a normal human being.

 

[peterdevries]

I agree with Mossberg. Siri is horribly inaccurate and is actually a danger while on the road. It is not important enough for me to switch, but definitely annoying enough to be the most irritating thing about my iPhone.

 

[Christian 5G]

Siri on my iPhone is useless, I have to shout so loud for her to understand.

 

[wol]

[doublepost=1476351253][/doublepost]

I would like Siri to just be consistent. It annoys the hell out of me that if i ask a question more than once i can get a completely different response. Even though Siri has heard the exact same phrase.

For example,

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"I don't know how to do that"

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"Here's what I found on the internet for 'Turn on my Bedroom Light'"

Siri, Turn on my Bedroom Light

"Ok, Your Bedroom Light is on"


This happens more often than not

So frustrating

Sounds like Siri has a split (bipolar) personality - maybe Apple should schedule an appointment for Siri with ELIZA?

 

[jetho]

He is, unfortunately, completely right! If you use the non-englisch Siri, it's even worse.
I hope Siri will be a big focus of iOS 11.

 

[TPALTony]

What I want Siri to do, is NOT complain it can't reach the internet when what I want it to do doesn't NEED the internet.

For instance:

"Play music from Matchbox 20"

"What's in my calendar for tomorrow"

"Call my girlfriend"

When I'm in the car and trying to get Siri to do these things I almost invariably get "Sorry, I am having trouble with the connection right now" or similar response...

It drives me crazy because there is no need for the internet in order to do these things... Bear in mind this is often after my phone screen has shown me what I've said, so it's already recognised the words.....

Siri should NOT require internet to figure out what you said or to do things that don't need an internet connection, which is almost everything I ever ask it to do.

So the reason things aren't popular with Siri... Because people give up almost instantly when it can't do basic "on device" things quickly and easily...

Yes I know they are leveraging the cloud for processing of things etc but they really need to be able to ship that "learning" to the device so it can do things without needing the cloud...

Just my 2c/p worth.

 

[TroyBoy30]

never use siri anyway

 

[Takeo]

I was driving on a street called Rocky Lake Drive once and asked for driving direction to 220 Rock Lake Road. Instead of understanding my error (turns out I was less than a block from my destination) she, without skipping a beat or asking for clarification, gives me driving directions to somewhere over 1,000 kilometres away in another country. Useless.

The best improvement Apple has made in Siri that I've noticed recently is that when she infuriates you by have no clue what you're talking about and you give up and shout at her to shut up of f-off she now simply shuts up instead of infuriating you further by trying to be cute with a reply like "Now now David... such language"

 

[femike]

You can't say "Set an appointment with Bob Smith for 2PM tomorrow" if Bob Smith is not in your contacts. That one infuriates me all the time.

I tried that, and it worked perfectly first time. Woke up iphone with hey Siri, and asked exactly the words you wrote, and it made an appointment in the calendar.

I'm sure half of what is complained about on here are not correct, ie BS.

 

[hoon2999]

i given up on siri. only thing she can do is setting up my alarm clock.

 

[gnipgnop]

AI is a misnomer at this point for any of the products that are on the market. It's voice commands with scripting for certain types of actions. Similar to programming itself, it's going to have issues with unknown commands.
[doublepost=1476354569][/doublepost]

I was driving on a street called Rocky Lake Drive once and asked for driving direction to 220 Rock Lake Road. Instead of understanding my error (turns out I was less than a block from my destination) she, without skipping a beat or asking for clarification, gives me driving directions to somewhere over 1,000 kilometres away in another country. Useless.

Understanding your error? You're giving it a command. It follows the command. None of these so-called AI assistants do anything different than that.

 

[Takeo]

Understanding your error? You're giving it a command. It follows the command. None of these so-called AI assistants do anything different than that.

So you think it's reasonable and valid and a good user experience that if I'm physically located one block away from 200 Rocky Lake Drive and I ask for directions to 200 Rocky Lake Road that a so-called intelligent assistant (that knows my physical location) thinks what I really want (without a doubt) are directions to a location days away in another country on the other side of the Continent.

 

[Col4bin]

I had a Nexus 6 until I dropped it and wrecked it, and I loved using Google Now on it. Was years ahead of Siri.

Back to using Siri on my iPhone, and it's pretty bad. I have "Cox" in my contacts (my cable provider). The other day I said "Call Cox" and it started to call 911 (it interpreted me as saying "Call Cops"). I do not have "Cops" programmed as a contact. I guess that is actually "smart" in that it figures out what you mean by cops (not that I said cops, which has a bilabial stop in the /p/ as opposed to Cox which has a velar stop in the /k/ sound). It also still thinks my nearest emergency room is a veterinary hospital or a museum of an old psychiatric hospital, which is a problem caused by it using Apple Maps--an issue I have been reporting for years to Apple through the Maps app. I've never actually needed it to find me an emergency room, but I've tested out if it would know in an emergency. It varies based on whether you say "emergency room" or emergency department" and both times it gives bad results.

Sometimes it's just really stupid and like Mossberg said it gets all the info right and still makes a mistake that is local to the device. For example, I'll say "Call Joe Smith" and it transcribes it right, but says there is no one by that name in my contacts even though there is. Other times it will say, "Did you mean call Joe Smith?" even though up above it shows that's exactly what I had just said.

As far as transcribing correctly, the Nexus 6 was also way faster and way more accurate.

A problem that Apple has is that it doesn't know or care that it has problems. I've been telling Apple that their software has been in decline since whenever it was that Lion came out. But they were in an ascendency so great, I don't think they could see that their quality was declining. At least in the 1990s, they knew that they had problems and they were trying to find solutions. Buying NeXT and bringing on Steve Jobs was one of the smartest things they did. But even before that they were acknowledging issues with Mac OS and had various plans to try to come up with a next generation OS. Now they're too rich to care.

Extremely well stated. This summarizes many of my own issues with Siri but will add one more: the fact that Siri requires an internet connection to "dial home" to enact a command has always irked me. For instance, if I need to set a calendar entry, use voice command to dial a phone book contact, or even set a simple reminder, Siri requires an internet or cellular connection to touch base with an Apple server first. If there's no connection, will tell me that she's sorry and to try again later. IMO this is still unacceptable to this day. It is also a safety concern when driving in an area with spotty cell reception and having to hand type a phone number because no connection can be made. Instead, my preference is to deactivate Siri comoleteky and just use iPhone's default Voice Command feature. This allows the desired functionality at a local level and without connectivity. I then use Google Now for all other features that do require internet. I personally find it to be more accurate, faster and more reliable than Siri.

 

[gnipgnop]

So you think it's reasonable and valid and a good user experience that if I'm physically located a block away from 200 Rocky Lake Drive and I ask for directions to 200 Rocky Lake Road that a so-called intelligent assistant thinks that what I really want are directions to somewhere on the other side of the continent.

It's not thinking. It's following a programmed script. Besides, what if you really did mean Rocky Lake Road? Then you'd probably be annoyed that it was wasting time questioning you as to whether or not you meant what you said.

 

[Tech198]

I side with mossberg...

 

[FelixDerKater]

Didn't they recently buy up some natural speech company to correct this?

 

[inscrewtable]

Worked the first time.

I have uploaded a small file on my original post where I ask it to set the time for 3 minutes, and then 4 minutes. It's not a big deal but it's absurd that it cannot make a guess that I probably mean 'four' rather then 'for' seeing as I'm in the timer. There are easy ways around it of course, I can say 'timer, 4 minutes' that works, but that is not the point.

 

[maflynn]

I can't say this article is stating somethign so earth shattering unknown. I find Siri to be nearly useless. Its great for when I want to play a particular album or artist, but other then that, its not that helpful

 

[Max Portakabin]

Another in a long line of mishaps that will take a while for me to be convinced to start over with.

Haven't used Siri since I got my 4S all those years ago. Then we had the maps debacle and then the crap Apple Music rollout.

Apple needs to work out a way to hook people back because Tim gurning and telling us all it's great is not working.

 

[tardegrade]

I read the article on the Verge yesterday. No doubt about it, Walt is absolutely right.