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

[cardfan]

Thing is, I only want to do iphone related things (timers, reminders, alarms, etc) not searches or info found on the web. At least Siri gets most things right in that regard although I kind of know from experience what Siri can do and so keep it simple.

For the other stuff, Bing is useless. That's what siri hooks into. Maps hooks into Tomtom which is also crap. POI's? It sure isn't google. And that's the root of the problem IMO. Third rate sources which Apple contracts out to. If only Apple used Google or decided to quit talking about cars and invest some of it into being their own google. Apple deliberately uses less costly poor quality sources to keep their margins up. Icloud is the same way in many regards.

Yep, it will bite them later. Because that's a poor foundation. This is the stuff that matters as hardware becomes less of a reason to upgrade or differentiate Apple's products.

 

[macsrcool1234]

I must say I never expected Walt Mossberg, the long time Apple Shill who was chosen and personally groomed by Steve Jobs, to ever question anything Apple. But with Jobs dead and no longer available to look after his charges like Walt, David Pogue, and others it's more of a level playing field, Mossberg feels free to speak out.

True, im surprised (and glad) that even Mossberg realizes what garbage Siri is.

 

[doboy]

For me Siri has been very reliable when I ask it to FaceTime audio someone, check scores, and weather using my watch, iPhone, and iPad. Maybe my pronunciation is superb

 

[JesperA]

View attachment 665090 View attachment 665089

Do you have it set to Swedish by default? Siri can't seem comprehend anything that's not straight up American English apparently.

Yep, i have it on Swedish and there is a lot of words she will simply not understand even though the speech to text conversion is correct. It would be great if Siri could be set to 2 languages at the same time because the English version is much richer, she googles basically every question in the Swedish version, she cant even answer how far away the moon or sun is while in the English version she can.

 

[wikiverse]

It does feel very dated and simplistic. I would love to see Siri push into the complexities level of Google Assistant and Alexa.

Siri inventors created an improved assistant called Viv. Offered it to Apple. Apple turned it down.

Samsung bought it.

 

[weup togo]

Juli, how much is Apple paying you for this garbage? Even Gruber couldn't find anything to disagree with Walt over.

 

[DudeDad]

I just asked Siri on my iMac "who is running for president" and Siri immediatley told me "in randomized order" and listed the major and minor candidates.

 

[Robert.Walter]

I agree with Walt.

That Siri is now half as weak as before is hardly a good selling point as it was seemingly already in stasis since iPhone 4S (all that was added were then skeuomorphic replies that also seem quite dated now.)

 

[Denmac1]

"Siri, when are the new watchbands coming out?"

"I don't watch bands, would you like me to open Apple Music?"

 

[SBlue1]

With Steve in charge Siri wouldn't suck so much at this point in time. Everyone is tired of waiting and listening endless Tim's babbling: "oh, we have the best pipeline EVER, we are definitely committed to this and looking into that, such great things are coming". Meanwhile others like Google and Microsoft and even Amazon are simply doing their job and actually progress and innovate with their products leaving Apple behind.

Absolutely right.

- Apple TV is just half baked. It could have been a console killer. It could have been so much more.
- Siri, half baked. It could have ruled the AI wars by now. Apple was so far ahead and they just gave up.
- Mac Mini. Abandoned. It could have been the home hub for all your media. It could have ruled your entire home.
- Computers for pros. They introduced the Mac Pro and have been high fiving each other for three years now.
- Consumer laptops. They gave us iPads with keyboards and Mac OS like people whined for. Really? That's all?
- Pro laptops. They will cripple everything you need for work on your next MacBook Pro. But hey there is a dongle for that!
- iPhones. Gave up on the design. But courageous enough to remove a worldwide cross platform standard, cause we can.
- iPads. What are they doing? What is this lineup? Where are they going? They seem clueless.
- Maps. Google has a 3D view of every big bush in central Europe. Apple Maps will never catch up.
- iTunes. It can get even more blown up. Who would have thought. But they can cut useful features to make it look lean.
- Photos. They keep changing features every year I don't even know where to do the things I need.
- iCloud. 5 Gig for my Mac, iPad and iPhone? Why are you so cheap Apple? Decide what way you wanna go with iCloud!
- Apple Pay. Ok actually not really Apples fault so they get one off...

 

[Roxy Balboa]

Walt is. Senile old man. I don't believe a word he says.

 

[SSDGUY]

The worst part of Siri is not that it being dumb, it's that you have no way to point out its dumbness, via continued conversation!

No real person can guarantee to understand everything at first sight, they get them eventually by piecing together the information collected during the whole conversation.

Me: I want to visit Liz' house.
Siri: There is no one named Lucy in your contacts.
Me: Her full name in my contact is Lizzy Romi.
Siri: I am sorry I don't understand what you mean.

That's what you get for hanging out with girls with names like Lizzy.

 

[simonmet]

"Siri "seems stagnant" and is "too limited and unreliable" compared to other services".......this Sums up Apple as a whole at the moment. It could be its motto......or epitaph.

Yeah Apple is doing as little as possible. It's driven by profits alone now.

Where is Phil Schiller? He can respond about other things. Why not this?

 

[Traverse]

This is a good wish list, but the answers may not be so simple as you think.

"How much is XXXX on Amazon", for example often brings up several different answers even when you search the Amazon site.

A price list is fine. I just want an idea. Siri just refuses to do that though which makes it seem limiting.

 

[Rian Gray]

At this point in time, I have to agree with him. Siri can't even handle two commands at once, and I think a lot of people would want those. For instance, tell me when it stops raining. Or for the homekit (which is not exactly siri but still), turn on the lights half an hour before sunset.

 

[lordofthereef]

For once, something the forum nearly ubiquitously agrees on lol. Siri needs work. At this point in unsure if it will beer match the competition.
[doublepost=1476319424][/doublepost]

A price list is fine. I just want an idea. Siri just refuses to do that though which makes it seem limiting.

Not quite what you want but I use an app called "Bakodo" which is a barcode scanner that quickly gives you prices and links. I've actually price matched quite a few things at target this way. Just yesterday I got "ABC-3PO" for my son for $8.50 instead of $12.99!

Anyway figured I'd mention it. Doesn't help if you don't have the product right there though haha.

 

[accesstech]

Siri is just plain DUMB and not getting much better. I do not have a strange accent but she seldom gets it right.

 

[kingtj]

Yeah.... I've been basically trained NOT to attempt to use Siri for many tasks. Mossberg is probably right about that part.

One of the frustrations I have is that any time Siri feels the need to resort to a Google search (or any "outside" service of that type) -- it essentially fails me if I'm using it in the context of giving it a command in my car while driving.

Unless you have Apple's CarPlay technology in your stereo, your interactions with Siri are going to generally be audio only, redirected through your car's speakers.

And this recent push to link other apps like Uber with it? Good, but a classic case of "too little, too late". I've had several times already where I tried to command Siri to do something in another app, only to get it responding back that it "doesn't support" that yet.

Siri sets my alarms every night, and adds items to my Grocery list in Reminder. That's it. Apart from that, things like "Call my dad" completely confuzzles her where she tries to call ME... yet "Call my father" works fine. No logical sense whatsoever.

I've pretty much given up on Siri because 99% of the time, anything out of the ordinary (timers, reminder items) seem to just get me a snarky, useless response which triggers my nerd rage.

 

[sir1963nz]

Spot-on, Walt.

I already tweeted his article to Tim Cook. Siri needs to finally graduate from Kindergarten.

There is a problem with this, Data.
Apple has made a design tradeoff to limit the amount of data it collects from people, this in turn limits the kind of deep data that is required for for AI personal assistants.

How much information do you want Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft,Apple, Baidu, etc etc to have on you, how closely do you want them to know your movements, your ideology, your politics, religion, your friends and family, what your food preferences are, are you pro/anti gun control, abortion, euthanasia , religion , etc etc etc. Do you really want a machine that will know where you are at any particular time and make damned good educated guesses about where you will be in the future ?

Who then is in control of that information/knowledge ? Who owns that information ?
Do you trust the companies involved ?, what happens if say Russia bought Google, now who is in control of that information ? What if pro Clinton/Trump supported were able to get access to figure out your potential voting choice ?
Health insurers ?, Life insurers ?, Banks ?, Employers ? who should/should not have access ?
Does this constrict free will, freedom of choice, freedom of speech ?
How do you withdraw your consent, retrieve you data, how much do they have either directly or by inferring it. If data is generated by inference, who owns it, can you check it for validity, make corrections ?
Will this help or hinder identity theft, if it helps will it make it impossible to reclaim your life ?

There are huge ethical, moral and legal challenges ahead, blindly rushing in and opening Pandoras box is not the best answer until we have the frameworks in place to protect the individual.

For example, if one suburb was shown to vote for politician A, would politician B be more likely to agree to a new road that breaks up that community, and shifts these political opponents to other communities. How do we protect ourselves from this kind of abuse ? Could we spot that abuse ?
What about data, could someone slow down fibre deployment to certain areas by speeding up deployment in others , manipulation who has access to resources, information ?

Its time for smart people to think and put in safety barriers before we loose control.

 

[jont-fu]

To be fair, you need to take into account that Siri is available on the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish. Google Now is only available in English.

Apple has added languages every year and it must be a lot of work considering some of these languages have a very different structure and pronunciation compared to English. I am Finnish and only started using Siri a year ago when they added Finnish, because it felt weird talking a foreign language to your phone. Besides it couldn't understand local street names and contact names. Siri still seems to be even more limited in Finnish than in English, but having such a broad language support makes it accessible to much bigger user base than Google Now. For these people a limited and dumb Siri is better than no siri at all.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Siri is useless. I gave up on it years ago.

Also gave up on Siri years ago, I'd say within 20 attempts/
The after being told it got better , tried again every year , say 10 times.
Same $^#!

As I posted before, whatever Apple puts out and I do not use, has issues.
Not that I am the pope of Apple offerings and some of it is related to me being 64.

But, I do not use:

iCloud
Apple music
iTunes ( ok, sometimes to stream movies)
pages etc. (MS Office is better)

on the hardware side:
aWatch (totally uninterested at that price and with current limitations)
Mac Pro (used to love having a big desktop machine)
iMac (used to be good for the family, but as kids get older nobody shares a computer)
current iPad (want a bigger size , plus iPad 2 still going strong)
iPhone 7 , will outwait them until 8S or 9S

What I do not get is that they can't see what is wrong.

Only explanation I can think off is that they must not be using their own products.

 

[jtmacb]

The Verge's Walt Mossberg today wrote a critical article on Apple's Siri personal assistant, exploring the service's shortcomings, mistakes, and inability to answer some simple questions that competing products have no problem with.

Entitled, "Why does Siri seem so dumb?", Mossberg's article, covers several questions Siri couldn't answer, ranging from queries about political candidates to the date of the World Series to the weather in Crete. In each instance, Siri failed to provide the desired information, while Google Now, Google's Siri competitor, was able to answer every single question correctly.According to Mossberg, Apple has fixed many of the above Siri shortcomings thanks to his feedback, and has "stressed" to him that the company is "constantly improving Siri." Apple says it focuses more on tasks like placing phone calls, sending texts, and finding places rather than "long tail" questions, which aren't as popular with iPhone and iPad users. Mossberg speculates that such questions aren't popular anymore because people "just give up" on asking Siri these types of things due to failed responses.

Mossberg also outlines several failures with Siri's cloud-based services, from searching through iMessages to locating photos to finding calendar appointments, drawing the conclusion that Apple has "wasted its lead" with Siri, which is now forced to compete with services from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Mossberg believes that Siri "seems stagnant" and is "too limited and unreliable" compared to other services.

Though it may not seem like it, Apple has been putting a lot of effort into improving Siri. Back in August, Apple executives Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, and Phil Schiller explained that machine learning techniques have cut Siri's error rate by a factor of two, improving understanding. Since 2014, Siri and other on-device features, like the QuickType keyboard, Spotlight, autocorrect, Maps, and more, have been powered by a neural net-based system that is able to provide users with more personalized responses and actions.

Recent rumors suggest Apple aiming to improve Siri's functionality even further in an effort to build the personal assistant into an Echo-like Smart home device that would do things like control smart home accessories. Apple is also said to be working on an "Invisible Hand" initiative that would allow users to fully control their devices through a Siri command, something that could debut within three years.

Mossberg's full article on Siri, which is well worth reading, can be accessed over at The Verge.

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

 

[tennisproha]

Should've bought Viv.

Honestly they'll probably have to drop the Siri brand going forward when they finally get something better. Siri's rep is pretty shot beyond repair.

 

[Thunderhawks]

There is a problem with this, Data.
Apple has made a design tradeoff to limit the amount of data it collects from people, this in turn limits the kind of deep data that is required for for AI personal assistants.

How much information do you want Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft,Apple, Baidu, etc etc to have on you, how closely do you want them to know your movements, your ideology, your politics, religion, your friends and family, what your food preferences are, are you pro/anti gun control, abortion, euthanasia , religion , etc etc etc. Do you really want a machine that will know where you are at any particular time and make damned good educated guesses about where you will be in the future ?

Who then is in control of that information/knowledge ? Who owns that information ?
Do you trust the companies involved ?, what happens if say Russia bought Google, now who is in control of that information ? What if pro Clinton/Trump supported were able to get access to figure out your potential voting choice ?
Health insurers ?, Life insurers ?, Banks ?, Employers ? who should/should not have access ?
Does this constrict free will, freedom of choice, freedom of speech ?
How do you withdraw your consent, retrieve you data, how much do they have either directly or by inferring it. If data is generated by inference, who owns it, can you check it for validity, make corrections ?
Will this help or hinder identity theft, if it helps will it make it impossible to reclaim your life ?

There are huge ethical, moral and legal challenges ahead, blindly rushing in and opening Pandoras box is not the best answer until we have the frameworks in place to protect the individual.

For example, if one suburb was shown to vote for politician A, would politician B be more likely to agree to a new road that breaks up that community, and shifts these political opponents to other communities. How do we protect ourselves from this kind of abuse ? Could we spot that abuse ?
What about data, could someone slow down fibre deployment to certain areas by speeding up deployment in others , manipulation who has access to resources, information ?

Its time for smart people to think and put in safety barriers before we loose control.

Did the sky fall yet?

 

[doelcm82]

A price list is fine. I just want an idea. Siri just refuses to do that though which makes it seem limiting.

Starting with iOS 10, developers can make use of Siri to provide information like this to you. Now that Apple has opened it up, it's up to Amazon to process your query. If they're smart, they'll do just that (not just for Siri, but for all the mobile assistants). Also, as with a google search, they'll make sure they are part of the results even if you don't specify you want to buy from Amazon.