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Will Siri Learn?

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danielowenuk

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 18, 2011
275
37
Will siri learn to interprit what I am saying based on what I have said in the past?

If I say "mek me n appointment with Jeff at three this aft."

First of all I wouldn't expect it to know what I meant, but if I then spoke more clearly to clarify ie

"Make me an appointment with Jeff at three oclock this afternoon"

Then would it remember my vocabulary?
 
Supposedly Siri will learn. Whether it will learn Ebonics is something that remains to be seen.
 
Siri would likely do better if you spoke proper english, but Apple says it gets better with time.

We shall see.
 
The feature of being able to read text messages... I wonder how it will read texts with lots of abbreviations. Maybe it will start speaking in Chinese :eek:. (no offense)
 
Like all software, Siri is not magic. It's based on predefined keywords and template forms that have to be filled in.

That is, for certain action keywords, it's programmed to ask you what an unknown subject word corresponds to. For instance:

If you say "send a text to dad", then the "send" and "text" action keys are programmed to look up the target word "dad" in your contacts. If the target isn't found, then it asks who "dad" is and stores that matchup for later. (It has now learned who the word "dad" refers to for communication and mapping actions.)

Now as to whether or not it's been programmed to also ask for alternative meanings of unknown action keywords, I don't know, but I don't think so. What would be ideal in your case is if it asked you "I don't understand 'aft', what is that an abbreviation for?" and you could reply "aft is short for afternoon".

Perhaps someone with Siri already installed can try the OPs example and see.
 
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kdarling said:
Like all software, Siri is not magic. It's based on predefined keywords and template forms that have to be filled in.

That is, for certain action keywords, it's programmed to ask you what an unknown subject word corresponds to. For instance:

If you say "send a text to dad", then the "send" and "text" action keys are programmed to look up the target word "dad" in your contacts. If the target isn't found, then it asks who "dad" is and stores that matchup for later.

If you ask it to "define dad" then the action keyword "define" is simply going to download a definition for the word "dad".

Now as to whether or not it's been programmed to also ask for alternative meanings of unknown keywords, I don't know, but I don't think so. What would be ideal in your case is if it asked you "I don't understand 'aft', what is that an abbreviation for?" and you could reply "aft is short for afternoon".
Click to expand...

So essentially, you don't know ;)

I wouldn't want it to ask for the meaning of, simply ask me to repeat it and learn from the repeat, or maybe ask me to select a list of possibles.
 
Supposedly you can speak sets of facts -- like relatives' names, and it somehow stores and indexes those things so that when you tell it to send a message to "Mom", it knows who to select.

I wonder how you can correct things that it learns. I assume there's a way to wipe the slate clean and start over, and maybe it can replace one specific fact with another. Just imagine if your friend, or kid, gets hold of your phone and tells it a bunch of lies. ;)
 
I "heard" that Siri doesn't necessarily use a set a key words per say. Rather AI to "understand" what you are saying. Which is why when asking for the weather you can say "will I need an umbrella today" or "will I get sunburn" or "will I need windshield wipers". If it works that way it will be amazing.
 
I'm assuming Siri doesn't learn like humans, but will have regular updates to her/it's database. Imagine Siri after 5 million people have been using her for 3 months. That data can be used to help Siri understand what people mean/want when speaking to her/it.

The interesting part will be how Siri deals with misspelling and accents. I'm really looking forward to using Siri. I hate texting while driving and I'm in the car a lot, this will really help. Particularly if it's hooked up to my Jawbone.
 
Manatee said:
Supposedly you can speak sets of facts -- like relatives' names, and it somehow stores and indexes those things so that when you tell it to send a message to "Mom", it knows who to select.
Click to expand...

Right, you can state "My brother is Tom Manatee" and it will store those two phrases as equivalents. Then when you say "send a text to my brother", the program substitutes it internally as "text Tom Manatee".

I wonder how you can correct things that it learns.
Click to expand...

I suspect that if you simply restate the equation, like "My brother is Bill Smith" then it will prompt if you wish to overwrite the original "Tom Manatee" with your new equivalent for "my brother".

danielowenuk said:
So essentially, you don't know ;)
Click to expand...

Not Siri per se, but I've done similar systems in the past. I'm an advocate of using voice as an extra input method, same as I am for pen, touch and facial recognition. No one method is best. They need to be used together.

I wouldn't want it to ask for the meaning of, simply ask me to repeat it and learn from the repeat, or maybe ask me to select a list of possibles.
Click to expand...

Simply repeating something it doesn't understand is useless. It presenting a list of possibilities is better, but best is simply asking for you to equate it with something that it does know. That's how AI learns. No magic. Just words, equivalents and related actions to take and/or responses to give.

sulpfiction said:
I "heard" that Siri doesn't necessarily use a set a key words per say. Rather AI to "understand" what you are saying. Which is why when asking for the weather you can say "will I need an umbrella today" or "will I get sunburn" or "will I need windshield wipers". If it works that way it will be amazing.
Click to expand...

You can say those things because they're programmed in as keywords relating to weather. Same as in the demo when the person asks if it will be "chilly". The word "chilly" when used in talking about weather has been programmed to cause a response related to temperature.

Of course, the context is critical. "Chili" means something entirely different when asking for a restaurant suggestion!

Now imagine the confusion if you wanted to cool off in summertime Atlanta and asked for a "chilly place to eat". It would very likely direct you to a nearby outdoor taco stand instead :)
 
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Interstella5555 said:
Looks more like southern redneck than Ebonics to me.
Click to expand...

Both missed the UK at the end of my name then, most Americans do ;)

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kdarling said:
Simply repeating something it doesn't understand is useless. It presenting a list of possibilities is better, but best is simply asking for you to equate it with something that it does know. That's how AI learns. No magic. Just words, equivalents and related actions to take and/or responses to give.
Click to expand...

I didn't say to just repeat the thing it didn't understand.

I said that, if what was previously said was said in a more eloquent fashion then could it recognise, what could potentially be, regional dialect in future.

If I said to you my first sentence, and you asked what I meant, then the next time I said it you would already know. Will Siri do that?
 
TM WAZZA said:
The feature of being able to read text messages... I wonder how it will read texts with lots of abbreviations. Maybe it will start speaking in Chinese :eek:. (no offense)
Click to expand...

I am sure apple had those programmed in.

For example if it sees UR it will know its you are or other common text expressions. If it would be great if we could add in our own. For example lets say it does not know that thx is thanks. You could just set its vocab to learn THX then from a drop down of all the words it knows you can tie it to thanks.

I also wonder how it does with misspellings.
 
I don't want it getting too smart.

Me: "Is it hot enough to go swimming today?"

Siri: "Nobody want's to see you in a bathing suit."

:D
 
I know you can say "My brother is John" and then you can say, "Call my brother" and it'll call John.

What if you have 2 brothers?
 
If my intuition is right, I don't think it uses a database of phrases for its main functionality. Yes it will keep a log of things like which of your contacts are relatives and whatnot, but the main understanding of your speech is probably a neural networks/machine learning situation. The way it works is they throw a bunch of test cases at it and it tries come up with a formula to decide between two paths in the decision tree. It's the same kind of thing used to detect spam in your inbox. It's really cool because you can do things like train a robot to detect faces or a door without actually having to explicitly tell it what those things look like. That's just my guess based on what I see of Siri, but I'm sure there's alot more that goes into it.
 
Anyone know if it could read a webpage such as wikipedia to you, not just search it? When I'm driving I tend to think of things to look up later.
 
This is the only question I want to ask Siri:

"Siri, when will the iphone 5 come out?"
 
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