Slashdot Mirror


Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?

hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"

2 of 692 comments (clear)

  1. Ben there done that by strangeattraction · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Heard a technology interview on NPR this morning. It was very funny. They kept asking Siri questions it could not answer. Great entertainment. Actually saw the technology a couple of years ago at the Semantic Web in San Jose. It was very funny then too. The problem I have and have always had with this type of thing (hand writing rec, voice rec etc) is that when it gets it right you are amazed when it gets it wrong you are mad. If I type character in my computer by keyboard and the wrong thing shows up on the screen it is my fault. When the computer recognizes the wrong characters it is the machines fault. We expect better behavior from our machines than we do from ourselves.

  2. Re:MIght as well be by narcc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Losing ground" = higher sales year-over-year?

    Why not? RIM has been growing year-over-year, though if you listen to the tech-press and slashdot commenters you'd think they were on the verge of bankruptcy.