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Meet Siri's Little Brother, Trapit
waderoush writes "Virtually overnight, Siri, the personal assistant technology in Apple's new iPhone 4S, has brought state-of-the-art AI to the consumer mainstream. Well, it turns out there's more where that came from. Trapit, a second spinoff of SRI International's groundbreaking CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), is preparing for a public beta launch this fall. The Web-based news aggregator lets users set up persistent 'traps' or filters on specific topics. Over time, the traps learn to include more articles that match users' interests and exclude those that don't. Philosophically, it's the exact opposite of social-curation news apps like Flipboard or Pulse, since it uses adaptive learning and sense-making technologies to learn what users like, not what their friends like. 'Just as Siri is revolutionizing the human-computer interaction on the mobile device, Trapit will revolutionize Web search as we know it today,' the company asserts."
While a program that fetches more things you are interested in is great, you should realize the consequences of such a program. In particular you should realize the concept of a filter bubble. Namely that by only picking out things you are already interested in, you exclude things that you could be interested in or things that are too important to exclude.
There's been a TED talk about this, I suggest you watch it so that you can take active steps (when needed) to step out of your comfort zone now and then:
http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk
"Virtually overnight, Siri, the personal assistant technology in Apple's new iPhone 4S, has brought state-of-the-art AI to the consumer mainstream."
I just choked on my cup of tea reading that. It's voice recognition feed into some search engines, Wolfram Alpha, Yelp and some snippets from Wikipedia and the result plays through text to speech, mashed up with voice commands. If you call such a remix of off-the-shelf tech and existing services state-of-the art AI then you must be joking. Indeed voice commands have been in many phones for a while, Android has had it, including dictation, since the dawn of the time. The only part about that is right is Apple's sucess at re-launching things that have been around for a while as something new, and actually getting people to use them. FaceTime for example, is mere video calling which many phones support, but nobody uses.
What's worse is Apple probably managed to get a patent or two on Siri. It is so obvious that a bunch of coders at a hackathon could put something similar together in a few hours and have a demo of the same thing. Oh... wait... they've done exactly that, it's called Iris Alpha from a firm called, and it took eight hours.
Point is, while Apple's idea is clever, the polish and packaging good and the marketing cleverest, but it is absolutely not start of the art artificial intelligence, it's the sorry state of artificial stupidity, and why we have little to fear in the way of robot uprisings yet.
Give it a cute name and throw in some smart ass answers to inevitable cheeky questions and Apple has fooled a lot of people, clearly.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
It's snarkier than Cleverbot.
http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/
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BMO
Apple's Siri is not necessarily 'State of the Art', but like just about everything Apple does... It just works. Siri is causing a splash because ... unlike Android. It works properly. I don't use voice on my Android because it is worthless to me. I say 'Call my wife' It says. 'Calling Lowes Home Center'. It NEVER EVER gets it right. I have several friends with Androids and only one friend with that perfect voice that can get it to understand him, and even he often has to ask it twice . My wife HATES my Android and never bothered with a Smart phone before because she did not really like them. Too big and bulky. Her phone finally broke and she bought the 4S.
Like everything else Apple does. It just works. She talks to it. It understands every word. I talk to it ... It understands every word. .. and it ALWAYS seems to say something appropriate in response. True that the Android voice can do more than Siri. But I would rather have a voice that can do less properly than one that can do lots of stuff wrong. The only thing I find the Android voice useful for is a good laugh. I fire it up occasionally and ask it something and get a chuckle with just how wrong it gets my request. When she got Siri, we had a house full of people that evening and we passed my Android around playing with the voice. It did not once get anything right anyone said. 7 different voices asking it stuff and not once was it even close. Siri understood everyone perfectly.
So the Android voice is useless. Siri is useful. Therein lies the difference.
When I tested it out, it did much better than my Android, with no "training". Try Android voice with a Boston accent. I tell it to call my favorite bar and it calls a sheep.....
One of the people who worked on Watson, the computer mind put to the test on Jeopardy, is my former brother in law. When BrotherInLaw -1 began on computer AI there was, at the time, no one more advanced than he to challenge his thesis. The stuff we're seeing now in Siri is very much like what Watson did and projects BIL -1 has been working on for over 10 years, only put to "commercial / consumer" use; something inevitable. I doubt anyone involved with the first missions to the moon were all up in arms saying "What? Velcro? *ththt* That's been out for ages." Remember, to much of the media and your average user, this IS bleeding edge!
This is what happens with technology. It gets invented, it gets used in science and technology circles for a while then, if it's got commercial appeal, it ends up in the hands of Joe 6GB.To those lambasting Apple, while I assure you is something I enjoy, is sort of shooting fish in a barrel.
All that said, I use Android for one very simple reason: Apple's Ap Store policy makes me rage. Their puritanical requirements on nudity, "obscenity", etc as well as their tight fisted control over interface is preposterous and reprehensible. When I'd heard they forced a German news agency change their iPhone ap due to a few boobies was when I decided I would never, ever own one. Many of my users have them, they're bought by my employer, I've been offered a new iPhone each year, but for the last two years I've very much enjoyed my Android. The voice command blows, no argument. The screen pivot is comical. But all the aps I have, I enjoy. I can play around with whatever aps I want and not brick the device. To me, that's a fair cop; One programs functionality (Siri) does not out weigh freedom to do as I wish with my devices.