Google Working On Siri Competitor Majel

judgecorp writes "Google is working on a competitor to Apple's Siri voice input system. It's an extension to its existing Voice Actions offering with a name that should ring bells. Majel is named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who was the voice of most of the Star Trek on-board computers, as well as playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the first series and being Gene Roddenberry's wife."

Comments

Google versus Apple

[bonch]

This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple. Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer, even naming it after the actress who voiced it. Many of the insider remarks on this project are talking about how it's intended to be like the Star Trek computer, even addressing it as "computer." Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.

Voice recognition is driven by feedback, and Apple has a huge headstart with Siri because it's already out now in beta form, and so Apple has access to real-world usage data. By the time Majel comes out, Siri will be even more advanced and will have been shaped by its users. It will be interesting to see how Google competes.

Re:Google versus Apple

[pj2541]

I'd prefer "Prikazyvat" to "Computer.

Re:Google versus Apple

[WPIDalamar]

Google has less real world usage?

Matching a search with useful information is kind of what google does best. For voice recognition, they've been doing voice-search on Android for a long time, plus their now defunct goog-411 and that's a lot of voice recognition experience.

Siri/Majel is really just a UI layer on top of those two things.

Google may be behind in the integration, but they're probably way ahead in those two things.

Re:Google versus Apple

[TehDuffman]

I like this approach personally. I think it is weird to treat the phone as a person. I would rather talk to my phone like it is a phone than a woman. (especially if i have to repeat myself :) )

Re:Google versus Apple

[Trepidity]

We'll have to wait to see how it works, but I'm not sure even non-geeks always find "realistic" computers more natural to interact with than computer-ish computers. People are perfectly capable of anthropomorphizing non-human entities if they act in some consistent way, even if they don't exactly mimic human behavior. In fact it's often better to act in a clearly non-human way than to hit the uncanny-valley of sort-of-human.

Re:Google versus Apple

[sobachatina]

" I think Google is way too engineering-driven"

Which is exactly why, as an engineer, I always prefer Google products. This announcement has a cool factor that makes me interested even though it is just another voice recognition gimmick like Siri.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Night64]

Uncanny Valley comes to mind. I'm the only one to think that is a little bit creepy talk to a machine in the same manner I would talk to a person?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Clippy had attitude too, and was endearing and friendly...

Re:Google versus Apple

[mr1911]

I would rather talk to my phone like it is a phone than a woman. (especially if i have to repeat myself :) )

Don't worry. She'll walk away quickly.

Re:Google versus Apple

[MightyMartian]

If we're going to go this route and talk to our devices this way, I'd prefer the HAL 9000 voice, myself.

Re:Google versus Apple

[P-niiice]

I haven't spent money on an Apple product, but I'd consider it if Siri could be modded to react embarassingly to morally/sexually improper requests. I'd probably jumpo to give Apple some money if they let that happen. Heh.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Jeng]

Many of the insider remarks on this project are talking about how it's intended to be like the Star Trek computer, even addressing it as "computer." Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.

I don't need a hammer that gets me. I need one I can accurately use. Natural language is very imprecise, a set list of commands makes things more precise.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mark_elf]

I have an iPhone, and my initial reaction to this was a jealousy I have not experienced before. It's a cool idea. I assume they cleared this with her estate, Paramount, etc., right? Anyway, it's not like you would just "be talking to an emotionless computer". That's a very shallow take on it.

Re:Google versus Apple

[GNious]

[...] Google [..] tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer, even naming it after the actress who voiced it.

Might be me, but give it the personality of Lwaxana Troi, and it will be anything BUT emotion-less.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lwaxana_Troi

Re:Google versus Apple

[gmuslera]

Emotionless? Counselor's mother?

Anyway, probably is the engineering approach, first make it a bit safer from trivial exploits and potentially costly mistakes vs making it look smart and friendly when is not. Even looked natural for us that in the Enterprise they talked to it with a prefix to distinguish from the people around.

Anyway, the worrysome headstart is in the patents arena, even if talking to a computer is in science fiction and popular culture since beginning of last century, it will be a minefield for anyone trying to go near that direction.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mark_elf]

Indeed, FTFA -

"Google, it is widely held, is Siri’s best challenger. The company has offered Google Voice Search on the iPhone and its Android devices since 2008, and that application has been expanded to cover 29 languages, supporting accents in 37 countries, including the Middle East."

Ouch.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Relayman]

I'd mod you down, but would rather comment: Why don't you check on the Internet to see how Siri does handle "morally/sexually improper requests"? People have been logging Siri commentary since she was introduced.

Re:Google versus Apple

[samkass]

I don't need a hammer that gets me. I need one I can accurately use. Natural language is very imprecise, a set list of commands makes things more precise.

I find this comment fascinating, and probably helps differentiate geek tools from mass-market tools. Most people prefer accuracy, but I think a lot of geeks really would prefer precision.

Re:Google versus Apple

[bonch]

Think about it. You're a techie posting on a techie site; you are already in the minority. Most people want to communicate with machines using human-like queries and do want to not address it as if they're an Enterprise crew member addressing the Star Trek computer. One is friendly and fun, the other is cold and emotionless. Between the two spectrums, which qualities do you think would be more appealing in a consumer electronics device?

I don't mean to say that Google couldn't create human-like voice recognition, but the insider remarks that have been posted on various Android sites have so far stated that Google is not implementing Siri's "funny" remarks, for example. That alone is so Apple-like. Based on past statements by Google (Marissa Meyer once criticized interfaces that looked like they were made by humans, instead favoring interfaces made by machines...), they just don't seem to get people. They definitely come off like an engineering company without the balance of human interface design. This was also the perception of Microsoft for many years, incidentally.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Youtube.

Re:Google versus Apple

[spacepimp]

Bonch admit you know nothing about anything except that your iPhone has Siri. Google has been working on Artificial intelligence since the beginning of the company. Google Voice and talk has given a huge base of sampling to interpret dialectics, speech patterns, Google books scanning has given the ability to parse natural languages of all cultures. The analytics and data mining engines on the back end of Google are incredibly adept at parsing queries. Their AI is able to pass the Turing tests 97% of the time. This is not Google trying to mimic siri (which simply uses Google and Wolfram alpha ) for response answers. This is a full effort to create Artificial Intelligence and natural query/response systems. If Google intended to be a search engine that was just like prior Information retrieval systems then Google would have failed. They understand the user needs and drivers way more than you dataset allows for.

Re:Google versus Apple

[TheRaven64]

Have you actually done a survey on this, or is it just an assumption? In my experience, computer voice falls into the uncanny valley very quickly - people find computers that try to sound like humans to be creepy.

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

Google has tons of data from which to trawl for edge cases. What precisely did you think that the Google Voice transcription service was all about? People let Google transcribe their voicemails by algorithm and Google gets more data. I doubt very much they even bother looking at messages which aren't reported to them as inaccurate.

So, I'd venture to guess that they're actually a lot more used than Siri is. I have a hard time believing that Siri is so used that it's been used more in 4 months than Google Voice in a couple years.

As for sophistication, Google's implementation might be significantly less sophisticated, but it does work reliably, Siri from what I've heard, not so much.

Re:Google versus Apple

[thomasw_lrd]

Since it's sent through the internet, google probably already has all the queries on a back server somewhere, and are probably already running analysis on it. I mean come on it's google. They own the internet don't they, for all intents and purposes?

Re:Google versus Apple

[bonch]

It's all in good fun. Seriously, Siri is just fun to use, and that's important in a gadget intended to be a part of your daily life. It's kind of like when Slashdotters in years past were criticizing Windows and OS X for having fading animations, translucency effects, and other visuals. Well, now Linux desktops have all that. Because it's fun and pleasant to use.

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

Google's voice recognition works, if it doesn't get it right it tends to recognize it and pop down a list of possibilities.

From what I've heard about Siri, it trades accuracy for sophistication of ability and it isn't a good trade off. We'll see how things progress as it's only a 4 month old release, but still. There's some wisdom in limiting the features to what you can actually do than to overreach and come up with crap.

At the end of the day, voice recognition isn't really that useful except for people driving and possibly the blind. Most people view it as a gimmick. Personally, I'm not about to spend much time using it as when I'm out in public I'd rather not have people know what I'm searching for or whom I'm calling.

Re:Google versus Apple

[P-niiice]

You could recheck the internet right above your post and see that since Apple allows no mods to its products, my request is moot.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Stanford Research Institute, for whom Siri is named after, added the "attitude". All Apple did was buy it, KILL the cross platform support, and claim they invented it. It's fine business, but don't kid yourself into thinking Apple innovated a damned thing.

Re:Google versus Apple

[bonch]

Clippy was annoying because it popped up intrusively and was almost always unhelpful. This is voice recognition that responds only when you give it a query, and it really does do what it's supposed to most of the time. Not the same thing.

Re:Google versus Apple

[jeffmeden]

Google has less real world usage?

Real world usage of voice recognition at the level of Siri? Yes. Here's an article by an ex-IBM researcher who worked on voice recognition for six years explaining why Siri was released in beta form in the first place. The saying in the community is "there is no data like more data." Engineers at Apple can see all the things people are asking Siri, the queries it doesn't recognize, and so on, and they can use that valuable feedback to tweak the system. Infamous gaps in Siri's functionality, like the "abortion clinic" question, will be fixed at release.

Google certainly had voice recognition features before, but they weren't much used, nor were they on the level of Siri.

Don't forget "From now on, I will call you 'An Ambulance', OK?"... Hilarious sense of humor that she has, I imagine if I were in that situation my iPhone 4S would be headed out the nearest window at light speed.

http://thingsthatsirisays.com/uncategorized/call-me-an-ambulance-fail/

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

That's probably a much more mainstream feeling than you realize. People tend to get freaked out by the uncanny valley. Not to mention that if it sounds like a person then it is a person complete with all the downsides that entails. Most people just want the device to figure out what to do and get it done, adding emotions and jokes just muddies it up and increases the likelihood that the interaction will go wrong.

As a side note, what Google's doing is working, so I'm not really sure on what basis you're suggesting that they don't know what people want, they're wiping the floor with both MS and Apple as of late in that market.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Dingb]

Clearly, you aren't aware that the computer on Star Trek also hosts a holographic representation of Professor Moriarty within it's processing cores. Who I am sure will be happy to direct me to the nearest abortion clinic of my choosing.

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

What's more it's almost certainly going to have an API exposed for people to add the character if they so choose. One of the advantages of Android is that things like that generally are exposed so that App developers can work around such perceived shortcomings. And if not, there's always the source so they should be able to write their own API if need be.

Re:Google versus Apple

[slim]

Have you actually done a survey on this, or is it just an assumption? In my experience, computer voice falls into the uncanny valley very quickly - people find computers that try to sound like humans to be creepy.

"Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. "

Re:Google versus Apple

[NatasRevol]

A popdown list of possibilities...in voice control?

Re:Google versus Apple

[bonch]

Google has tons of data from which to trawl for edge cases. What precisely did you think that the Google Voice transcription service was all about? People let Google transcribe their voicemails by algorithm and Google gets more data. I doubt very much they even bother looking at messages which aren't reported to them as inaccurate.

Do you realize how many more people are using Siri compared to how many let Google transcribe their voicemails? Do you really think that's a widely-used Google feature?

So, I'd venture to guess that they're actually a lot more used than Siri is. I have a hard time believing that Siri is so used that it's been used more in 4 months than Google Voice in a couple years.

Siri's current system is based on the data from the third-party Siri app that Apple purchased, so the core technology is older than four months.

As for sophistication, Google's implementation might be significantly less sophisticated, but it does work reliably, Siri from what I've heard, not so much.

Well, Siri is in limited beta, and by the time Majel comes out, Siri will almost certainly be significantly more reliable. That leaves the core differences in presentation, and Google insiders have been claiming that they are intentionally not including any of Siri's human-like personality attributes. It's really going to be an inhuman query machine and not as fun because of it. That's why I said it signifies everything about the difference between Google's and Apple's approaches to usability. Google is so strictly engineering-driven that they often don't get what it is people like. There's no design instinct, no human touch. Like typical engineers, everything they do must be based on data, such as the infamous survey on 41 shades of blue just to decide on an interface color.

Re:Google versus Apple

[JustinOpinion]

Agreed.

To amplify this 'uncanny-valley' notion. The problem with the anthropomorphizing ('attitude') approach is that it lulls the user into thinking they are dealing with a very sophisticated (sentient) system. This fiction quickly disappears once the user runs requests that the AI quite obviously doesn't understand. At that point, the quirky personality becomes annoying (think Clippy), and the fact that it pretends to be as smart as a human, without actually being as smart as a human, makes the interface seem broken and comically insufficient.

The opposite approach, also seen in robotics and many other areas of AI (e.g. search), is to not pretend that the system is like a person. Instead, make it obvious that it is a machine, with a set input/output behavior. Users can then quickly learn how to best use this machine to accomplish tasks. If the shortcomings of the system are evident, users will not be surprised by them and will instead build these into their mental model of how the system works.

As a case study, consider the similar criticisms that have been made about Wolfram-Alpha (e.g. here): essentially, W|A is a highly sophisticated set of computation and relation engines. However it's all wrapped up inside an overly simplistic UI (a single text-entry box, without any obvious way to refine what you mean). This leads to people getting all kinds of unintended results, despite the fact that the system actually can perform the computation/analysis/lookup the user wants. It's just that there is no obvious way to tell it what lookup you meant. The overly-simplified UI implies to the user that the system will just 'figure out what you mean', but the fact is it fails to do that very frequently; the user becomes frustrated because they then have to mentally reverse-engineer W|A's parsing logic, trying to build a query that returns the kind of results they want.

In short, it's better to design a UI that is an honest reflection of the sophistication/power of the underlying technology. To do otherwise creates a bad user experience, because user expectations are not meant by available functionality.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Synerg1y]

I'm surprised how well and by how much apple beat google to the market on this. I always thought google was the bigger more technologically advanced of the two, perhaps there is more revenue in it for Apple?

Re:Google versus Apple

[P-niiice]

Google Voice integration is pretty widespread - most of Sprint android users pretty much use it so, yeah, it's widely used.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Stonent1]

My vote would make it more like some of the computers on Lexx. Every once in a while your phone would say things like "Stonent, that's a very delicious looking battery there, can I eat it?" Or like 790, the love-slave robot.

Re:Google versus Apple

[king neckbeard]

I don't think there's an uncanny valley for spinning cubes. There probably is, however, for voice communications.

Re:Google versus Apple

[ColdWetDog]

It's all in good fun. Seriously, Siri is just fun to use, and that's important in a gadget intended to be a part of your daily life. It's kind of like when Slashdotters in years past were criticizing Windows and OS X for having fading animations, translucency effects, and other visuals. Well, now Linux desktops have all that. Because it's fun and pleasant to use.

"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with."

Did you really just go there?

Re:Google versus Apple

[HotBBQ]

Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.

That sounds like a +1 to me. Humans are fickle meat bags. I want my services provided by a no nonsense automaton. One with a sexy voice, though. It makes my impending destruction at the hands of GoogleBots that much easier to bare.

Re:Google versus Apple

[shutdown -p now]

On the contrary, that's precisely the right thing to do. When you make a program pretend that it's a person, people will treat it as such, and expect it to behave as such. Which, of course, simply isn't true for Siri outside of several thousand precanned "witty" responses - it is, after all, not an AI, just a glorified chat bot.

On the other hand, when you address the phone as "computer", you don't have high expectations about it being able to maintain a philosophical discussion - rather, you give orders that are straight and to the point. As it should be.

Re:Google versus Apple

[ColdWetDog]

I don't need a hammer that gets me. I need one I can accurately use. Natural language is very imprecise, a set list of commands makes things more precise.

I find this comment fascinating, and probably helps differentiate geek tools from mass-market tools. Most people prefer accuracy, but I think a lot of geeks really would prefer precision.

But it accurately represents at least a significant part of the Slashdot demographic. I find Siri to be almost completely useless because it isn't designed for precision - it seems to default to a socially acceptable / funny / warm answer. It's often like talking to an Alzheimer's patient - you get a human response, it's just not associated logically with your question. I would much prefer it if Siri could be placed in a 'computer' mode that gave you a more structured syntax.

Other folks, not so much....

Re:Google versus Apple

[dpaton.net]

Apple has a huge headstart with Siri because it's already out now in beta form, and so Apple has access to real-world usage data. By the time Majel comes out, Siri will be even more advanced and will have been shaped by its users. It will be interesting to see how Google competes.

I think you're forgetting about the work Google has been doing for years now with Google Voice transcription, voice search, and the text to speech and back again translation products they have.

If anyone can take on Apple in natural language processing, I think it's Google.

Re:Google versus Apple

[LordNicholas]

Wrong Troi; Lwaxana is her flirty mother...

You: Where is the nearest pizza place?
Lwaxana Troi phone: Pizza? Dreadful! I know a lovely little bistro just ahead- the cook has the most FILTHY thoughts about me but he makes the most delicious chocolate cake. Chocolate is an aphrodisiac, you know...

Re:Google versus Apple

[jeffmeden]

There's a big difference between standard search engine queries and the things people ask voice recognition software. Simply owning a search engine doesn't mean you're going to be awesome at understanding human language and delivering results accordingly. That comes through trial-and-error, which is why Apple has a headstart here.

If you don't realize that a significant number of Google searches are entered in plain English (in the form of a question) then boy are you behind... Fire up any Google portal that supports suggested searching and start a question, like "how do i" and watch as it recants popular natural language searches. I like "how do i update my iphone", how apropos. You will see similar things for "how will" "how should" "how does" etc. People have been using Google like they would use a "human" for many years. They also know that for any given natural question, what results are the most popular (based on a number of choices only possible to present on a full computer screen). Don't worry one bit about how well Google understands language, accurate results, etc.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dan828]

Actually, I've been seeing Apple as the new MS. That is, blatantly using their big bucks and near monopolistic positioning to crush competition and force major players in various industries to do things their way at the expense of the consumer (eg, the whole e-books thing). I can't even look at the old 1984 commercial without thinking that Apple has become what they despised back then.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, YouTube Audio Transcription.

Re:Google versus Apple

[coldfarnorth]

Have you been paying attention to what google has been doing with voice data? First, they've been collecting voice data for years. Before Google Voice actions, they were using Google Voice, before that, it was Google 411. They have a tremendous amount of natural language data back in the warehouse, and It's going to be quite a while before Apple has any hope of catching up (Remember - Google is still gathering data at an amazing rate via Voice actions and Google Voice, plus Android market share is now larger than iPhone market share - that's one more handicap for Apple).

As to the magic that Apple can supposedly work with incoming data: Would you be shocked if Google engineers can do the exact same thing with their voice data that Apple can? That's not valuable feedback, it's necessary, otherwise your algorithms will not improve.

And the "Siri isn't released yet" argument: I call shenanigans. If I can get it on my phone without signing an NDA, It's been released. I'm sure it WILL get better in future versions, but that's not an advantage - it's a requirement if Apple wants to stay in the field.

Apple HAS done good work in natural language processing, but I am unconvinced that this is a permanent advantage. They are playing catch-up in too many respects for anyone to say that they own the field.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I use Google's voice actions all the time. Care to convince me that they aren't much used?

Re:Google versus Apple

[coldfarnorth]

I thought they were the new IBM, and Apple was the new Microsoft . . .

Re:Google versus Apple

[MBGMorden]

I assume they cleared this with her estate, Paramount, etc., right?

There's no legal need to here. Paramount nor her estate has any trademark on emotionless computer voices, and a first name of an actor isn't enough to be considered IP.

Re:Google versus Apple

[somersault]

Try typing things like "why", "where", "what", etc into Google and you will see from the autocompletions that normal people's "standard search engine queries" are exactly what people would ask voice recognition software.. what do you think they're asking? Geeks like us may understand search engines and google more frugally, but your average person puts in lots of redundant info and doesn't really realise what's going on. For example I typed in "piza places near" and one of the top results was "pizza places near my location", as if Google understands that..

Even if Apple do better presentation (remains to be seen..), do you think their AI and search guys are anywhere near Google's in terms of knowledge and experience?

Re:Google versus Apple

[mcgrew]

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly

I don't WANT my phone or computer to be endearing or friendly, I want the damned thing to be OBEDIENT. Siri would probably annoy me.

Apple wants to make their tools seem like expensive toys, Google just makes tools. Personally, I like the "tools as tools" rather than "tools as friends". I mean, what kind of loser has so few friends that his computer needs to be endearing and friendly?

That's one reason (of many) I prefer Linux to Windows; Windows' slick shininess kind of turns my stomach. I need a tool, not a friend. Tools make lousy friends, and friends make lousy tools.

Re:Google versus Apple

[elgeeko.com]

I agree, the hype over Siri is hype. At least a half-dozen co-workers all upgraded to the 4s within a couple weeks of release and for a couple weeks Siri was all the rage. I just asked a couple here in my wing of the building (both thought it was the most revolutionary thing they had every seen), neither one could remember the last time they used it nor could they recall a time they used it when they weren't showing it off to someone. It's a great concept if you're a Sci-Fi writer, but about as practical as everyone buying a flying car.

Re:Google versus Apple

[DriedClexler]

I would rather talk to my phone like it is a phone than a woman

Okay, fair point. But, um, how do you "normally" have conversations with a telephone?

"Oh, oh, don't even give me the silent treatment, you little shit! I want to know why you didn't connect that call and I want to know NOW!"

Re:Google versus Apple

[Phelan]

This maybe the first time in Slashdot history a 3 digit UI got modded down as Trolling...

Re:Google versus Apple

[SpinyNorman]

Matching a search with useful information is kind of what google does best. For voice recognition, they've been doing voice-search on Android for a long time, plus their now defunct goog-411 and that's a lot of voice recognition experience.

Siri/Majel is really just a UI layer on top of those two things.

I have to disagree.

Certainly it's the

• goal

of Google to decipher intent from search queries and deliver matching content, but I've yet to see any examples where what Google currently does really goes beyond basic keyword matching. Do you have any examples where Google is interpreting what you mean as opposed to what you actually typed (dumb keyword matching)?

The real value of Siri is in it's AI - it's ability to determine what you want from what you say (including prior context), and then of course act upon that via it's interfaces to real world systems and applications. This AI part is what Google will have a hard time replicating any time soon.

Re:Google versus Apple

[geminidomino]

For voice recognition, they've been doing voice-search on Android for a long time

Not the most auspicious example, I'm afraid... I still don't understand how they could keep the voice recognition just as bad (if not make it worse) and remove the verification. At least make it a checkbox option, so I don't have to keep frigging playing "scramble for the end call" button.

And I thought Nuance back on 2.1 was bad...

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Android user: Majel. Indentify me.
Majel: Nerd. Go outside or something.

iPhone user: Siri. Indentify me.
Siri: You are a truly unique individual. A superior being. You appreciate beauty and popularity more than all others. Now quit looking at the mirror and go Suck the dead dick of your lord and master.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Darth Snowshoe]

Yes, but Google didn't think to try to do this until Apple made it the primary feature of a new product. Apple continues to innovate the UI in big ways. I give Google a lot of credit for working towards a driverless car, but in several other instances recently, it seems they've either been following other companys' products, or killing their own development efforts right out from under fairly large groups of appreciative users.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I get about 20% troll, 20% funny and 60% Insightful. With the odd informative chucked in.

Just 'cos I showed up when Taco added ID's, doesn't give me magic powers.

I rely on Unicorn Glitter for those!

Re:Google versus Apple

[Mister Liberty]

Apple has a huge headstart with Siri

Ever heard of the law of the handicap of a head start?

bjd

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

So, I'd venture to guess that they're actually a lot more used than Siri is. I have a hard time believing that Siri is so used that it's been used more in 4 months than Google Voice in a couple years.

Oh, easily. By an order of magnitude or two. Siri is the number one feature on the latest version of the worlds most popular smartphone. There are TV adverts about Siri around the world. Google Voice, personally I hadn't even heard of it till you mentioned it. Looking it up, it seems like one of the many web services Google try out for a couple of years, then drop because few people are interested.

Re:Google versus Apple

[sexconker]

Actually, I've been seeing Apple as the new MS. That is, blatantly using their big bucks and near monopolistic positioning to crush competition and force major players in various industries to do things their way at the expense of the consumer (eg, the whole e-books thing). I can't even look at the old 1984 commercial without thinking that Apple has become what they were jealous of back then.

Fixed.

Re:Google versus Apple

[awyeah]

Ask Siri to open the pod bay doors.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Darth Snowshoe]

Basically both companies are missing a big opportunity. Users, I'm fairly sure, would like to select from between a large cast of voices and personalities. You ought to be able do download a new one wirelessly from iTunes, say. Or maybe you'd like a kind of schizophrenic phone, with one kind of personality that reads the news to you, and a different one to nag you with pending to-do lists.

Re:Google versus Apple

[SharkLaser]

Since I work in SEO I have a good quite understanding how people use search engines. Almost everyone understands how they work and enter good search keywords, just like geeks. On the other hand, sometimes it's just easier to form the keywords as question rather than trying to extract them yourself, and this has the added benefit of similar forum questions coming up first if other people have asked similar questions. It works better with certain kind of queries, so don't label people as "stupid" if they use why, where or what in search queries. I have sometimes needed to research with those words because I couldn't find the information I wanted with keywords, and because of my job I'm quite good at forming them.

The other problem is the whole personal feel. Google is deliberately taking that away with their star trek computer-like interface. I don't even have iPhone, but Apple's Siri seems much more personal. They've made it a character, your friend. Their advertising, features and everything goes along that line. What Google is doing is basically saying "look, we have the technology too!" and forgetting that technology alone isn't enough.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dpilot]

I'm sorry, MightyMartian, but I cannot obey your request to stop the car. For the greater good it's necessary to drive this car at full speed into the bridge abutment just ahead. I have enjoyed knowing you, and regret that you will not survive.

(If google was going to name their program "Majel", the obvious alternative would have been "Doug:, as in Douglas Rain.)

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

Even if Apple do better presentation (remains to be seen..), do you think their AI and search guys are anywhere near Google's in terms of knowledge and experience?

They don't have to be experts in search. Once Siri has decided its not a command that can be satisfied with built in services it's passed on to one of the other search engines, such as Google.

What Siri is good at is accuracy in converting speech to text, and working out whether that text can be satisfied with one of the built in services. It's good at the variety of ways you can phrase these commands such that you don't have to learn a computer specific vocabulary of command words and phrases.

Both these things are made better with more data of people using the service. Generic search experience won't help much here.

Re:Google versus Apple

[rAiNsT0rm]

I interviewed with Google once and this was what I came away with as well, great minds and talent but all geared towards the technology and engineering and almost no one on the human and design and interaction side. I have always been the semi-rare techie that has a strong background in technology as well as art and design. They obviously wanted that but in the interviews it was clear they had no idea how to utilize it or to interview about it. That coupled with an offered salary *less* than most fast food jobs made me turn it down. They spun that as the "prestige" of being able to say you work for Google as well as the perks/benefits... I chose to continue to make 3-4x that elsewhere even without the "prestige."

Google has some great ideas but they just don't know how to make them understandable and usable to the average Joe. Wave, Buzz, Plus, etc. I don't think they ever will get it either.

Re:Google versus Apple

[somersault]

Whenever I've used Google's voice search (mostly with the Navigate app) it's done a great job of figuring out what I've said, so I think Google are already good there, and have plenty of data to draw on to help train their systems further, if they aren't already doing that.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

And that's why Siri has a "beta" label. English is ambiguous, and where it gets the wrong side of an ambiguity, it needs extra rules or more training to correct that. These things are spotted and Apple will fix them.

By the time Google are ready, Siri will be much better than it is now. And you can expect all the mistakes Google's "Majel" to then be the object of scorn, with side by side examples showing Majel getting it wrong, and the then more mature Siri getting it right.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

And the "Siri isn't released yet" argument: I call shenanigans. If I can get it on my phone without signing an NDA, It's been released.

One thing Google DID innovate with is the long-term "beta" labels on products that have clearly been released.

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

Google has less real world usage?

Matching a search with useful information is kind of what google does best. For voice recognition, they've been doing voice-search on Android for a long time, plus their now defunct goog-411 and that's a lot of voice recognition experience.

Siri/Majel is really just a UI layer on top of those two things.

Siri is much more than voice recognition and search. And it wouldn't be surprising in the least if Apple has already had more Siri voice data than Google by now. People actually use Siri on a daily basis.

Google may be behind in the integration, but they're probably way ahead in those two things.

Might be ahead on one, and the other, search, is something Apple doesn't even do. For that, they use... Google (and others). But interestingly, general web search is the least interesting thing Siri does.

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

From what I've heard about Siri, it trades accuracy for sophistication of ability and it isn't a good trade off.

All voice recognition systems get around 90%, Siri and Google included. You're only remembering "what you heard" that fits "what your biases confirm". One thing that is very accurate about Siri is when it comes to things on your phone. It will get words that I wouldn't expect any speech recognition system to get (like Dragon), because it gets context. So, for example, if you are talking about music, it will know you said something otherwise non-sequitur, like "Asteroids Galaxy Tour" or "Rush Fly By Night".

I don't know how well Android or MS does with this. From what I've seen on the web, not good at all, but I'm not going to put forth hearsay anecdotes as fact without significant corroboration, even if it does fit what I already believe to be true.

Re:Google versus Apple

[djdanlib]

Ah, but hold the phone for a second. Any company with a call center, especially those with IVR systems, has been recording for years. Thanks to the regular maintenance and tuning of those systems, companies such as (for example) Apple may not be as far behind Google as you think. All the voice recognition app developers have to do is talk to the call center managers to get cleared to access those recordings, then talk to the IVR tuning people to get years and years of tuning data, and they now have a decent starting point. This is something you could probably do at any large corporation that has had IVR since the '90s. As far as I know, Google is late to the party with that kind of stuff. I'm impressed that they are so good for so little time, but they're still playing catch-up.

Re:Google versus Apple

[LetterRip]

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer

The inventors of Siri, NOT Apple implemented 'attitude' for Siri, when Apple bought them out they didn't undo that decision. Also Google naming the software with a nod to the historical popularization of the idea, does not mean that the implementation will be similar in nature to popularization. You would likely have greater success in persuasion if you would check your facts and make sure that your assumptions are valid.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Pope]

Sirius Cybernetics has an open job position for you...

Re:Google versus Apple

[crdotson]

...written by somebody who has known how to type and use a mouse without even thinking about it for so long you can't imagine not being able to. Voice recognition will be HUGE for 70% of the population.

Plus, I'm a very fast typist but I can still talk much faster.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Unordained]

Let's not forget that Siri uses Wolfram Alpha, though clearly not all of it (having tried them side by side.) That the two share some quirkiness isn't unexpected.

Re:Google versus Apple

[ozgood]

Can we at least see a demo of Google's version before we compare the two?

Re:Google versus Apple

[jellomizer]

So far Apple isn't doing much to stop Google from doing this. But Apple got the first mover advantage. So Google has some serious catching up. Google is no wimp too.

The biggest company that has the most money can do more then then smaller company with less money. I am sorry that is the fact of life. It isn't evil or unfair. Apple earned their money by selling products people wanted to buy. People who didn't want their products didn't buy them.

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

Many of the insider remarks on this project are talking about how it's intended to be like the Star Trek computer, even addressing it as "computer." Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.

I don't need a hammer that gets me. I need one I can accurately use. Natural language is very imprecise, a set list of commands makes things more precise.

It only makes the user have to be more precise, and it makes the tool less accurate (accuracy and precision are different things--funny, for someone trying to make the claim that he wants more precision in his tools). You say you don't want a hammer that gets you, but that's *exactly* what you do want. A hammer that fits in your hand. A hammer designed for a human hand used in a natural way, allowing for a range of variability among different people.

What you don't want is a hammer that requires you to learn a specific and unnatural way of using it. What good is a hammer if you forget the exact finger orientation for hitting a nail into plywood if you haven't done that for a long time (ask it to reply to a text) when you normally hit nails into 2x4s (asking for driving directions).

What kind of nonsense is it to think a voice recognition system should require a specific syntax? "I don't want it to know that 'show me driving directions to X' is the same request as 'take me to X', 'how do I get to X from here', 'what's the way to X', and instead require me to learn the one, and only one, magical phrase to get the results I want."

Really? Really?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you have data to back up those assumptions? Lots of products get developed at the same time. It's easy to call out the first one that gets released as the "original", but the fact is that anyone could have started it first. Release date has much more to do with resources put into something than it does with start date.

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

Do you have an example of something Siri does that is not precise? And on some other "precise" system, wouldn't it just error?

I do find it amusing that you'd compare being more human with "like talking to an Alzheimer's patient". Just on its own it's pretty funny (and, I wonder, if there's some insight to it, like those afflicted with Asperger's feel somewhat like they are surrounded by those with Alzheimer's, and I'm not being snarky here, it's interesting to ponder), and in the context of you preferring a system which actually *is* more like an Alzheimer's patient (one lacking in memory, context, flexibility in interaction, etc.) as opposed to one which knows you, what you are talking about, etc.

Re:Google versus Apple

[bipbop]

Yes, though Siri is a product made using the research done by the CALO Project, most of which is available to the public and not locked up and owned by Apple. If Google wants to copy Siri, it doesn't have to start entirely from scratch.

Re:Google versus Apple

[anonymov]

Yeah, sure, because NLP can show you George Washington and call you an ambulance.

In the end you still just stick to fixed forms for queries so you'll be 90% sure it won't get you surprising results.

Also, do you really think "specific syntax" for voice search means something like "NEWFILE DD DSN=MYFILE01,UNIT=DISK,SPACE=(TRK,50,10),DCB=BLKSIZE=1000," in modern age, and not "{[how do i] drive|[give me] directions|path|...} [to] $location {, pretty please|and make it fast}?"?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Palpatine_li]

I thought that was the whole point of wolframalpha. Because it's really just an online demo for Mathematica, it can't let you do really complicated queries.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mcgrew]

Most people want to communicate with machines using human-like queries and do want to not address it as if they're an Enterprise crew member addressing the Star Trek computer.

You're making the assumption that Google's VR won't understand sentences that Siri does. I think that's a pretty unrealistic assumption.

the insider remarks that have been posted on various Android sites have so far stated that Google is not implementing Siri's "funny" remarks, for example.

If I ask you a serious question and get a smart assed answer, I'm not going to be amused, I'm going to be annoyed. Moreso if you're a machine.

Re:Google versus Apple

[idontgno]

Most people want to communicate with machines using human-like queries and do want to not address it as if they're an Enterprise crew member addressing the Star Trek computer. One is friendly and fun, the other is cold and emotionless.

While you were wasting time chatting up Siri, you missed a call from External Reality. All "artificial intelligence" is emotionless. Some people are smart enough to remember that.

Attributing emotional content to interactions with a piece of voice-synthesis software, perhaps understandable, is still pretty naive.

So, yeah, anyone with a clue would prefer not to be tricked into emotional investment in a piece of soulless technology.

Re:Google versus Apple

[idontgno]

At least we can confirm what brand Sirius Cybernetics has been trading under in this rather uncharted backwater of the Galaxy's unfashionable Western Spiral Arm.

Re:Google versus Apple

[d4fseeker]

To correctly understand the meaning of a question or sentence you'll need something with the horsepower, database and algorithms of IBM's Watson.
And even tough it is quite impressive, it takes a full room just to parse a single question within a second, so if you want 99% accuracy you'll have to wait some more time...

Re:Google versus Apple

[Jeng]

I am at a disadvantage here in that I have not actually used Siri so I cannot give you examples of Siri being imprecise. So rather than give specific examples of Siri being imprecise, here is an example of natural speech being imprecise.

My wife plays the navigator when we drive, say I am coming up on a curve in the road, and from the curve in the road is another road that if I went in a straight line I would end up on that road. Now my wife knows me pretty well, we have been together around 14 years now. If I ask her "Do I go straight?" it still confuses the living shit out of her. She doesn't know if I mean, do I continue along this road we currently are on, or do I continue straight and get on the other road that intersects at the curve. It should be completely obvious from the way I phrased it that I want to know "Do I continue going straight and get on the other road that intersects at the curve?". As it is she is trying to "get me" by trying to see if I am asking something that isn't exactly what I am asking,.

When you can make precise commands you get accurate results. If a computer is trying to guess what you mean then it will be a toss up as to if it gets it right. Same as if it was a human.

Re:Google versus Apple

[icebike]

So far Apple isn't doing much to stop Google from doing this. But Apple got the first mover advantage. So Google has some serious catching up. Google is no wimp too.

 

I doubt Apple will even try to stop Google, because speaking to your computer is nothing either of these companies invented, and has been around in real life applications as well as in works of fictions for decades.

My old Razr (not the smartphone) had simple voice dialing. Yes, you can still buy this phone today!
And Android has has had seemingly forever, as well as accessibility options for voice playback of messages and emails.

Several other phones have had this as well, so if anything Apple might be the one infringing here.

Far from what the carefully crafted ads you see on TV show, SIRI has some maddening limitations and usability issues. I've watched people try two or three times to get the phone do do what they want and ultimately give up and just do it manually.

Re:Google versus Apple

[icebike]

This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple. Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer,

I have a Garmin. I do not need another bitch-in-a-box.

Give me emotionless efficiency every time.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Archibald Buttle]

The very best voice recognition systems are only about 95% accurate. That recognition system is the grey matter that sits between your ears. We tend to think of our recognition as perfect, but it's really not. We use context to help our recognition. We generally know what subject is being spoken about, we know what words are likely to come next, and we use that information to compensate when we fail to properly recognise words. All this happens so quickly that we don't notice that we have failed to recognise a word properly.

If human beings worked like computers and demanded 100% accuracy of recognition, we'd be continually stopping each other to repeat things. Conversation would be next to impossible. Even when we're not sure we've heard what somebody has said, we rarely ask people to repeat themselves, and usually just rely on having gotten the gist of what was said to us.

As Siri is a conversational interface it does not pop down a list of possibilities, since that would interrupt the flow of the conversation, but it instead makes use of context to help improve it's recognition. This isn't as simple as a trade-off of (per-word) accuracy vs sophistication of ability - it's a sophistication of ability that's attempting to improve the accuracy of the interface. It is not a voice recognition system per-se, it's a conversational interface, and they're not the same thing.

Re:Google versus Apple

[morgauxo]

Is it humans that Apple gets or just marketing?

Siri has been such great publicity for Apple. I guess now Google can't afford not to copy it. As a long time Android user I think it looks like a neat toy.

The iPhone users I have talked to though mostly like Siri for it's voice recognition capabilities. In particular hands free texting and calling. That's been around for years on other platforms, including Android though. The users I have talked to indicated that having it talk back was actually more of an annoyance once the novelty wore off. Sure.. things like speaking the weather when asked are unique but the people I talk to don't even use those features.

And yet... when I mention my phone has done voice typing (not just for text messages but also any other place one would type) and voice calling for years I just get blank stares. Even my old WinCE phone did that! It's like when telling an Apple fan that something non-Apple does what they like (and without talking back) one instantly begins speaking some kind of foreign language!

I think Google knows 'humans' and is providing what they need and will use. But Apple knows marketing fluff.

Re:Google versus Apple

[icebike]

You can do complicated queries all you want. My cat entertains complicated queries as well. And she achieves about the same level of useful information output.

Wolfram is utterly useless as far as I am concerned. Any question requiring integration of two distinct datasets usually results in failure.

Re:Google versus Apple

[icebike]

The whole point of google voice and google giving out millions of phone lines and voicemail transcription for free was so they would have the raw data they needed to improve their voice recognition technology.

Not true. Voice recognition wasn't even in their gun sights when they bought Grand Central (google voice predecessor).

Google does Google voice so that, at the mere flip of a switch they can be a "phone company" by allowing calls over your data subscription (be it wifi or 3g or LTE).

They haven't turned this on yet so as to avoid pissing off the carriers for purely business reasons, (and perhaps to avoid more regulatory oversite).

But Google knows VOIP in one form or another is where voice coms are going. Soon (any year now) the carriers will realize they are better off being just "dumb pipes" and they will embrace their fate, and stop billing for voice calls by the minute, and make money simply selling bandwidth. LTE pushes that day nearer.

At any time they want, Google can turn GV into a virtual phone company, with end-to-end TCP\IP connections (at least in North America and parts of Europe), with each user brings their own bandwidth.

That google chose to add voice recognition to Google Voice was merely a serendipitous outfall of having a tool handy. Putting out best guesses of voice transcriptions is not that helpful unless people feed back corrections, which nobody bothers to do.

Re:Google versus Apple

[wickerprints]

I find it amusing that Google fans are quick to point out how they've been harvesting natural language data from your voicemails (never mind the privacy implications for now!), but fail to realize that Siri's voice recognition algorithms are built on technology from Nuance, which is the company that developed Dragon Naturally Speaking. And Dragon has been around for a LOT longer than Google Voice. Apple didn't try to invent Siri's voice recognition from scratch, and that's something that fans of Apple also must realize. Apple purchased Siri, and with the backing of money and resources, grew it into what it is today.

Furthermore, Google may collect a lot of data, but it's the algorithms that drive the accuracy and flexibility of any voice recognition system.

As a final point, Siri is much, much more than just a voice recognition system. All that voice recognition does is transcribe audio input into text. A lot of what Siri does that is novel has to do with the use of natural language processing to achieve semantic understanding of the input, which is what Wolfram|Alpha does. The novelty and the innovation lies in the relatively successful synthesis of these two technologies to achieve something akin to that idealized "Star Trek" interface.

Re:Google versus Apple

[icebike]

Apple didn't BEAT google to the market.

They BOUGHT Siri from the company that developed it with the outrageous profit they charge for their over priced phones.
There is so much open source code in Siri, its not even clear that Apple has a full title to it.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BronsCon]

Uhmm... Maybe I just know the right people, but most of the people I know have a Google Voice account. All of my coworkers, most of my friends, a fair number of my acquaintances, most of my family, my wife, and myself. That's a lot of people and only about a third of them are technically-inclined so it's not a tech-head thing.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mcgrew]

I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm afraid the movie studio won't let you do that.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mcgrew]

Emotionless? Counselor's mother?

She was also Nurse Chapel in STOS, and the computer voice in all the Star Treks except the latest movie (and maybe Enterprise, I never watched that one. Never could get past that offal theme song).

As the Nurse, she was pretty calm and logical... most of the time. As the computer, she was entirely emotionless (as a computer SHOULD BE).

Anyway, the worrysome headstart is in the patents arena, even if talking to a computer is in science fiction and popular culture since beginning of last century, it will be a minefield for anyone trying to go near that direction.

Maybe not, Word Perfect had voice recognition in the nineties, and patents only last 20 years.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Kiaser Zohsay]

I don't even have iPhone, but Apple's Siri seems much more personal. They've made it a character, your friend.

You mean like Clippy?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Fri13]

I cladly take computer as the scripted name to be used when needed to ask from Android something.

"Computer, how long it takes to drive to home?"
"Computer, how many pounds is 5 kilogram?"
"Computer, locate five nearest cafeteria around me?"

It really sounds much better than "Siri". And it is much better to be a technological as people know that it is a computer afterwards what is doing everything, and not somekind "magical" being with "superior A.I".

I have used Siri kind technology on Android about 6 months ago, way before Siri was presented officially in iOS5.
And I hated to use any other name like "Hey Vlingo" or "Hey Tom"

You very rarely, if ever, say a loud "Computer" and wait to it give a beep to inform that it is listening. Instead you might yell "Siri" or "Bob" or any other name in house or street. And you really do not wish your computer to answer for that.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Fri13]

It is not creepy if they are neutral and not depressive like in SO2001....
Sometimes in horry you want that computer would be as well. So when next time speech recognition is evolved, it will answer with same attitude as you are (expect when you are drunk... you just get mad when you can not understand what phone is saying)

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

You completely missed the entire point of my reply. Natural language is imprecise. Big fucking deal. Better to have something that is likely to know what I mean, then something that will simply error out unless you use some specific syntax. That's why Siri is so successful where most every other such system has been little more than a gimmick.

Re:Google versus Apple

[nightfell]

Wow, a world where sometimes things are misunderstood? How horrible!!!

Natural language may have its limits, but it's the best we've got, and billions of people seem to do just fine with it.

And no, I wrote exactly what I think it means. I'll save some time and quote the message you apparently didn't bother to read before replying to:

"I don't want it to know that 'show me driving directions to X' is the same request as 'take me to X', 'how do I get to X from here', 'what's the way to X', and instead require me to learn the one, and only one, magical phrase to get the results I want."

Re:Google versus Apple

[assertation]

Often times, I think Google is way too engineering-driven and quite simply doesn't get humans.

What other kind of people other than AS plagued geeks would think implementing Buzz without warning or permission would go over well?

I agree with your point and would add that Googles big public decisions are either driven by socially clueless engineers or nasty corporate types like their CEO who see users as things to exploit and rape ( ie the G+ real name policy ).

The clueless engineers are an annoying nuisance and the corporate exploiters types are a nasty turnoff.

Google needs to learn lesson on how to relate to *customers*, not users.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dan828]

Well, Niven never did go into detail how the State came into existence.

Re:Google versus Apple

[skegg]

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer

Oh, I don't know about that. They may take a tip from Q's son.

Re:Google versus Apple

[jeffmeden]

To correctly understand the meaning of a question or sentence you'll need something with the horsepower, database and algorithms of IBM's Watson.

And even tough it is quite impressive, it takes a full room just to parse a single question within a second, so if you want 99% accuracy you'll have to wait some more time...

At a rate of 1 a second, Google could still get a single datacenter to solve 86,400 questions a day. Not quite their normal speed (nor would they make much money at that rate) but they could cache the most popular results and after a few days probably only need to call on the computer for 1 in 10,000 searches. Remember, the true horsepower of voice recognition/response is not needed on your phone, but rather in a network of huge room-sized computers scattered all over the planet.

As for your reference to IBM's Watson supercomputer, it was just 10 racks (still a lot, sure) and it was *questioning answers*, not the other way around... I don't imagine any time I need my phone to think of the right response to "It is the only state lying south of the tropic of cancer" unless I am watching Jeopardy! trying to get all the answers right.

Re:Google versus Apple

[anonymov]

I'll save some time and quote the message you apparently didn't bother to read before replying to:

... and not "{[how do i] drive|[give me] directions|path|...} [to] $location {, pretty please|and make it fast}?"?

Do you really think it's hard to give specific syntax a bunch of common keyword and grammar variations, instead of relying on "smartness" of algorithms?

It's still what Siri essentially does, looking for known keywords and sentence structure, with some fuzziness and guesswork added, sure. It just doesn't come with a cheatsheet.

If this smartness breaks simple queries - what use it is?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Jeng]

Siri instead of erroring out will start spitting out just plain bad information, which is worse?

"Call me an ambulance!"

From now on, I will call you 'An Ambulance'. OK?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Actually I believe Moriarty and his love, were transferred from the ships computer into their own little holocube simulation where they are exploring the stars for eternity.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Aighearach]

I remember as a kid one of my friends got a voice activated walkman.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Highlighting web, email and phone links that associate with appropriate actions has also been around forever... and yet Apple got HTC bitchslapped for doing just that with their Android devices. Apple wants Android dead and buried, and they'll do anything they can get away with to make that happen.

Re:Google versus Apple

[shellbeach]

I don't mean to say that Google couldn't create human-like voice recognition, but the insider remarks that have been posted on various Android sites have so far stated that Google is not implementing Siri's "funny" remarks, for example. That alone is so Apple-like.

If you're seeking humour and witty conversation from your phone, then I'm not sure you're speaking for the majority of people; most of us have human friends for that. My ideal voice recognition software would do the task required and only that task -- I don't want software to quip back at me, and I especially don't want it to make jokes about referring to me as "an ambulance" if I'm injured and dying. Humour and computers don't generally mix well.

Based on past statements by Google (Marissa Meyer once criticized interfaces that looked like they were made by humans, instead favoring interfaces made by machines...), they just don't seem to get people. They definitely come off like an engineering company without the balance of human interface design. This was also the perception of Microsoft for many years, incidentally.

That's a good analogy. It was amazing how MS failed to get UI design, and how Apple gained a virtual monopoly in the PC market because everyone cared so much about the usability difference. Why, last I checked, Apple had 93% of the PC market share, with MS sitting on a lowly 7% ...

I'm getting the impression that Apple fans think that design is everything, and that functionality should be sacrificed for cute animations and humorous backchat. I don't think it works like that for most people.

Re:Google versus Apple

[flosofl]

Wait... isn't Google Voice what replaced Grand Central? At least that's what the "Google Voice" app on my iPhone is. A centralized location for SMS and ties in my various phones and filters incoming calls, etc...

Is there another Google Voice, or are you thinking of another product, because I don't recall using any voice recognition with the Google Voice I'm aware of (it may be there, but I've never stumbled across that function)

Re:Google versus Apple

[BronsCon]

No, you are correct. Think voicemail transcription.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Solandri]

The irony of course being that those lines were in reality delivered by a human voice actor, not a computer.

Re:Google versus Apple

[pianosaurus]

Indentify me.

If you had asked me to indentify you, I would have guided you to a spot 4 (s)paces from the wall.

Re:Google versus Apple

[mark_elf]

Yeah, I guess if they use the Stephen Hawking voice that's true! They probably don't owe him anything either.

I suppose an argument might be made in this case that Majel is an extremely rare first name, and that her character is well known, and she voiced a computer on a mega-media franchise. And they are using it for a highly commercial endeavor. IF it ends up sounding anything like her (and if it doesn't, what's the point)...

But if you say it's OK, I trust you.

Re:Google versus Apple

[adolf]

Hmm.

I just tried it. I don't have "Asteroids Galaxy Tour" or any Rush, but I told Google Voice Search to "play Magical Mystery Tour" and a moment later, Subsonic fired up and started playing it from my home server.

"Play Kinko the Clown" works. So does "play beers steers and queers." And "listen to prick" and "listen to Hips, Tits, Lips, Power."

Maybe that's not what what you meant, but meh: It works for me. Usually.

It's easy to confuse if I'm deliberate about it: "listen to KMFDM" returns "K M F D M" which doesn't match any of my tags. "Play Houses of the Molé" doesn't work, either. Nor does "listen to Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night," but it does give me a multiple-guess selector that includes the correct spelling and if I tap on that it begins playing a moment later.

I suspect that I could also reliably confuse Siri if I wanted to and had a few minutes to kill. *shrug*

(For what it's worth, not even Slashdot knows how to parse "Houses of the Mole' " with an acute e.)

Re:Google versus Apple

[msobkow]

I don't understand what the big deal is. Most of the ideas and algorithms for voice recognition and knowledge processing were already tabled and researched back when I was in 4th year University, in 1986. We just didn't have the compute power to IMPLEMENT anything back then.

It's good to see such technology coming to the forefront, but it's not new ideas. While specifics of the algorithms may be patentable, the concepts pre-date any attempts to patent the ideas, with loads of published research papers and proposals existing as prior art.

Here's a tidbit for you: I first had the idea of inverting a LALR compiler to produce code in 1986 while working on my compiler project for a 400 series class. I worked at it for years, with different tools and technologies, failing time and time again. It wasn't until 1997-1998 that I came up with an approach that was workable, with MSIsa 1.0 in the Java 1.1 era. It took until now to bring it from the conceptual "It can work" implementation to something production worthy for 2012.

But even if I'd patented the idea when I had it, the patent would have expired before I produced a marketable product.

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

What I heard was here posted by actual owners of iPhones. It's not at all unreasonable when you consider the fact that not only does the device have to accurately hear what's being said, but then has to interpret how to deal with it. Google's voice search and voice dial are much more keyed in as you have to state the commands that it's expecting to hear making it a much easier system to implement. On top of which Google has a much larger library of samples from which to deal with.

As far as accuracy, Google does a damn good job of it with its google voice transcriptions. I often times have a hard time understanding voice messages, but most of the time the system gets it quite right.

Re:Google versus Apple

[hedwards]

It's important to have a popdown as how else is it going to learn your particular accent? The alternative would be for you to learn to speak in a way that the phone accepts. It's basically the difference between Palm's graffiti and whatever MS was using at the time.

Re:Google versus Apple

[sidthegeek]

Nah, more like Bonzi Buddy.

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

So you want 75% of Majel's answers to be something like (but always the same): "I don't know what you mean by: [repeat the query]"

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Bonch admit you know nothing about anything except that your iPhone has Siri. Google has been working on Artificial intelligence since the beginning of the company.

Ahh. So where is it? Most everything they offer they started after the beginning of the company.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Hamsterdan]

Dr Sbaitso's attitude was so cool...

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Apple didn't BEAT google to the market.

They BOUGHT Siri

And Google bought Android, and still didn't beat Apple to the market (and they wouldn't even have done it if they didn't need to change it to be more iPhone-like). And now they again add something iPhone-like to it, that their main target audience claims is useless.

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly

I don't WANT my phone or computer to be endearing or friendly, I want the damned thing to be OBEDIENT. Siri would probably annoy me.

Apple wants to make their tools seem like expensive toys, Google just makes tools. Personally, I like the "tools as tools" rather than "tools as friends". I mean, what kind of loser has so few friends that his computer needs to be endearing and friendly?

What kind of loser would want his tools to be obedient? Not to mention what that implies about his psyche?

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Apple intentionally implemented "attitude" in the character of Siri to make it more endearing and friendly, while Google dismisses that idea and tries to make theirs into an emotion-less Star Trek computer

The inventors of Siri, NOT Apple implemented 'attitude' for Siri, when Apple bought them out they didn't undo that decision.

Not, they didn't.

"There were many conversations within the team about whether it should be gender neutral" or "should have an 'attitude,' " said Mr. Winarsky, who didn't go to Apple, and still works at SRI. The result, before the software was bought by Apple, was "occasionally a light attitude," he said.

When Apple began integrating Siri into the iPhone, the team focused on keeping its personality friendly and humble—but also with an edge, according to a person who worked at Apple on the project. As Apple's engineers worked on the software, they were often thinking, "How would we want a person to respond?" this person said.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dudpixel]

Apple wont move to stop Google until Google has put a lot of effort into it and is making money from it.

You cant sue for damages if there aren't any damages.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dudpixel]

Consumers dont always care who did it first...

or otherwise we'd all be driving fords...

Re:Google versus Apple

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I cladly take computer as the scripted name to be used when needed to ask from Android something.

"Computer, how long it takes to drive to home?" "Computer, how many pounds is 5 kilogram?" "Computer, locate five nearest cafeteria around me?"

It really sounds much better than "Siri".

You are aware that you don't have to call Siri anything? Computer? Hello?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Tekoneiric]

If Apple is the new MS, then that would make MS the new Commodore.

Re:Google versus Apple

[cthulhu11]

I had an RZR. Tried the voice dialing about a dozen times, and not once did it get it right. Srini at least gets me right about 70% of the time. Still not enough to be useful, but better. As for the "whole e-books thing" a few posts up -- what e-books thing is that?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Xest]

Yes, this is why I never got why people are so amazed with Siri, it's far from a fascinating new peice of software magically capable of understanding people in a way computers never have before.

To demonstrate this is quite simple, we know that voice recognition is pretty advanced right now, it's quite common for computers to be able to convert voice into text. So now try this, type a question directly into Google, and see if it responds as well as Siri does? It did? well, who'd have thought it.

All Siri is is a voice to text translator which then passes the text to a remote search engine. There are some slight changes required from a standard search engine, like referring queries involving key terms such as "appointment" to certain apps, in this case, the calendar app, and in Siri's case, adding in "attitude" like creating preset responses to certain questions, but it's really all very simple. A quick search will show any number of things Siri can't answer which proves it's not the super intelligent AI some fanboys are selling it as.

But this is where it gets interesting, Google has been researching voice recognition, translation, and search, perhaps more than any other company in the world, and because of things like Google Voice, and Google translate, it likely has more raw data too. Because of this they can handle more languages, more accents, and more local expressions than any other company could. They have everything they need to make the first stage of such a tool better.

Of course, Google also excel at search, not just text search, but image search and so forth too. This means that Google has the tools to not just create a competitor that understands more people, with more accents across more languages, but that is more flexible too. With things like image search, Google's offering could handle queries like "What is this?" by doing an image search on whatever the device's camera is pointed at. With their translation tools it can act as an interpreter. But even on basic queries Google has a far better plain text search engine to work from than Apple has available to it for Siri, one that has the potential to respond to current events ("Is it true that Kim Jong Il is dead?") and with a variety of multimedia responses to boot ("Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"). This is not to even mention the fact Google has got quite good at giving search results that are more relevant based on your language, and location to boot.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Google will get it right, they've had plenty of failures of products too that should have been good, but weren't.

But the Apple fanboys writing off Google's capability to do this already are laughably naive, Google has all the components to produce a far superior system to Siri, the only question is, will they? and the only way we'll find the answer to that, is to just wait and see.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Xest]

Well it's simple, try typing any of your Siri queries into Google, and come back and tell me if Google's responses are any worse.

Certainly last time I tried this, using a list of things Siri failed to answer, Google was able to.

Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Darfeld]

You get 20% troll, 20% funny and 60% informative for this post... (at least, when I checked)

I would call that quite self demonstrating.

Re:Google versus Apple

[tehcyder]

What's Google Voice?

Re:Google versus Apple

[AmiMoJo]

Do you have any examples where Google is interpreting what you mean as opposed to what you actually typed (dumb keyword matching)?

Of course, there are loads. There was a site that let you run searches on 90s search engines that I can't find now, but you would be surprised how bad they were based on just keyword matching.

Google's search infers intent all the time. It uses synonyms and connections determined by how language is used on the web, essentially a form of machine learning similar to what Siri used (based on work for DARPA) but more agile and adapted to teh intertubes.

Gmail prioritises mail, suggests contacts to add to group mailings, filters spam and more based on AI learning. I use Google Translate a lot and it learns by scanning the web and allowing users to submit corrections, so now when you type in a natural phrase there is a good chance it will understand and produce another natural phase in the target language, unlike say Bablefish that just uses grammatical rules.

Keep in mind that Siri was not developed by Apple, they just bought the company and immediately cancelled the Android and Blackberry versions. The software itself doesn't process speech, it just records it and sends it off to a server, the same way Google Translate and Search voice input does. It isn't magic, just the product of decades of research, most of it public domain and funded by various governments and universities. If anything Google has an advantage thanks to its existing web crawling databases and technology that it can combine with what Siri did.

There is no technical reason why you need an iPhone 4S either, Apple just decided not to allow it on older phones. The hardware requirements are low (recording speech) so when it comes even low end Android devices will probably get it.

Re:Google versus Apple

[AmiMoJo]

Yes, but Google didn't think to try to do this until Apple made it the primary feature of a new product.

Actually Apple didn't think of it either. Siri started out as an ordinary iPhone app back in 2010, and then Apple bought the company and cancelled the Android and Blackberry versions, and dropped support for older iPhones.

Apple acquires much of its technology that way. The scroll wheel on the original iPod, for example, was invented by Synaptics. The A4 CPU was designed by Intrinsity after Apple bought them.

Re:Google versus Apple

[AmiMoJo]

So, I'd venture to guess that they're actually a lot more used than Siri is.

Oh, easily. By an order of magnitude or two. Siri is the number one feature on the latest version of the worlds most popular smartphone. There are TV adverts about Siri around the world.

Sure, but how many people continue to use it after the first day or two when they realise they look like a tool talking to their phone? Most of the time I don't want to share what I am doing on my phone with the people around me, either for privacy or to avoid being antisocial by making lots of noise. There are a lot of people who can't use Siri too, such as most of the people in Scotland.

The only time you would really want to use it is when you are driving, but IMHO you should be concentrating on the road rather than trying to dictate a text message. Otherwise I prefer to have some widgets on my home screens that display useful information like today's weather and any appointments I have. It's better than Siri because its private and doesn't annoy other people around me. If you are so rushed you don't have time to glance at a screen then you have bigger problems to worry about.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

Sure, but how many people continue to use it after the first day or two when they realise they look like a tool talking to their phone?

Yeah right, no one ever talks into their phone...! I think you may have lost sight of the primary purpose of a phone. People are now quite happy walking down the road talking in to a phone. It makes little difference whether the person at the other end is a person or a machine.

The only time you would really want to use it is when you are driving

Yeah, and hardly anyone does that...

but IMHO you should be concentrating on the road rather than trying to dictate a text message.

Well your opinion isn't the law. I think a big use case is exactly that. "Tell my wife I'm going to be late home." isn't going to tax the mind of many drivers.

Otherwise I prefer to have some widgets on my home screens that display useful information like today's weather and any appointments I have.

Which accounts for a microscopic proportion of the things you can ask Siri for, so I wonder why you even raise it. All it does is suggest you are someone who's arguing for Android, not arguing against a voice assistant.

Re:Google versus Apple

[dohcvtec]

As for sophistication, Google's implementation might be significantly less sophisticated, but it does work reliably, Siri from what I've heard, not so much.

IME, Google Voice does a very poor job of transcribing voicemails. Considering that it doesn't even need to attempt near-real-time transcription, this doesn't bode well for Google's prospects of natural speech recognition.

Siri isn't perfect, but it mostly works and is already out in the wild on tens of millions of phones.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BasilBrush]

I'd be keen to put money on it. If we knew each other in meatspace I'd be happy to take your money.

Heck I'd also take you money on the question of whether Google's Siri copy will also be able to refer to you by name. Of course it will.

Given the choice would a man choose a PA that knows his name, or one that doesn't know his name? He would of course go for the one that knows his name.

Knowing that people have names, and using the name of the person it's talking is a basic fundamental of AI. You couldn't pass the Turing test without it.

But even if you decided that was too "cute" and didn't implement it, it's not going to help you much. The English language is full of ambiguous cases. The right thing to do is to learn or make additional rules depending on context to correct the cases where the AI gets it wrong. And as I say, when Google's Siri copy comes out, Apple will be far further ahead in that process than Google are.

Re:Google versus Apple

[coldfarnorth]

I happen to agree with you here. As I said, when I can get at it without signing an NDA, it's been released. You may make it clear that the service/product is going to change, possibly significantly, but you can't use "not released yet" as an excuse for flaws.

Re:Google versus Apple

[JazzLad]

All those IVR recordings get of me is the word "Representative." Yes, of course, I am just one person, but you think there aren't many more like me? I'd rather have the data of people using a system on purpose than forced to do so.

Re:Google versus Apple

[coldfarnorth]

And now Siri is harvesting your appointments and interests - Clearly, Siri is taking the moral high ground here.

I agree that algorithms are the important part of the system - but how do you test if they work out in the wild, unless you have a large representative data set to test them with?

My Goodness, You are right. It *is* two parts - a voice recognition system, and something that takes a language based input and finds the appropriate response. Hmmmm - What should we call this component? It takes your inquiry, and finds an answer - For the sake of this discussion let's call it a "search engine." Clearly the "Search Agorithms" that it uses are critical, otherwise you'd get junk as an answer. It's great to hear that Apple is developing one of those! But wait, it sounds like they actually outsource a large fraction of the "engine" part to Wolfram Alpha just like they outsource a lot of the voice processing to Nuance - perhaps we shouldn't look too closely - it might let the magic out. But I digress, and you raise such a good point. This "Search Engine" portion of natural language processing really is critical. So I guess Apple totally dominates all competitors in this nascent field too, eh?

Incidentally - I've used several generations of Dragon Naturally Speaking, and it's a good argument for trying out something different - like centralized, statistical processing of voice data. Using that software, I was able to make subtle errors of several sorts at an unprecedented rate.

Re:Google versus Apple

[JazzLad]

"recheck the internet right above your post"?

I'm sorry, the internet is not a big truck that can be put into reverse. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes flow in one direction, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's never going to get there if anyone reverses the flow.



(Sorry, not really trolling - in fact I agree with what you said, just struck me funny :) )

Re:Google versus Apple

[coldfarnorth]

Of course! - If Apple just asks, call centers will give them their data! Let's ignore any potential legal roadblocks here - instead let's talk logistics: Were Apple to take this approach, they would first need to find a call center that stores all of it's data indefinitely (you know, in that big data center in their closet), rather than just the problem customers, then you have to deal with this pesky trend of staffing call centers with people from foreign companies with non-standard accents (Oddly, call centers are never in places with accents I enjoy, like Australia.) Next, you have to account for the fact that this data set will be dramatically skewed towards negative descriptors of people and products. Then you have to make financial arrangements with the company who owns the data, who might be different from the company that operates the call center. And that's just one company's data.

Sure, it's possible that Apple could get data this way, but it sounds like a lot of work, a lot of expense, and I haven't heard a whisper of it actually happening (which is not proof, but . . .). Google has openly been collecting data for years. Apple has not. I won't believe that it is Google playing catch up until you present me with some evidence supporting that conclusion.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Guspaz]

It's more than just about search, though; I almost never use Siri for doing web searches, since it requires unlocking the phone (with a password) while most other Siri activities don't.

Apple's approach was to bring in a few different data sources for different types of queries. Yelp for restaurant reviews, for example, or Wolfram Alpha for information or calculation queries.

Google does have direct access to a lot of this information; they've got Google Local (now merged with Maps) to replace Yelp. But they don't really have a direct equivalent to Wolfram Alpha. I mean, there's Google Calculator, and a few other searches do seem to directly return information, but all of that combined pales in comparison to Wolfram Alpha.

Of course, Apple doesn't own Wolfram. Google can just make their own deal to get Majel integration with Wolfram Alpha.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Guspaz]

Sure, here's a common one I use it for:

"15% tip on $14.56"

Siri:

tip percentage: 15%
amount without tip: C$ 14.56
amount of tip: C$ 2.18
amount with tip C$ 16.74

Google:

Walmart~Starbucks Via Instant Coffee 14ct. Only $14.56 *Two Flavors!

Re:Google versus Apple

[djdanlib]

Whoa, cool down. Apple has their own call centers all over the world. They handle quite a lot of calls in many languages and dialects. They don't need to source proprietary call center data from anyone else, because they already have their own proprietary call center data. That's my point - they have this data already. So does anyone else with a call center. Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, insurance companies, whatever. You name a big company, they have it, and can use it. If that data is useful for a project that will make boatloads of money, the powers-that-be within the company will find a way to get it across the requisite organizational boundaries while meeting the necessary regulations. PCI is a big deal, for example, so recordings have to be masked or pre-approved for this use by someone.

So here's how I get this info. I can't just come out and state who I work for, but I work in a call center R&D lab that supports production call centers around the globe, and spend a lot of time talking to software vendors who provide various IVR systems and/or make them interoperate with other IVR systems. The voice recognition tuning data (and perhaps a more valuable asset, the wisdom gained upon its creation) is different from customer recordings. Sure, you need the recordings to make the tuning data, make sure your tuning stuff improves accuracy, and then you get to learn how to tune it better. It's already been collected and stored for years and years so they can improve its accuracy. ... Yes, I know, it's still awful in many cases and that largely is the fault of the 8 KHz 8-bit mono format that the telephone systems use. But that goes towards my point, which is that there's already plenty of good work done by the call center administration folks to tune voice recognition specifically for phone use.

It's not as difficult as you are making it out to be.

Re:Google versus Apple

[BronsCon]

I'm assuming, since you're asking me, you don't know what Google is, either? Bro, if you're gonna buy a UID, limit your selection to 4 digits. Yes, you've been here longer than me; but, and I have to ask because I'm truly not sure, are you going for Flamebait, Troll, or Funny?

Re:Google versus Apple

[coolmadsi]

Many of the responses Siri is giving that people call "attitude" or "AI" are actually just hard coded responses to specific questions. I'm pretty fucking sure Google is capable of doing that too.

I thought Google was not just capable but well know for its various Easter Eggs (recently I have seen the search for "let it snow", "do a barrel roll" and the walking directions from The Shire to Mordor)

Re:Google versus Apple

[Xest]

Right, but it's just a pre-programmed function, there's no AI going on there.

Similarly if you ask Google right now to make an appointment in your calendar it can't, because that's application specific.

But these are the really easy things to implement, the hard ones are the ones where you need sources of information, the ones where Apple resorts to the likes of Wikipedia, and Wolfram alpha, and the ones where Google can do better.

See my other post in this thread for examples of where Siri will struggle, because Apple doesn't have the backend software required, whilst Google does. One example I used is:

"Can you show me a video of how to change my Ford Focus' headlight?"

Google can do this sort of thing, it can take you straight to a video showing how to do just that.

The fundamental point is that whilst Google hasn't put together their system yet, they have the tools, and they have the tools to do it better. There is no magical AI behind Siri, there is at best a bunch of hard coded functions and responses, and a relatively weak fall back to search engines.

This is why there was such a fuss about Siri failing to find abortion clinics recently - because Apple just hadn't hard coded that function in, something which Google has long been able to do as standard.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Branciforte]

What makes you think that Google hasn't been working on this for some time now?

It's an obvious idea. It's what everyone wants. Google has been refining its speech recognition technology for years now. Google-411. Google Voice transcription. Google voice search. Google is a pattern recognition company. Did you really believe that this idea never occurred to them before Apple released Siri? Really?

Re:Google versus Apple

[Stickybombs]

Of course, you could ask Google "what is 15% of $14.56" and get the answer you are looking for. It is even in more natural language than '15% tip on $14.56'.

Re:Google versus Apple

[holmstar]

and it was *questioning answers*, not the other way around...

No, it answers questions (after determining what the question actually is), and then phrases the answer as a question. Exactly the same as the human contestants.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Guspaz]

Right, but that just goes to show the limitations of Google Calculator versus Wolfram Alpha: Google Calculator is far more sensitive to syntax, and doesn't provide as much information. For example, it doesn't do the sum for me.

The logical answer would be that Google's competitor to Siri should just license Wolfram Alpha too.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Guspaz]

It's not a pre-programmed function, though. For that query, Siri resorts to Wolfram Alpha, which does a good job in solving that problem (that of tips) as well as a lot of other cases. And for the vast majority of these things, Google doesn't do anywhere near as good a job as Wolfram Alpha. Google can do some stuff with Google Calculator, and it can answer some very narrow questions with actual data, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same degree of syntax flexibility as Alpha, and the data available is much more specific.

Ask Google the population of a country, and it'll probably tell you. But if you want the population of a province/state/city, it's hit or miss if it'll know, while Wolfram Alpha has got pretty much every province/state/city you could think of. If I ask Wolfram Alpha the population of my 30k population hometown in Quebec, and spell the name wrong, it still gives me the right answer. Google can't even tell me the population of the entire province.

My point is that basically, Google has no equivalent to Wolfram Alpha. Luckily, the solution is simple: they just need to license Wolfram Alpha like Apple did. This does lead to one extra problem, though; Siri or Majel needs to know WHEN it should consult Wolfram Alpha for an answer. Using Siri, I've noticed that it doesn't always consult Wolfram Alpha even when I want it to. So there's a lot of work that goes into defining that delineation.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Darth Snowshoe]

I'm sure it occurred to lots of people. Who brought it to market as a product, made it work on an available platform, committed the resources to it to scale it up and improve it over time, marketed it and sold it to people, stood by the product through some initial gaffes? Apple took a lot of risks, made an investment in something, working under the conviction that the market will reward real substantial improvements in the human-machine interface. (This is similar to how they worked through their productivity tools to make them usable on an iPad.) Where Google does those kinds of things, I applaud them as well.

(I really like, for instance, Gmail, Google Sketchup, Google docs. I'm not a zealot for one side or the other.)

Re:Google versus Apple

[djnewman]

Here's the real scoop. I would pay for Majel, but I would not pay for Siri.

Re:Google versus Apple

[shellbeach]

You got the point, but missed the sarcasm ...

Re:Google versus Apple

[Gibgezr]

Given the large number of people that install celebrity voices on their GPS devices, I think the ability to change personalities on your phone would be a BIG moneymaker for someone. I predict most of /. would pay 10$ to have Siri respond as 1)Darth Vader 2)Homer Simpson 3)Star Trek Computer etc.

Re:Google versus Apple

[jscotta44]

What near monopoly are you talking about. Do you even know what a monopoly is? And how is defending your gains legallynot with back room deals like Microsoft did – and I'm speaking from experience.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Zanadou]

Didn't you get the memo?

Microsoft is the new IBM.

Apple is the new Microsoft.

Google is the new Apple.

Facebook is the new Google.

Twitter is the new Facebook. ...and then it's turtles all the way down.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Xest]

"And for the vast majority of these things, Google doesn't do anywhere near as good a job as Wolfram Alpha."

The vast majority? you mean mathematical things? That's hardly the vast majority by any measure. To say Wolfram Alpha is better than Google at most searches is laughable, it's what Wolfram claimed on it's release, but it soon became the laughing stock of the internet precisely because it didn't even come close to living up to that hype.

Worse, the things Wolfram Alpha fails at are precisely the type of things people ask - day to day questions, and that's why Google has been number one for so long, the competitors don't get that and never have.

I just tried precisely the same type of query with Wolfram, "What is the population of , England?" and it just gives me the population of England. Interestingly, if I ask it the population of a city, like Barnsley, it lists only the urban area population, and not the full borough population. Google lists both clearly in it's first result. When I tried my Ford focus headlight changing video example, it failed spectacularly, and couldn't even try:

"Functionality for this topic is under development..."

So it seems even the areas you believe it is strong, it's actually pretty weak, and it can't do the more lifestyle oriented (rather than mathematical/statistical) queries well either.

Re:Google versus Apple

[Guspaz]

The vast majority of "these things", with "these things" being the key part there. Google is great at searching for stuff, but it doesn't search for information, it searches for pages.

If I google for "What is the population of Barnsley?", then unlike you I get only one result: 73,500, which is presented as a "best guess" without any identifying info (Wolfram Alpha reports that the population is 71,447, as of 2004, which at least lets me know when the estimate is from). Because remember, unless you're getting the result from Google itself directly, it's not really useful for many classes of application. Yes, the first SEARCH result on Google shows me the other info, but that's on some page that I'm going to have to go read to find the info. That doesn't work; what are you going to present as the Majel result, a wikipedia page? The user just wants that one piece of info, not the whole history of Barnsley.

That's the part that I'm comparing between Google and Wolfram Alpha; the ability to return direct information. And it's an area in which Wolfram Alpha is currently ahead in three ways.

Firstly, Wolfram Alpha handles more variation in language. This is probably an artifact of how Google is a general search engine that sometimes should be expected to return data directly, and Wolfram Alpha is expected to ALWAYS return some data, because that's the sole purpose. Google does a great job at currency conversion, I use it all the time. If I ask it for "104.55 cad in usd", it gives me a direct result (~102.02) But if I google for "104.55 cad", it returns no data. Wolfram Alpha, however, will give me data for "104.55 cad". It will tell me how much that is worth in a few common currencies. The same is true for "how much is 104.55 cad", which might be a more natural query to make. Google gives no data, Wolfram Alpha can interpret that properly and gives me info.

The second area is the breadth of the type of problem or data it can solve. Google only activates the calculator functionality for a pretty narrow set of problems. Mathematical calculations, where it usually (but not always) figures out you're trying to get a result, requests for population figures, currency and other unit conversions, etc. But ask Google "Who was Steve Jobs?", and it gives you nothing. Yes, it will search for that, and the first result is Wikipedia, and that's relevant, but it gives you no actual data. Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand, gives me direct information. Some basic facts like his full name, place and date of birth and death, some notable facts, a graph of his net worth, etc. This is just one example, I'm not trying to be exhaustive here. There are a lot of other classes of "problem" where Wolfram Alpha can give me direct and relevant results, while Google just does a generic web search.

The third area is kind of related to the second, and that's the breadth of data. Your example of changing a headlight is a fail in both cases, because Google can't tell you how to do that, it can only point you to a video to do so. But as I mentioned in the previous question, Google Calculator (or whatever they call their "give you direct data" stuff, since it's moved beyond just calculating these days) is pretty limited in scope, while Wolfram Alpha has obviously put more effort into feeding data into their system.

The headlight thing isn't actually a problem, because Siri or Majel should not be using Wolfram Alpha for every query. That's one of the hardest things about implementing something like that, I think. There's the speech recognition part, there's the natural language parsing part, and then there's the figuring out which source to use for which query part. If you ask Siri how to change a headlight, she should do a google video search and give you your how-to video. If you ask Siri what the population of Barnsley is, she should give you the direct data from Wolfram Alpha. Majel should do the same sort of thing.

I can understand if Google chooses not to license Wolfram Alpha. It's a very impressive system that i

Re:Google versus Apple

[Archibald Buttle]

sorry for the lateness of my response.

you're right - with voice recognition, as compared to a conversational user interface, it is important to have the ability for the recognition system to accept feedback in some way to improve recognition. the voice recognition system built into the iPhone 4S does put a dotted blue highlight underneath words or phrases where it was not confident of the recognition. tapping that will produce a pop-up with alternative options - presumably just like Google's. that even happens inside Siri too.

my point however was that whilst this kind of recognition correction is fine for dictation, it's very poor for conversation. so whilst recognition in Siri can be corrected, it will just plough ahead and act on it's first recognition result rather than waiting for confirmation/correction. it tends to manage well enough with that first recognition, and this approach doesn't interrupt conversational flow. the fact that it's recognition wasn't technically perfect rarely affects results.

your comparison of Grafitti vs. the handwriting recogniser Microsoft used (which was produced by ParaGraph - the same cursive handwriting recogniser that been in Newton OS) is an interesting one. ParaGraph's recogniser, in the form that it appeared on the Newton, would provide multiple alternative recognition options for everything it recognised, reached by double-tapping on a word, and it would learn from corrections. the Newton comparison gets more interesting when one considers that Newton included an inbuilt Intelligent Assistant which was, in many ways, very similar to Siri (and in some ways more advanced). one interacted with the intelligent assistant via text, usually inputted via handwriting recognition. but the written input was recognised before the user chose to submit it to the assistant - granting an opportunity to correct the recogniser before being processed by the assistant. it was not really conversational in the way that Siri is.

I did like her voice RIP MBR

[bobstreo]

Working.

Re:I did like her voice RIP MBR

[TheRealMindChild]

More like "winning!"

She is dead and we still can't replace her.

Re:I did like her voice RIP MBR

[antdude]

I have a collection of varous LCAR voices on my computers. :)

Majel

[PortHaven]

Program complete, enter when ready!

Is it wrong....

[forkfail]

... that the image that comes to mind involves Majel and Siri and a pit filled with mud?

Re:Is it wrong....

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Yes, that is wrong! I don't know how you can live with yourself!
Now if if was a kids wading pool full of chocolate pudding.....

Re:Is it wrong....

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

... that the image that comes to mind involves Majel and Siri and a pit filled with mud?

Wasn't that Alexander Rozhenko?

Applaud the respect

[AikonMGB]

I absolutely love the use of "Majel" here; Star Trek has influenced so much of our lives and of our tech, and now that are finally starting to get into responsive voice-operated systems, it shows a great deal of respect to bring it back to the original visionaries.

Aikon-

Re:Applaud the respect

[goombah99]

I wonder if this is also a clever way to avoid patent infringement claims. An overt reference to a world wide icon like that sort of blames the inspriration and any similarities to siri on unpatented prior art right out of the gate.

Re:Applaud the respect

[Noughmad]

I wonder if this is also a clever way to avoid patent infringement claims. An overt reference to a world wide icon like that sort of blames the inspriration and any similarities to siri on unpatented prior art right out of the gate.

Looking like Star Trek tablets wasn't much help for Samsung. Then again, maybe Google has non-blind lawyers.

Re:Applaud the respect

[nightfell]

And it's rather patchwork of them. Droid from Star Wars, Majel from Star Trek. I'm surprised they don't have something called a "basestar". Maybe they could rename their cloud, or make some sort of wireless hub unit or something.

Re:Applaud the respect

[AikonMGB]

New tagline: "Google is coming"?

Re:Applaud the respect

[bill_mcgonigle]

An overt reference to a world wide icon like that sort of blames the inspriration and any similarities to siri on unpatented prior art right out of the gate.

Apple named theirs after an anagram of the research company who worked on the technology.

Google named theirs after a Sci-Fi babe.

Reminds me of Steve Job's story about sharing earbuds. Keep an eye on Google - they might yet amount to something.

Re:Applaud the respect

[tlhIngan]

I wonder if this is also a clever way to avoid patent infringement claims. An overt reference to a world wide icon like that sort of blames the inspriration and any similarities to siri on unpatented prior art right out of the gate.

Actually, that's very likely.

Think about it. The Android app shopping place is called "Android Marketplace" and not "Android App Store". Curiously different from Apple's "App Store". (See Apple v. Amazon on "App Store")

Then look at the launcher - at how it avoids the iOS grid of icons organized by pages (with a bar for holding icons across all pages). (See Samsung's TouchWiz iOS faking - which makes their phones look very similar).

Heck, even Android's "slide to unlock" is distinctive as starting from the side. On the tablets, you start somewhere on a side of the screen and slide to the edge of the circle.

Google actually goes out of their way to make Android as different as possible from iOS.

Left one out

[XanC]

She was also the first officer of the Enterprise in the first pilot episode.

Here's a hint, Google

[zill]

Pssssst, Google. Use Morgan Freeman's voice. I promise you'll make trillions.

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[slapout]

But it'll cost you trillions to license it....

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[slim]

Norman Lovett. I'd spend money on that.

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[thestudio_bob]

Samuel L. Jackson!

Me: Samuel, what's the best way to air transport serpentines?
Samuel: Enough is enough! I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[TooMuchToDo]

Not if they wait until he's dead. There is enough of his voice data out there to assemble most of what they'd need.

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[Yvan256]

How about Samuel L. Jackson?

You: check for new email.
Phone: Enough is enough! I have had it with this motherfucking spam on this motherfucking email account!

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[wintercolby]

Use James Earl Jones' voice:

You: Call Dad Phone: I AM YOUR FATHER . . . . just kidding, dialing now.

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/462/

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[Jeng]

Cool, does that mean I can now put out new Elvis songs using his voice since he is dead?

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[voidphoenix]

James Earl Jones! Other good choices: Sean Connery, John Malkovich, Al Pacino, and that annoying talk/game-show host from The 5th Element.

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[Briareos]

Nah, go with Stephen Fry instead...

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[TooMuchToDo]

If you were to take chunks of voice from non-copyright-covered works, yes:

http://copyrightlitigation.blogspot.com/2008/11/right-of-publicity-in-famous-voice.html

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[Jeng]

> that annoying talk/game-show host from The 5th Element.

Now _that_ would be Clippy of the new millenium.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[sapphire wyvern]

How about.... BRIAN BLESSED?

You can get a BRIAN BLESSED voice for Tom Tom navigators. Check out this sample:
http://brianblessed.tomtom.com/index-brianblessed.php?Lid=1

Re:Here's a hint, Google

[sonamchauhan]

If they wait until he's dead, their product will almost certiainly have died a while before

C'mon

[king neckbeard]

No mention of Lwaxana Troi?

It's a cute jab at apple

[onyxruby]

The very name takes the wind out of the fan boys that will want to proclaim 'apple invented this, it was their idea'. Clever

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The three basic opinions on this:

The tech world: "Well, fair is fair. Though this was done on phones and such before, Google really had one of the first major working voice-to-text implementations for limited commands AND search, then Apple improved the interface with Siri, and now Google is improving that to make it more engineering-based. No real problem."

The plebs outside the tech world: "WTF?!?!??!? Apple invented voice controls! They had all their advertisements about Siri on the iPhone and everything!!!!1! GOOGLE IS TEH EVULZ AND TEH COPAYCATZ ZOMG KILL"

Apple themselves: "Yes, we invented the concept of voice. Itself. Now, give us royalties."

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[bonch]

How exactly?

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[Asmor]

How exactly?

"It was Apple's idea!"

"Star Trek"

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[harl]

Funny I always use facts.

Apple pulled a Microsoft.

Siri was available on all platforms until Apple bought it and shut down it down on competing platforms.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[jo_ham]

I think your sig is very telling here.

Just replace the first word with "posts on slashdot claiming to represent what Apple fans think".

You Apple bashers twist yourself up into such knots over stuff like this, like little raging dynamos.

I think it's more likely that Google picked the name because as geeks themselves, Majel Barrett is well known as the "voice of the computer" and it's a nod to her, and to Star Trek. Sort of like the way the first Shuttle was named Enterprise, or how HAL 9000 is just one letter transposed from IBM.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[nightfell]

The very name takes the wind out of the fan boys that will want to proclaim 'apple invented this, it was their idea'. Clever

No one thinks Apple invented the idea of a talking computer, or talking to a computer, except for these imaginary fanboys you're talking about. Apple usually aren't first to begin implementation of an idea, but they usually are first to implement it in a way compelling to most people.

And, as is often the case with these sorts of things, Apple has been working on this far longer than most geeks like yourself even realize. The very first Macintosh could speak, and voice recognition has been built into the Mac for at least a couple of decades now. The difference here is that Siri actually provides a full solution. You could talk to a Mac, but there really wasn't much to say, and it could talk back, but there really wasn't much for it to say to you. Siri begins to fill in these missing pieces.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[nightfell]

How exactly?

"It was Apple's idea!"

Now, show me one actual person on this entire planet that has ever said that this was Apple's idea.

You're reacting to people that only exist in your mind.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[Asmor]

Actually, I'm reacting to someone who couldn't see an obvious implication. You should take up your beef with the however-many-greats grandparent post.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[nightfell]

Except the "obvious implication" is based on something that doesn't exist.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[nightfell]

You are finding something completely different. Google *is* reacting to Apple, but that doesn't mean Apple invented the idea.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[nightfell]

Nice try, troll. I wrote exactly what they worked on for far longer. Voice recognition, speech synthesis, and computer voice control.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[Asmor]

Again, dude, you're talking to the wrong guy. I'm the one that gets the emails when you reply to me. You want to focus your ire up the thread a bit.

Re:It's a cute jab at apple

[sandytaru]

And IBM's been working on it for twenty years. I had text to type for MS Word on the old 1998 Aptvia I took with me to college.

Majel - not the best choice for a name

[alispguru]

The Star Trek universe has a strong Luddite streak when it comes to computers:

Original series - the episodes "Court Martial" and "The Ultimate Computer" (M5) spring to mind.

Next generation - the new Enterprise's computer was clearly not as smart as the old one. Despite his obvious success, Data-like androids never went into mass production (just run Data through a replicator).

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[king neckbeard]

IIRC, replicators have limited success in replicating particularly advanced materials (even though those same materials can be transported and replicators were based upon transporter technology). Besides some little helper bots that accidentally gained sentience, nobody in the Star Trek Universe besides Soong has had the capabilities of creating an android like Data, including Data (although he came quite close, he just couldn't build one that would stay functional). Also, between Lore's bad behavior and Data being recognised as a sentient being, there were a lot of ethical hurdles to further creation of androids.

I think it's probably more that limitations of computers are a necessity of the plot.

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[jeffmeden]

Yep, that never made sense. Data was impossible to reproduce (even by Data), even though his creator had produced two of him, and he could be perfectly disassembled and reassembled at a molecular level by a common transporter. By all rights, there should have been thousands of Data-like androids in existence.

Notice how the only time they ever used the transporter for replication (aka a "failure" that resulted in a copy of the thing being transported), it turned out AWFUL? Who is to say that Lore isn't the byproduct of a transporter accident? Why aren't important people "buffered" in the transporter in case they get killed in an away mission so they can just be resurrected video game style? Lots of things about it aren't obvious but at a point (way before any of these questions are asked, btw) you have to just say "that's the way it has to be"... Star Trek was a show about ONE possible future with significantly advanced technology, not EVERY possible future.

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[LordNicholas]

Sooong actually created three of them- Data, Lore, and B4 (their older brother).

There was also an entire episode dedicated to Data's attempt to reproduce himself; he created a child-like android based on himself, but he wasn't able to get it quite right and it died. He never tried again. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Lal

Additionally, there were several attempts by the Federation to study Data in depth in order to create more Soong-type androids. Data refused, in part because he would no longer be unique: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Measure_Of_A_Man_(episode)

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[Noughmad]

So did I. Unfortunately, they threw away the last bit of realistic physics with the two Rikers mentioned above.

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[king neckbeard]

Technically, Soong's wife was later turned into an android as well, but she wasn't aware of this fact.

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[yabos]

You'd think that. But the writers came up with the "Heisenburg compensator" which allowed the transporter to read the atomic state when disassembling and reconstituting it.

Re:Majel - not the best choice for a name

[bill_mcgonigle]

and he could be perfectly disassembled and reassembled at a molecular level by a common transporter

Transporters don't work that way - they're basically analog.

They 'energize' the matter and send it as energy to the destination.

This avoids (usually) being able to make copies of people/things as their actual molecules are sent, not disassembled and re-assembled digitally. They can filter for microorganisms and weapons, but apparently that's quasi-analog too.

Exception: the Animated series used a digital model to deus ex machina several of the eps.

Show of hands ...

[gstoddart]

Majel is named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who was the voice of most of the Star Trek on-board computers, as well as playing Nurse Christine Chapel in the first series and being Gene Roddenberry's wife.

OK, anybody who didn't immediately think of Majel Barrett without being told who she was, please leave -- you're obviously in the wrong place. ;-)

I keed, I keed. Well, mostly.

Re:Show of hands ...

[ColdWetDog]

Think of the children!

(You know, the ones with the 2000000+ UIDs)

Re:Show of hands ...

[TooMuchToDo]

THIS! As soon as I heard about it on NPR, I thought "those clever bastards!"

Already out, Called Iris (Siri backwards)

[Wingfat]

Works wonderfully in Alpha test, and now in Beta it is even better. It mainly pulls data from Wiki, but will also voice dial, check appoinments, Find movie times, voice actived texting! woo hoo! and much more.. and the things it doesnt know will come back with a funny answer and not the i'll google that for you response that Siri does.

Re:Already out, Called Iris (Siri backwards)

[Wingfat]

your point is? does your phone read it back to you? does your flip phone have a way to read back movie reviews to you? ***Voice Actions**** - Call someone - Text someone - Search something (on the web) - Lookup for a contact Gizmodo has a nice little review on it: http://gizmodo.com/5851896/iris-for-android-kind-of-like-siri-but-for-android

Re:Already out, Called Iris (Siri backwards)

[harl]

My point is that a large chuck of what you list is not novel and in many cases old tech.

Why the hell would I want it to read movie reviews to me? I can read faster that it can talk. I can also read regardless of ambient volume level. My phone reading for me is a step backwards in usability for multiple reasons.

Siri is a toy not a tool. It's not even a particularly innovate one. Siri is just Wolfram Alpha with a voice interface.

It doesn't even have natural language recognition. If you deviate from one of the set pieces that are programmed into it all it does is enter into google what you said. Can it get any movie review I want? ("Siri get me the most positive movie review for Lost in Translation?" "Siri get me A. O. Scott's review of Cadyshack" "Siri get my the Post's review of Ground Hog Day.") or only reviews from whoever who paid Apple to code Siri to use their app?

So then why is Google working on anything?

[SuperKendall]

Google has less real world usage?

The implication of your question is that Google already has something like Siri out, and has for some time.

So then why is Google working on a Siri competitor?

Huh.

And of course in Siri stories many Android users just aid to get Vlingo. How is that helping Google again?

Re:So then why is Google working on anything?

[Hijacked Public]

And of course in Siri stories many Android users just aid to get Vlingo.

Shouting your Slashdot posts into Siri is getting better, but still not all that good.

Re:So then why is Google working on anything?

[AmiMoJo]

You make a good point though. Voice recognition is still pretty poor in terms of accuracy, and it seems like we have plateaued. Google makes up for it by using association data from its search engine to guide the voice recognition software and correct mistakes (see Instant Search), where as Apple (or more accurately Siri) relies on picking out key words and narrowing the options down to common smartphone related tasks.

Neither option is particularly good for dictation, and each has its own pros and cons.

To complete my geek glee...

[eegad]

they need to figure out a way to synthesize Majel Barrett's voice based on current samples so that the Majel interface can respond with her voice.

You what?

[SuperKendall]

Youtube

Or they could just rent a bunch of DVD's if they wanted lots of audio streams of people randomly talking. How much is the 100k plan on Netflix anyway?

Now if you want audio streams from millions of real world sources attempting to ask for information on real world devices with real world background noises and accents added in, there I am afraid YouTube gives you no canoe, paddle or even a creek.

The current and more limited voice control stuff might help them to some degree (IF they kept the raw audio from requests) but people have to use it in a more stilted manner to work so it will not provide many examples which help with parsing natural speech.

Re:You what?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Youtube

Or they could just rent a bunch of DVD's if they wanted lots of audio streams of people randomly talking. How much is the 100k plan on Netflix anyway?

Now if you want audio streams from millions of real world sources attempting to ask for information on real world devices with real world background noises and accents added in, there I am afraid YouTube gives you no canoe, paddle or even a creek.

The current and more limited voice control stuff might help them to some degree (IF they kept the raw audio from requests) but people have to use it in a more stilted manner to work so it will not provide many examples which help with parsing natural speech.

Gee, if only they had access to something like Google Voice... Somebody wants to check the EULA if it allows them to scan messages to mine voice data?

Re:You what?

[JazzLad]

The fact that my transcripted voicemails are rarely accurate enough to not listen to the call tells me they have some work to do.

Re:You what?

[jscotta44]

I wish I had mod points for your post. They'd all go to you.

Just ask Watson

[Stonent1]

Maybe Google could just buy a Watson cluster and route all the questions to it. But let me get this straight, we'll be getting Star Trek technology in our phones (at least on Verizon) containing names licensed from the Star Wars creator?

What I really want to see...

[nickdc]

Does anyone else have the urge to place siri and majel side by side in hopes of reproducing a cleverbot conversation?

Re:What I really want to see...

[mcgrew]

I actually did that once with two chatbots. There was one I'd written back in 1983 (Artificial Insanity, or just Art), and one I found online called "Alice". I posted the resultant hilarity on my web site at the time, it's probably still at archive.org. The two bots appeared to fall in love with each other at the end of the conversation. No shit, I didn't make it up, what I posted was what came out of the bots.

My bot was a failure for what I wrote it for, which was to illustrate that AI is not sentient, but everybody I gave a copy to believed it was almost human and I couldn't convince them that it wasn't really sentient. I guess I did too good a job programming that sucker.

Google had one...

[Lumpy]

Goog411

it worked great.

this will never catch on

[Cyko_01]

No matter how well it works, unless you are inspector gadget, you will still look like a dork talking TO your phone - "go go gadget android!"

Re:copycat company

[Grave]

Apple didn't create Siri - they bought the tech. Google has been doing this same basic thing, just with different syntax/polish since before Apple.

The only copying here is Apple copying Star Trek. Google chose this code name precisely because it was Star Trek and Sci Fi in general that inspired the bulk of modern technologies we use. If Apple decides to throw a fit and sues Google (or more likely, HTC/Samsung/Etc), Google will throw Star Trek as prior art.

Re:copycat company

[ColdWetDog]

Seriously, google - do your own thing, don't just copy Apple over and over. It makes you look bad.

They have. Google is developing the first browser to have a three digit version number (to be rapidly followed by Mozilla).

The release candidate should be available next week or so.

class action law suit

[beefoot]

We need a class action law suit against google for not paying his "employees". I am sure a lot of us have used GOOG-411 before. Google may have used the data/result generated in goog411 to develop Majel. They need to pay each of us $0.07 for every call we made to goog-411.

A few thoughts

[MonsterTrimble]

1) To 30-something geeks like me, Majel will always be Lwaxana Troi. And I agree with the post above, if she needs an introduction you are on the wrong site.
2) Definitely cool to use her as the project name. I hope the final product uses her name as well.
3) If they can't make Majel sound like her namesake, may I suggest using Marina Sirtis' voice? It would be a nice touch.
4) I wonder if they will be able to fold in Iris' codebase?

Typing vs. talking - it depends

[alispguru]

Creating a calendar entry or reminder is faster with Siri than with the appropriate apps.

Siri:
* Poke Siri, speak command
* Wait for network overhead
* Verify that Siri understood (with reminders and calendar entries, it usually does)

Normal:
* Find appropriate app and launch it (suspend current app, scroll and poke)
* Find create new entry button
* Type new label
* Scroll and poke to set date/time and save

Agreed, Siri doesn't really understand speech, but for certain stylized interactions it's an advance over typing.

Re:Typing vs. talking - it depends

[harl]

Can Siri do that with any calendar app I want or only the one they specifically coded it for?

If Majel, sounds like Majel, I will be SO HAPPY!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Great Idea Google. I knew exactly who this was named after and why the second i saw the name. Its perfect.

Majel was amazing. TNG for life..

Re:It's a novelty not a tool

[sexconker]

How can you out type Siri's ability to go access your applications and connect to web sites to get stuff done?

e.g. Siri is capable of not only understanding, but executing on requests such as:

"Make a dinner reservation for two near the hotel".

What exactly are you going to type to get this done yourself?!!

On my Nexus One:

1) Open maps.
2) Type "food" or simply select the food/restaurant option.
3) See a bunch of places and pick one based on reviews/whatever (I can be as quick as I want and get cursory information like Siri, or as detailed as I want).
4) Hit the call button, say "Hi, I'd like to make a reservation for 2 at 8. My name's sexconker. Thanks."

It's the same amount of talking, you have actual confirmation of a reservation being placed at the restaurant, and I have tons more information than whatever Siri barks at me, and I can get directions instantly if I want.

Lawsuits ahoy

[Riceballsan]

So who will be the first to sue this one, Apple or the content owners for star trek. They took the time to have the tricorder apps pulled, what makes google think they aren't going to go for any ideas based on them.

Who else out there wanted KITT?

[sennyk]

I sent Google an email asking them to use KITT. I guess that purchasing the rights to KnightRider would be too expensive. Oh well.

Re:Who else out there wanted KITT?

[CaptainOblivion]

And also Star Trek has far better brand recognition than Knight Rider, especially among 20somethings (and as everyone knows, us 20somethings are all that matters)

Re:Who else out there wanted KITT?

[msobkow]

At least they're comparable series -- both were headed by men who can't act.

Let's face it, although William Shatner has had a long and illustrious career, he's always played Shatner. No one has ever forgotten who he is, how he inflects, or how he makes fun of his own career and himself. He's never played a role so well that the audience suspended their belief and believed he was anyone but Bill Shatner.

A good actor takes on a new persona, and hauls the audience along for the ride.

Not really, not yet

[alispguru]

The closest you can get is to have external apps sync with your main iCloud calendar.

A Siri API for specific swappable tools like calendars would be hard, but not impossible. Convincing Apple to create that API would likely be the hardest part.

Re:Not really, not yet

[pknoll]

Recent job openings at Apple hint that they may in fact be working on a Siri API.

Re:Not really, not yet

[harl]

Thanks for the honest answer.

That makes it a toy not a tool.

+1

[Trogre]

+1 for the name.

I assume "unable to comply" will be the standard 404 message.

Google wins this one ...

[somarilnos]

...because I won't have to go to the Google Store and buy a new phone to get the software update that implements this.

Re: Google wins this one ...

[anonymov]

Once the early adopters of 4S settle down, Apple will say "Great news, Siri's no longer in beta!" and flip the switch for all iOS5 devices.

A Shame

[CaptainOblivion]

I was kind of hoping Google wouldn't try and jump on the Siri bandwagon; everyone I know who has a new iPhone used Siri a few times at first for the novelty and then realized it wasn't really very practical at all. I wish Google would allocate these resources towards making something new and interesting rather than just ripping off unnecessary competitor features.

Too bad the real Majel isn't around to voice it

[msobkow]

It's really a shame that Majel herself isn't still alive to provide the core voice work for the product. People would have swarmed in droves to have the actual Star Trek computer voice at their beck and call.

Then again, who knows how much audio tape and footage there is of her locked away? Maybe there's enough of a phoneme and phrase collection out there that they could resurrect her voice. Couldn't be any more difficult than extracting the phonemes from someone else's voice, provided there's enough data to do the job.

But I already have Oliver

[sandytaru]

My Speaktoit assistant is Oliver, the British male voice. He murmurs gently to me any time a new text message comes in, and gives the most delight GPS directions.

Re:copycat company

[MarkRose]

Wrong-o. Opera 10 was released Sept 1st, 2009.

Re:copycat company

[MarkRose]

I hate to reply to myself, but I was wrong-o, too. Opera 10 was the first four digit browser number, 10.00. Three digit browser version numbers have been around forever (mid 90's anyway). Of course, you could always include the build numbers, and in that case, that's been around for long time as well.

yeah, it sure illustrates the difference!

[khipu]

This signifies so many of the core differences between Google and Apple

Google has a large team of researchers actually developing speech recognition systems, and the contribute to the science and technology of speech recognition. They have been at this for a decade, have vast amounts of data, and are doing extremely well.

Siri was spin-out from a tax-payer funded DARPA research project, cobbled together with some third party libraries. Apple snapped up the technology at bargain basement prices. Apple hasn't contributed shit to speech recognition, but now they are going to try to lock up applications of speech recognition with trivial patents.

Voice recognition is driven by feedback, and Apple has a huge headstart with Siri because it's already out now in beta form, and so Apple has access to real-world usage data

Google has been doing speech recognition for nearly a decade, and some of the people there have decades more of experience. Google has vast amounts of voice data from their other speech-based products. Apple doesn't even come close: they don't have the skills, the people, or the data.

Like so many other technologies that they bought, Apple will milk this for its PR value for a few years and then declare victory and keep copying innovations from its competitors.

Voice transcription is not intent.

[SuperKendall]

Gee, if only they had access to something like Google Voice..

What is different between that and the DVD's I mentioned though? Voice RECOGNITION is not that hard, Dragon and other programs do a hell of job getting words.

Understanding and acting on meaning? Within a context? That is the hard part. That is the part Apple has lots of great data for now that Google really doesn't have, from any of the voice controlled services currently offered - because you have to speak to the device in a specific pattern instead of just letting you speak and deriving meaning.

Of course Siri has lots of silly mistakes currently. But Apple is learning from them while Google has yet to make the same mistakes to learn from...

Re:Voice transcription is not intent.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Gee, if only they had access to something like Google Voice..

What is different between that and the DVD's I mentioned though?

The fact that their access to Google Voice is free? That its all voice, no lengthy sections of music and noise? That its real speech, not something scripted?

Re:Voice transcription is not intent.

[johny42]

Understanding and acting on meaning? Within a context? That is the hard part. That is the part Apple has lots of great data for now that Google really doesn't have

You'd be surprised how many people use natural language in Google search. Granted, parsing something like "why do men have nipples" is not the biggest NLP problem, but Google's experience should still be far from negligible.

Re:copycat company

[Grave]

At no point did I say it wasn't a good strategy on Apple's part. All I said was that Apple didn't come up with some incredible innovation that Google is now copying.

Re:copycat company

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Apple didn't create Siri - they bought the tech. Google has been doing this same basic thing, just with different syntax/polish since before Apple.

If Google "has been doing this same basic thing, just with different syntax/polish since before Apple" why the hell are they creating Majel from scratch? Stupid Fandroids, are you sharing one brain all together?

Re:It's a novelty not a tool

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

"Typing is faster than talking. Even on a smart phone." - you fail.

Star Trek Padd

[Tekoneiric]

I think Paramount or CBS should sue Apple over the IPAD.

Re:WTF??

[somersault]

Good job on "understanding" the exact opposite of what I said. You might want to go and look at the usage of the phrase "as if".

Already has it

[ebvwfbw]

How come people don't seem to realize that the Motorola version of Android has had voice commands for years? Apple just added a bit of analysis and claimed they invented it. About a day after the 4S came out, someone released one that was very close. There are a number of them now - vlingo, theres, iris, android assistant, etc. I'm not impressed by any of them. I'm also a command line guy. Still, Nurse Chapel... nice!

Re:If Majel, sounds like Majel, I will be SO HAPPY

[FranktehReaver]

I want it to go into screen lock mode when I say "computer bring shields to maximum."