Is Siri Smarter Than Google?

storagedude writes "Google could go the way of the dodo if ultra intelligent electronic agents (UIEA) make their way into the mainstream, according to technology prognosticator Daniel Burrus. Siri is just the first example of how a UIEA could end search as we know it. By leveraging the cloud and supercomputing capabilities, Siri uses natural language search to circumvent the entire Google process. If Burrus is right, we'll no longer have to wade through '30,000,000 returns in .0013 milliseconds' of irrelevant search results."

Comments

Is she?

[tomcode]

Whenever I ask Siri a question, she always refers me to a google search.

Re:Is she?

[iluvcapra]

Or a Yahoo search, whatever your settings may be.

It seems like the real question is, "Will searching the Internet become less useful in the future, when people have small personal chochkies that know all of their personal preferences, their habits, location and can give them exactly what they want, instead of 400 things that might be, interspersed with dozens of ads."

Even though Siri needs a search engine to work, it basically commoditizes Google/Yahoo/Bing-type services. I suspect this is why Goog's happy to expend astounding amounts of energy and money to keep Android on phones.

Re:Is she?

[LoudMusic]

"Will searching the Internet become less useful in the future, when people have small personal chochkies that know all of their personal preferences, their habits, location and can give them exactly what they want, instead of 400 things that might be, interspersed with dozens of ads."

If you use Google Search while logged in with a Google account they're doing the same thing for you.

The difference between Siri and what this author is referencing as "Google" is query entry by voice or query entry by keyboard.

*** News flash, you can enter your query in Google Search with your voice as well. ***

Re:Is she?

[rampant mac]

"*** News flash, you can enter your query in Google Search with your voice as well. ***

I just tried this, trying louder and louder each time. My neighbors just called the cops. Can someone else PLEASE google "Did Hitler love anal sex" for me??

PS - I don't have a microphone.

Re:Is she?

[griffjon]

Alternatively, it's been approximately a decade since I went past the first page of google results. Siri basically gives you the same result as "I'm feeling lucky," but we don't actually want google.com to hide all of the second-run results.

Re:Is she?

[shitzu]

For me, google has got progressively worse in the last year or so. It treats everything i write as a typo and all words as optional by default. Just yesterday i got 0 relevant results on the first page (query: insync uninstall osx).
And I don't get this natural language thing at all - i find it much easier and faster to type two-three words (google *used to* give me relevant results) than to form full sentence. Speaking with a computer is even more cumbersome and a sentence takes even more time than typing a couple of words even if the computer gets it right.
But maybe i am just becoming obsolete and google is not meant for searching obscure commands or error messages at all.

Voice recognition

[GeneralTurgidson]

This assumes voice recognition becomes leaps and bounds better than it is right now. I've cursed at Siri more than I've asked it questions. Maybe it's my Midwest accent.

Re:Voice recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus Siri can't work without content. So if everyone is using Siri, why would people create textual content if all ad revenue is circumvented by Siri.

Re:Voice recognition

[aaronb1138]

Voice recognition is at it limits phonetically, really it has been since the late 90's. The perceived improvements come entirely from context sensitive assumptions. Siri was better than Google Voice and search for the first 90 days or so due to more brute force behind the context engine. They pulled the CPU allocation at Apple and it has been behind Google Voice ever since.

A Pentium II 450 Mhz running Dragon Naturally Speaking on XP circa 1999 interprets your voice just as well as Google Voice or Siri (given similar microphones / adc's), the difference has entirely been in the guesses the software makes when it doubts recognition of a word within a phrase. A propagation of high quality mics and adc's into phones versus a crap Labtec mics on 90's era PC's constitutes the rest of the difference.

Context interpretation requires an enormous database of phrase fragment search capabilities. Providing better search results is merely the act of making better command keyword extrapolation. E.g., "I want to go to ," and going straight to a map to the (nearest current GPS), rather than requiring a structured query such as, "Map to near "

There is no real intelligence or revolution being discussed here, it is rather all the correct application of large amounts of brute force processing power. It all comes down to an extension of the system which made Google #1 over Altavista and Hotbot back in the day, that is processing power driven context sensitivity as opposed to pure keyword frequency.

The only revolution is the linear improvement of CPU power/RAM/storage per $ which makes it affordable to do for free or cheap.

Re:Voice recognition

[Samantha Wright]

Q. How many Apple Newton users does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Faux. There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup.

hmmm

[rainmouse]

Can we mark the OP as flamebait?

Tautology at its finest

[Anonymous Coward]

So he's saying that if we perfect assistants to the point where they'll be able to answer our questions directly, we won't have to go look for the answers ourselves?

No shit, Sherlock.

Simple answer: no

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a non-story. Next.

Wait a minute

[Bruce Perens]

Forget about leveraging the cloud, AI, all of the wonder of Siri that nobody else has (or some portion of myopic Apple users think nobody else has). Asking Siri something and search by typing a field in a bar are both... search. What looks different is that Siri can take advantage of the semantic web and similar things to read the result to you, and come close to actually understanding what it's doing. But text search can have all of that understanding too.

Somewhere behind Siri are search engines, and will remain search engines.

The only thing that's unique about Siri is that the search engine companies can't put their ads in there.

Re:Wait a minute

[olsmeister]

The only thing that's unique about Siri is that the search engine companies can't put their ads in there.

Yet.

Re:Wait a minute

[nurb432]

The only thing that's unique about Siri is that the search engine companies can't put their ads in there.

Sure they can, by buying a place at the top of the results. Even worse than a traditional ad since you may not even know you are being 'steered' towards a particular product.

GIGO?

[fahrbot-bot]

If Burrus is right, we'll no longer have to wade through '30,000,000 returns in .0013 milliseconds' of irrelevant search results.

Hmm... If that's your experience, then your search query is way off. Learn to ask better questions. Siri won't help if you're an idiot.

Obligatory Betteridge's Law Reference...

[Almonday]

No.

Re:Most Effective Search

[stevenfuzz]

ME: "What time does [movie name] start tonight?"
Siri GFE: "Not until you clean the dishes."

Re:Most of the time, Siri just shows Google result

[R3d M3rcury]

Depends on what you ask. But that's a good point.

Siri "circumvents" Google search for certain things. "Find me a seafood restaurant" will go to Yelp, which has reviews and such. "How many grams in an ounce" will go to Wolfram-Alpha. Otherwise, it sticks it in a query and ships it off to Google.

Needless to say, Google isn't sitting still. "Find me a seafood restaurant" in Google will also provide me a list of local restaurants with reviews, much like Yelp does. Arguably, Google's ratings may be better because they are collected from a broad spectrum of sources (user reviews from various review sites, individual bloggers, professional reviews) versus whoever Apple decided to sign a deal with. Speaking of which, you have to consider what kind of deals are being done in the background. Woz recently pointed out something I found a bit disturbing:

“I used to ask Siri, ‘What are the five biggest lakes in California?’ and it would come back with the answer. Now it just misses. It gives me real estate listings. I used to ask, ‘What are the prime numbers greater than 87?’ and it would answer. Now instead of getting prime numbers, I get listings for prime rib, or prime real estate.”

So where Siri used to give answers, Siri now gives advertising.

Seri cracks me up...

[Malenx]

A couple of months back my family and I were having a debate whether falling thirty feet would break your legs or kill you, so we asked Siri. She responded back with a list of buildings we could jump off in our area over thirty feet high.

I'm all for scientific tests... but ouch.