Apple confirms existence of Cambridge Siri R&D lab with new office sign
Apple is no longer keeping its Siri research and development office in Cambridge, U.K. a secret, revealing the facility's existence by constructing a sign bearing the company logo beside the building's front door.
The Apple sign outside Apple's Cambridge R&D center in the U.K. (Source: Keith Jones via Cambridge News)
The sign, displaying a light blue Apple logo on a grey background, sits to the left of steps leading to the entrance of 90 Hills Road, reports Cambridge News. The sudden appearance of the sign is the first real confirmation from Apple that it uses the office, though not what kind of work takes place within its walls.
It is believed the office was opened shortly before Apple acquired VocalIQ, a natural language processing firm spun off from the University of Cambridge Dialogue Systems Group, with the purchase thought to have cost Apple around $100 million in October 2015. While VocalIQ has been involved in automotive voice recognition projects with General Motors, its expertise in language processing is likely to have been refocused on improving Siri.
Before Apple's acquisition, VocalIQ's technology was believed to be more accurate than others in recognizing complex queries, scoring over 90 percent in tests compared to the 20 percent scored by Siri and other rival digital assistants.
Apple has continued to work on improving Siri, and in the last few months the company has become more open to collaboration in its artificial intelligence research. In December 2016, Apple lifted restrictions preventing AI researchers from talking to their peers about their findings, and published its first AI research paper, before signing up as a founding member of the Partnership for AI the following month.
The 90 Hills Road office was renovated shortly before Apple moved in, and is thought consist of more than 9,000 square feet of floor space across two floors and a roof deck. More than 30 people are believed to be working at the facility, including former VocalIQ employees.
The Apple sign outside Apple's Cambridge R&D center in the U.K. (Source: Keith Jones via Cambridge News)
The sign, displaying a light blue Apple logo on a grey background, sits to the left of steps leading to the entrance of 90 Hills Road, reports Cambridge News. The sudden appearance of the sign is the first real confirmation from Apple that it uses the office, though not what kind of work takes place within its walls.
It is believed the office was opened shortly before Apple acquired VocalIQ, a natural language processing firm spun off from the University of Cambridge Dialogue Systems Group, with the purchase thought to have cost Apple around $100 million in October 2015. While VocalIQ has been involved in automotive voice recognition projects with General Motors, its expertise in language processing is likely to have been refocused on improving Siri.
Before Apple's acquisition, VocalIQ's technology was believed to be more accurate than others in recognizing complex queries, scoring over 90 percent in tests compared to the 20 percent scored by Siri and other rival digital assistants.
Apple has continued to work on improving Siri, and in the last few months the company has become more open to collaboration in its artificial intelligence research. In December 2016, Apple lifted restrictions preventing AI researchers from talking to their peers about their findings, and published its first AI research paper, before signing up as a founding member of the Partnership for AI the following month.
The 90 Hills Road office was renovated shortly before Apple moved in, and is thought consist of more than 9,000 square feet of floor space across two floors and a roof deck. More than 30 people are believed to be working at the facility, including former VocalIQ employees.
Comments
However, I'm very confused as to why only some of Siri's functions work on my Mac. On my Mac if I ask Siri to turn on some lights, for instance, I get a response saying HomeKit isn't supported on the Mac. So, it's smart enough to realize what I'm asking but can't follow through. Weird.
You can't expect Apple to do all the leg work of supporting every possible field of human endeavor.
I have approximately 100-120 apps on my iPhone.
Only 4 apps support Siri interaction! Less than 4%!!!
SiriKit currently supports only 7 domains and intents:
1 Ride Booking “Get me a ride to SFO via MyRidesApp.”
2 Messaging “Send a text to Carey using MyTextApp.”
3 Photo Search “Look for beach photos taken last summer in MyPhotosApp.”
4 Payments “Send $100 to John for dinner last night using MyPayApp.”
5 VoIP Calling “Call Mike on my MyVoIPApp.”
6 Workouts “Start my daily run workout from MyWorkoutApp.”
7 Climate and radio (CarPlay) “Set the heater to 72 degrees.”
Apple needs to significantly expand SiriKit to give more developers the tools to take advantage of it.
Personally I'm dubious about speech replacing touch.
For me what I'd like far, far more than more functionality is a more reliable voice recognition & dictation engine—especially for English (Ireland) accents. My accent isn't that strong and it has trouble with understanding me often. And since Ireland Siri option was released in October of last year I've noticed perceisly 0% improvement for me over me using British Siri. And my accent is most certainly not British. So that was a huge disappointment for me given that I awaited it since I first got wind of it from WWDC.
It's gonna happen. VocalIQ's technology is ridiculous. It's ℅90 accurate compared to the wannabe Siri's ℅20 and can understand phrases as complicated as "Show me kid friendly Chinese restaurants that offer Wifi".
Expect it to be more accurate by the time it's released.