When they launch a useful Siri outside of the USA then perhaps it'll be useful, for the rest of the world, we dont really know what Siri is as we have a butchered version not much more use than the old Voice Control
At this point I don't think you are missing much. My experience may be atypical but when Launched Siri worked very well for me. As time has passed she is getting less and less useful because she is getting more and more inaccurate. Other than using her for speech to text and a few voice commands I find it quicker and easier to just use my apps. Of course Ymmv.
Pretty much all of the stories are about Siri recommending/not recommending Lumia.
I wonder what the says about this search engine....
I already noted that previously in this thread. Does Siri use the most widely-used search engine (ever)? Is that something to look into before a production release?
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Google tailors search results too. If you pay them then you show up higher.
How's this any different, aside from being very slightly more amusing?
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Only if there was no other way to search for information you desire. You can also use Google's own search app, which supports voice. Siri is meant to add a personal element to the phone, make is more like a personal assistant than a simple speech to text app. Changing Siri's response to this question hardly damages it's credibility, since after all you'd have a hard time proving Siri's previous response was correct or that it's current response is wrong. If you're asking your phone such subjective questions you should be prepared for a biased answer.
I wonder how much control Steve had over Siri, I mean would he have launched it as a Beta service (which is still Beta 9 months later) ?
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
The essence of Siri isn't speech recognition, but basic understanding of natural language. Reportedly, the input to Siri is the converted text, and speech-to-text conversion is done by an engine by Nuance. I strongly doubt that Apple is using the users to train the speech-to-text engine.
The reasons Siri is, and may well remain for many years in beta, is the complexity of natural language interpretation. According to Siri's creators, the biggest challenge isn't even language, but culture differences. This is hardly a problem any one single company will be able to solve in the observable future.
Here's more about Siri from the people that created it:
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
But 9 months of Beta ?
A lot of non-US people got the iPhone4s and thought it'd get full Siri after a few months, as it stands we'll probably see iOS 6 and iPhone5 before it comes out of Beta
In the UK we speak English (with minor differences) so why they could not have it work here (and Canada) is another matter
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Cred: As opposed to say, Google upgrading search results by how they correlate with Google + (but not Twitter or facebook) postings?? Or facebook's new "ads disguised as regular posts" in your stream??
Quote:
Originally Posted by dagamer34
I personally don't like changes from his because we are one step away from being advertised to with Siri responses. It's no different from a search ad.
Or how both Google and Bing are gaming search results (in different ways, with Bing likely less egregiously for the moment)? Or the new facebookery mentioned above?
Or how Apple attempts "lock-in" for its services. Apple's Facetime video calling was introduced as having its API's being available to other manufacturers in the future. When's the future? And iMessage wasn't, but again it's a lock-in thing. You not only have to only message Apple device owners, you have to know which of your friends that does or doesn't include, no?
Get a grip. Big corporations (not to mention big governments and powerful public figures) are self-serving in what they offer up to people.
The essence of Siri isn't speech recognition, but basic understanding of natural language. Reportedly, the input to Siri is the converted text, and speech-to-text conversion is done by an engine by Nuance. I strongly doubt that Apple is using the users to train the speech-to-text engine.
The reasons Siri is, and may well remain for many years in beta, is the complexity of natural language interpretation. According to Siri's creators, the biggest challenge isn't even language, but culture differences. This is hardly a problem any one single company will be able to solve in the observable future.
charlituna did write "voice samples", which is incorrect, since after the Dragon Dictation backend* converts the voice to text the Siri servers attempt to comprehend the context. That said, you are both on the same page even though you did delve deeper into the challenges for this type service. I'd chock in up to him misspeaking about it being "voice samples" as opposed to "query samples."
PS: While impressive I take issue with Watson on Jeopardy! as the system didn't have to find the question by first listening to the answer via optical or audible cues. The system was given the data directly which has always been faster than humans. I'd like to see the system beat man by having to use a mic and camera to get input.
* Technically Dargon Dictation does some contextual processing as it knows, for example, the proper form of to, too and two when used across various apps.
When they launch a useful Siri outside of the USA then perhaps it'll be useful, for the rest of the world, we dont really know what Siri is as we have a butchered version not much more use than the old Voice Control
Apple needs to think outside of the USA, otherwise Samsung and others will definitely take the lead, and Apple may become the new Nokia/RIM .. going slowly into Oblivion
I wonder how much control Steve had over Siri, I mean would he have launched it as a Beta service (which is still Beta 9 months later) ?
Apple already has a Chinese version in the works.
Why would you think this WASN'T something they would think about? It's not like they can snap their fingers and convert a million words into their associations and build a complex system to find relationships out of the blue. There's just a LOT MORE prior work on English expert systems.
Japanese and Chinese are probably the next round. Then perhaps German. The rest might get easier with prior working knowledge -- but someone still has to create associations for every word and understand the "nuances" of how people refer to things -- and that just isn't written down anywhere in a way that's useful to a computer EXCEPT in English.
The fact that Apple can get a software to understand; "what's the weather like outside?" is a MAJOR achievement.
It doesn't even do Spanish yet, which is the 2nd most common first language in the world, if I remember correctly. Not to mention the previous comments about culture which includes pronunciations and term usage which affect dialects and other parts of spoken language.
A lot of non-US people got the iPhone4s and thought it'd get full Siri after a few months, as it stands we'll probably see iOS 6 and iPhone5 before it comes out of Beta
That's overly optimistic.
In the UK we speak English (with minor differences) so why they could not have it work here (and Canada) is another matter
Oh, and I'd just like to add -- that some languages are going to be a lot more NUANCED than others.
With the Spanish -- though they probably have a lot of developers who've worked on text to speech -- you've got a lot of differences in meanings and references between countries that speak Spanish. French might have dialects, but other than a few notable regions (like Quebec), it's probably more unified with idioms -- same with German.
There's going to be a major quirk with every language added and it's going to have to be regional. I'm sure that SIRI has a learning period per user -- and that they probably have a "Northeast", "MidWest" and "SouthEast" sub-routine as well.
It doesn't even do Spanish yet, which is the 2nd more common first language in the world, if I remember correctly. Not to mention the previous comments about culture which includes pronunciations and term usage which affect dialects and other parts of spoken language.
That's overly optimistic.
In the UK we speak English (with minor differences) so why they could not have it work here (and Canada) is another matter[/quote]
Minor differences? Really?!
LOL.
English in America and English in the UK are totally divergent, separated by a common language -- and certainly not a common vocabulary, nor way of speaking.
Human's can adapt quite readily to a South African, Australian, European or American accent and change in idiom -- but not a machine. I think a lot of people don't have any appreciation to how much effort probably goes into converting "I'd like to know when I've got to go to the lawyer" into something useful. A Brit will say "solicitor" and might use a totally different way of asking the question.
Siri is going to add regions one hard fought development database at a time. There probably not a lot of people to hire to do this kind of work -- and beyond that, you have to depend on people REALLY UNDERSTANDING how those people speak. Google probably has a database -- but their searches don't really have to understand the questions as well as SIRI does.
English in America and English in the UK are totally divergent, separated by a common language -- and certainly not a common vocabulary, nor way of speaking.
Human's can adapt quite readily to a South African, Australian, European or American accent and change in idiom -- but not a machine. I think a lot of people don't have any appreciation to how much effort probably goes into converting "I'd like to know when I've got to go to the lawyer" into something useful. A Brit will say "solicitor" and might use a totally different way of asking the question.
Siri is going to add regions one hard fought development database at a time. There probably not a lot of people to hire to do this kind of work -- and beyond that, you have to depend on people REALLY UNDERSTANDING how those people speak. Google probably has a database -- but their searches don't really have to understand the questions as well as SIRI does.
This really is a longterm goal for any company to make. Your example of solicitor is actually an easy one to add to Siri since it's a fairly simple and common noun. Even if we get past the proper deixis in converting voice to the proper homonym in text we still need to get the system to understand all parts of the phrase as intended by the user.
Everyday I have conversations with other humans where the communication falls apart because they misunderstood what I meant or vice versa. I'm impressed that Siri is as good as it is considering the number of parts and variables involved.
You think Siri would be more credible if it recommended the Nokia Lumia (or whatever it's called) as the best smartphone ever?
You're certainly welcome to your world....
That is a bit narrow-sighted.
I'd expect Siri (or whatever it's called) to give answer based on some statistics, the more legit, the better.
If Apple starts (continues?) "teaching" Siri to try boosting owner's ego by sucking up, rather than returning meaningful answer with some weight, it turns Siri into another novelty/farting/party app.
So basically, in my book proper answer should be "Based on that-and-that research/customer satisfaction questionnaire/..., best smartphone is XYZ". Apple can still fine tune answer by choosing source that prefers iPhone, while still giving sustainable information (If Apple cannot find such source, well then, Apple has much bigger problem than Siri's answer). As it is, it is just being smart-ass, without much success IMHO.
I always wondered when Apple would open it so sites could be listed in Siri. And now i think i figured it out; you target Wolfram and it eventually trickles down in Siri. So before Apple really opens it up with an api you should get a headstart by being indexed by Wolfram. Question is how do you get AI properly translated into Wolfram. Any thought about this? Btw, my first post!
That's shocking. I was under the impression that Wolfram Alpha is a respectable source of information. It appears that Siri isn't tuned to use the best engines out there. Maybe this will change in the production version.
I too was surprised at the junk results returned by Wolfram. If anything lost credibility here, it is the search engine Apple chose to use.
But I don't know enough about AI to really know anything.
Forget A.I.
"I" seems to be quite a challenge for you at times, judging from most of your posts.
Hey Mods:
Is this sort of mindless insult really OK around here? I don't complain, because they don't bother me a bit, but it seems bad for the forum as a whole to allow such things.
Comments
At this point I don't think you are missing much. My experience may be atypical but when Launched Siri worked very well for me. As time has passed she is getting less and less useful because she is getting more and more inaccurate. Other than using her for speech to text and a few voice commands I find it quicker and easier to just use my apps. Of course Ymmv.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Gee, I searched the term "best smartphone ever" using the most widely-used search engine (ever) and it gave me: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=best+smartphone+ever&oq=best+smartphone+ever&aq=f&aqi=g4g-K6&aql=&gs_l=igoogle.3..0l4j0i30l6.1141.6816.0.7391.24.17.0.2.2.0.383.1146.7j3j0j1.11.0...0.0.U4vpwLtUP1A
Pretty much all of the stories are about Siri recommending/not recommending Lumia.
I wonder what the says about this search engine....
I already noted that previously in this thread. Does Siri use the most widely-used search engine (ever)? Is that something to look into before a production release?
Quote:
Originally Posted by camper
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Google tailors search results too. If you pay them then you show up higher.
How's this any different, aside from being very slightly more amusing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by camper
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Only if there was no other way to search for information you desire. You can also use Google's own search app, which supports voice. Siri is meant to add a personal element to the phone, make is more like a personal assistant than a simple speech to text app. Changing Siri's response to this question hardly damages it's credibility, since after all you'd have a hard time proving Siri's previous response was correct or that it's current response is wrong. If you're asking your phone such subjective questions you should be prepared for a biased answer.
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
The essence of Siri isn't speech recognition, but basic understanding of natural language. Reportedly, the input to Siri is the converted text, and speech-to-text conversion is done by an engine by Nuance. I strongly doubt that Apple is using the users to train the speech-to-text engine.
The reasons Siri is, and may well remain for many years in beta, is the complexity of natural language interpretation. According to Siri's creators, the biggest challenge isn't even language, but culture differences. This is hardly a problem any one single company will be able to solve in the observable future.
Here's more about Siri from the people that created it:
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
Anyone that asks that question has no idea why it is a beta product.
For this kind of tech to work it needs thousands if not millions of voice samples to learn from. The only way to get those is from use. Since they can trust several millions folks not to squeal and they wouldn't want to pay for some kind of stock voice samples, going out beta is the only practical solution
But 9 months of Beta ?
A lot of non-US people got the iPhone4s and thought it'd get full Siri after a few months, as it stands we'll probably see iOS 6 and iPhone5 before it comes out of Beta
In the UK we speak English (with minor differences) so why they could not have it work here (and Canada) is another matter
Quote:
Originally Posted by camper
Yes, it significantly diminishes the credibility of Siri.
If Apple can tailor the results that Siri provides to put a self-promoting positive marketing spin on the answers, the results Siri provides have lost their credibility.
Apple made a significant error with this change.
Cred: As opposed to say, Google upgrading search results by how they correlate with Google + (but not Twitter or facebook) postings?? Or facebook's new "ads disguised as regular posts" in your stream??
Quote:
Originally Posted by dagamer34
I personally don't like changes from his because we are one step away from being advertised to with Siri responses. It's no different from a search ad.
Or how both Google and Bing are gaming search results (in different ways, with Bing likely less egregiously for the moment)? Or the new facebookery mentioned above?
Or how Apple attempts "lock-in" for its services. Apple's Facetime video calling was introduced as having its API's being available to other manufacturers in the future. When's the future? And iMessage wasn't, but again it's a lock-in thing. You not only have to only message Apple device owners, you have to know which of your friends that does or doesn't include, no?
Get a grip. Big corporations (not to mention big governments and powerful public figures) are self-serving in what they offer up to people.
charlituna did write "voice samples", which is incorrect, since after the Dragon Dictation backend* converts the voice to text the Siri servers attempt to comprehend the context. That said, you are both on the same page even though you did delve deeper into the challenges for this type service. I'd chock in up to him misspeaking about it being "voice samples" as opposed to "query samples."
PS: While impressive I take issue with Watson on Jeopardy! as the system didn't have to find the question by first listening to the answer via optical or audible cues. The system was given the data directly which has always been faster than humans. I'd like to see the system beat man by having to use a mic and camera to get input.
* Technically Dargon Dictation does some contextual processing as it knows, for example, the proper form of to, too and two when used across various apps.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PJWilkin
When they launch a useful Siri outside of the USA then perhaps it'll be useful, for the rest of the world, we dont really know what Siri is as we have a butchered version not much more use than the old Voice Control
Apple needs to think outside of the USA, otherwise Samsung and others will definitely take the lead, and Apple may become the new Nokia/RIM .. going slowly into Oblivion
I wonder how much control Steve had over Siri, I mean would he have launched it as a Beta service (which is still Beta 9 months later) ?
Apple already has a Chinese version in the works.
Why would you think this WASN'T something they would think about? It's not like they can snap their fingers and convert a million words into their associations and build a complex system to find relationships out of the blue. There's just a LOT MORE prior work on English expert systems.
Japanese and Chinese are probably the next round. Then perhaps German. The rest might get easier with prior working knowledge -- but someone still has to create associations for every word and understand the "nuances" of how people refer to things -- and that just isn't written down anywhere in a way that's useful to a computer EXCEPT in English.
The fact that Apple can get a software to understand; "what's the weather like outside?" is a MAJOR achievement.
That's overly optimistic.
Minor differences? Really?!
Oh, and I'd just like to add -- that some languages are going to be a lot more NUANCED than others.
With the Spanish -- though they probably have a lot of developers who've worked on text to speech -- you've got a lot of differences in meanings and references between countries that speak Spanish. French might have dialects, but other than a few notable regions (like Quebec), it's probably more unified with idioms -- same with German.
There's going to be a major quirk with every language added and it's going to have to be regional. I'm sure that SIRI has a learning period per user -- and that they probably have a "Northeast", "MidWest" and "SouthEast" sub-routine as well.
And accents will be an issue as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
It doesn't even do Spanish yet, which is the 2nd more common first language in the world, if I remember correctly. Not to mention the previous comments about culture which includes pronunciations and term usage which affect dialects and other parts of spoken language.
That's overly optimistic.
In the UK we speak English (with minor differences) so why they could not have it work here (and Canada) is another matter[/quote]
Minor differences? Really?!
LOL.
English in America and English in the UK are totally divergent, separated by a common language -- and certainly not a common vocabulary, nor way of speaking.
Human's can adapt quite readily to a South African, Australian, European or American accent and change in idiom -- but not a machine. I think a lot of people don't have any appreciation to how much effort probably goes into converting "I'd like to know when I've got to go to the lawyer" into something useful. A Brit will say "solicitor" and might use a totally different way of asking the question.
Siri is going to add regions one hard fought development database at a time. There probably not a lot of people to hire to do this kind of work -- and beyond that, you have to depend on people REALLY UNDERSTANDING how those people speak. Google probably has a database -- but their searches don't really have to understand the questions as well as SIRI does.
Everyday I have conversations with other humans where the communication falls apart because they misunderstood what I meant or vice versa. I'm impressed that Siri is as good as it is considering the number of parts and variables involved.
Exhibit A:
[VIDEO]
Quote:
Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz
But I don't know enough about AI to really know anything.
Forget A.I.
"I" seems to be quite a challenge for you at times, judging from most of your posts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slurpy
This is the 2nd best phone from Wolfram:
$29 prepaid garbage-bin phone.
What a piece of crap!
I mean, seriously...where is the stylus!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
Really?
You think Siri would be more credible if it recommended the Nokia Lumia (or whatever it's called) as the best smartphone ever?
You're certainly welcome to your world....
That is a bit narrow-sighted.
I'd expect Siri (or whatever it's called) to give answer based on some statistics, the more legit, the better.
If Apple starts (continues?) "teaching" Siri to try boosting owner's ego by sucking up, rather than returning meaningful answer with some weight, it turns Siri into another novelty/farting/party app.
So basically, in my book proper answer should be "Based on that-and-that research/customer satisfaction questionnaire/..., best smartphone is XYZ". Apple can still fine tune answer by choosing source that prefers iPhone, while still giving sustainable information (If Apple cannot find such source, well then, Apple has much bigger problem than Siri's answer). As it is, it is just being smart-ass, without much success IMHO.
I always wondered when Apple would open it so sites could be listed in Siri. And now i think i figured it out; you target Wolfram and it eventually trickles down in Siri. So before Apple really opens it up with an api you should get a headstart by being indexed by Wolfram. Question is how do you get AI properly translated into Wolfram. Any thought about this? Btw, my first post!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrDoppio
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slurpy
This is the 2nd best phone from Wolfram:
$29 prepaid garbage-bin phone.
This is the 3rd:
Yes, that's an HP touchpad.
Take that as you will.
That's shocking. I was under the impression that Wolfram Alpha is a respectable source of information. It appears that Siri isn't tuned to use the best engines out there. Maybe this will change in the production version.
I too was surprised at the junk results returned by Wolfram. If anything lost credibility here, it is the search engine Apple chose to use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GTR
Quote:
Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz
But I don't know enough about AI to really know anything.
Forget A.I.
"I" seems to be quite a challenge for you at times, judging from most of your posts.
Hey Mods:
Is this sort of mindless insult really OK around here? I don't complain, because they don't bother me a bit, but it seems bad for the forum as a whole to allow such things.