When Apple rolled out the iPhone 4S back in
2011, one of the new features to garner lots of attention was Siri. This digital assistant could receive voice
commands and accomplish various tasks. It seemed to be right out of a Star Trek movie. Siri was the source of extraordinary media
attention and grist for several stand-up comedians. Siri has expanded the tasks that it can do
and has spawned several other competing applications that allow for voice
commands. You can now ask Google
questions by speaking rather than typing in requests. Microsoft has a new app called Cortana.
There is a new company entering the market
that seeks to take Siri and Siri-like apps to a new level. The company called Viv has set up shop in San
Jose, California and has attracted a literal “Who’s Who” in the field of
artificial intelligence (AI) to join its staff.
The team now has engineers who worked on the original Siri and IBM’s
Watson of Ken Jennings and Jeopardy fame.
Their mission is to take Siri-like applications and enable them to do
some very complex tasks.
For anyone who has used Siri, once the
novelty and fascination of speaking orders to your phone wears off, it becomes very
apparent that the complexity of tasks within Siri’s grasp is very limited. In most cases Siri can only provide actions
on existing functions or retrieve information already stored and organized in a
form that answers your question. Tasks
that require the acquisition of information and actions based on that
information to accomplish another action are well beyond Siri and all of the
other similar apps now available.
For example, you can ask Siri to wake you
at 6:00 AM. This is a simple task since
your phone has an alarm program and a clock.
Siri needs only to connect the two to accomplish your request. Let’s change the request making it more
complex. Let’s say that the reason you
needed to be awake by 6:00 AM was to get to the airport for an 8:30 AM flight
to Washington, DC, on Delta. You know
that bad weather is predicted overnight.
This could slow your drive. So
you request Siri is to wake you in time to get to the airport for your flight
to DC. Viv hopes to have an app that
will break down your request into smaller tasks, gather information and then
set the alarm to allow you to make your flight.
This task
now requires monitoring the weather for your area. It must also gather traffic reports for roads
you will use. The app must also retrieve
data from your airline to make sure that the flight is indeed on time. With all this information it will compute the
amount of time you need to make the flight and wake you at the appropriate
time. While this task would be a simple one for a
human personal assistant, it is now well beyond the reach of any app available
for your phone.
The folks at Viv see extraordinary
applications. This level of AI might assist
with medical diagnoses using information gleaned from millions of research
papers, information that the attending physician doesn’t even know exists. It might open opportunities for those with
sight or auditory impairments. For sure
it will speed the development of driverless cars. Although my morning commute on I-275 often
seems like I am among many “driverless” cars.
Not sure even a new Siri will solve that issue!
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