

Siri says some weird things - Toddward
http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/12/siri-weird-things-iphone-4s/

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chime
If anyone with 4S has some time, I'd like to know how Siri responds to:

    
    
        * Map from here to the nearest gas station
        * Map from here to the nearest gas station, avoid highways
        * Turn screen darker (or lower brightness)
        * Redial (last called number)
        * Turn off 3G when near home
        * Turn off Wifi when near work
        * Turn vibrate mode on when near work
        * Turn vibrate mode off after 6pm
        * Repeat song (when iPod is playing)
        * Open HackerNews (saved as bookmark)
        * Delete Safari cookies
        * Update AppStore apps
        * Which actor plays Ryan in The Office?
        * Alert me when battery has less than half charge

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Udo
I don't have a 4S, but some of these screenshots already reveal some stunning
limitations. For example "take a photo" doesn't seem to work (on a mobile
phone, wtf?) and the proper response to "I think I just killed someone" should
not be "oh did you?" but something more along the lines of "do you want me to
call an ambulance".

On a side note, I believe Apple is making a fundamental mistake with Siri in
not communicating its limitations more clearly (or at all). Sure, the
marketing department probably wants to make announcements to the effect of
"oh, this baby can do _anything_ " but soon customers will find out that's not
the case and be thoroughly disappointed after the novelty factor wears off.
Siri is a prime example of this shortsighted marketing move because its
capabilities are murky and unknown by nature.

Putting out a clear bullet list of things it can do (like: make cal entries,
notify, simple if-then logic, GPS data, Google lookup) would work much better
in the long run.

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MaxGabriel
The only real limitation you bring up is not being able to take a photo (I'd
add reading email as well, not just texts). But there's no reason Siri has to
maintain its current capabilities.

Have you read reviews of people struggling with limitations? Also, Siri offers
a list of suggested tasks it can perform from the iPhone itself, based on the
videos I've seen.

"Siri, on the other hand, feels limitless. It’s fuzzy, and fuzzy on purpose.
There’s no way to tell what will work and what won’t. You must explore. I
found it extremely fun to explore Siri — primarily because so many of the
things I tried actually worked." -Daring Fireball

Even if Gruber is an Apple fanboy, I would suspect people to react more like
him than you.

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lukifer
Does the choice of being unable to call 911 seem strange to anyone else? I
think the risk of occasional accidental calls [1] is nothing compared to
emergency situations where the user is too panicked to operate the
touchscreen, or blind, or [insert your own edge case here]. Or is this solely
a legal restriction on emergency services?

[1] I once somehow butt-dialed 911 on my old dumbphone, which was embarrassing
and terrifying. I awkwardly apologized and hung up, and there were no
repercussions.

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ams6110
Don't know if it's like this everywhere, but here if you dial 911 they are
obligated to dispatch a police officer to your location. Even if you say
"sorry I meant to call 411" or whatever, or just hang up, I guess they think
you might be in a situation where you somehow were able to get to the phone
and call 911 but then can't talk about the emergency.

~~~
alanh
Where’s here? I have never heard of this sort of policy.

Somewhat relevant: I have called 911 a few times to report near-emergencies
(e.g., significant debris in the road, or extremely erratic driving; they
forward me along)

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mwill
Here in Australia, I recently was trying to get in touch with the non-
emergency police number (I had seen 2 kids, one maybe 2 years old, the other 4
at most, playing alone, on the median strip of a dual carriageway road, with
no one else in sight), via directory assist, but was redirected to 000 (Our
emergency number), so I hung up, to try and get the direct number again.
Within 5 seconds I was called back by emergency services, and asked to explain
in detail what had happened, why I had hung up, and what the situation was.

The operator told me that, typically, they treat people hanging up at any
stage during a 000 call extremely seriously, and will follow up, and will
usually send officers out if the call is from a land line and they have an
address, even if the caller says no officer is needed.

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Tiktaalik
This reminds me of playing around with Dr. Sbaitso when I was a kid.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso>

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rrc
I got Dr. Sbaitso with my Creative sound card when I was little. I remember
asking him all these questions about sex, then printing out the conversation.
Then I panicked, thinking my parents would see it, and tore the papers up and
hid them in our basement. Good times.

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Zakuzaa
Siri is going to be a great marketing machine for Apple. People will love to
show it to their friends. And it all happens on the servers, so there's no end
to Siri's incremental 'intelligence'.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_it all happens on the servers, so there's no end to Siri's incremental
'intelligence'._

This is why I'm amused, but not amazed. Siri presumably has an actual team of
ghostwriters cranking out amusing answers to FAQs.

And I can't wait for someone who has read _The Diamond Age_ to concoct a
version of Siri in which the responses are read aloud by _actual human actors_
, who are paid Mechanical-Turk style, rather than the synthesized voice.
Though the effect might actually be ugly: the human intonation will come
through, but probably too well, such that every few responses "Siri's"
personality seems to change.

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ugh
Did the original Siri also do stuff like this?

I think it’s a great move on the creators’ part. Building silly stuff like
that into Siri creates massive amounts of goodwill. That will make it much
harder to really hate Siri when it – inevitably – screws up sometimes.

~~~
mikeash
I never tried it this extensively, but it would tell jokes and such,
certainly. I once tried "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck wood?" and it gave me a list of local lumberyards.

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philwelch
Siri has to have some massive AI to know where to find weed and hookers. I
can't imagine them building in that sort of functionality.

~~~
alanh
Haha :) Not sure if you’re serious or not — and no disrespect either way — but
thank you for the belly laugh!

~~~
philwelch
Read the original link; Siri gave a seemingly relevant response to a query
about wanting weed and recommended escort services to a query mentioning the
term "horny".

~~~
alanh
I know...

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aresant
As random as some of these seem, clearly Siri has amassed a ton of input data.

With the volume of people playing around with Siri I'll bet darn near every
clever question has already been asked a dozen times.

Heck with that amount of data pouring in Apple could hire a team of comedy
writers to just hit the daily top 1000 new questions.

Wonder how they are ranking the quality of the responses / satisfaction.

~~~
Garbage
AFAIK, Siri internally asks these questions to Wolfram Alpha. And I am not
sure if these questions are going into Apple's database. IMO, Wolfram Alpha is
getting clever than Apple by this. :)

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alanfalcon
That's incorrect. Wolfram Alpha's responses are specifically marked as such
and aren't nearly as entertaining.

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naveensundar
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+love%3F>

~~~
Enthusiastic
If you click 'assuming it's a phrase', Wolfram says: "A strong positive
emotion of regard and affection, of the kind humans sometimes express towards
one another and computational knowledge engines express towards the internet."

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sarbogast
I have the feeling that this will become a new meme and a few tumblr's will be
created about it.

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willpower101
Damnyousiri.com/.net/.org were all bough last week sadly :'(

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zach
Siriously.com was also available the day of the announcement but now even the
.net has been taken!

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martinkallstrom
Anyone knows if Siri can keep a todo list alongside with the calendar? That
would be great, actually. "Siri, what's the three most important things I need
to do today?"

Also, something I really need assistance with is to be aware of the time it
will take me to get to the appointments I have. I always leave my office just
a few minutes before I need to be somewhere, no matter if it's within walking
distance or fifteen minutes by car. I'm like an infant in this regard. "Siri,
let me know when I need to leave for my two o'clock appointment" would be
great if it worked.

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Tyrannosaurs
It can certainly add things to the to do list (including geolocation
information - "Remind me to call my wife when I leave the office" is the much
cited example).

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martinkallstrom
Thanks, great! Is the semantics of a reminder and a todo the same, though?
Perhaps it is. A to do list is a list of stuff you want to do at some point
and mark as completed as you go along. You can probably emulate this with
reminders, right?

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lukev
Damn it, now I really want Siri.

Too bad I only have an iPhone 4. Pulling the original from the app store was
kind of a dick move, Apple. (even though I understand the motivation)

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paul9290
Today, a friend and I have been having fun using the Android version of Siri
<http://speaktoit.com> (best one we tested).

It understands 90 to 95% of the conversation we spoke to it. Also, it
understands 8th grade humor type words and reprimands you by saying things
like, "Would you talk to your mother like that?"

Fun stuff for the 8th grader in all of us!

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mvkel
This stuff is pretty immature, and indicative of it being something Apple
didn't build internally. It makes Siri seem gimmicky and highlights the
programmed nature of the responses (instead of being more AI-like, as I had
hoped).

These answers serve no purpose, except for one's buddies to go "heh heh watch
what happens when I tell it I'm drunk"

~~~
hrabago
I see this as consistent with the Apple that shows a iPod Nano Mickey clock
face that shows actual time on their website.

<http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/>

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nathanwdavis
Are these responses real? My first reaction was "Funny, but I'm sure these are
photoshopped".

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Pent
This has everything I've thought to ask Siri and more... I'm very impressed. I
hope Apple plans on supporting and iterating Siri rather than forgetting about
it like they occasionally seem to do...

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ak217
This is actually super awesome and makes me want to get Siri.

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redthrowaway
These are far too entertaining to be Apple's decision. Either they were pre-
existing, or a dev hid an easter egg.

Regardless, I hope they stay.

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cubicle67
Voice recognition on the Mac has told jokes for years. No idea how far back,
but definitely on Jaguar

~~~
philwelch
I think it goes back to System 7.5.

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Bry789123
Just an observation I've made, but isn't this almost identical to what
WolframAlpha's goals are? With the exception of handling your own personal
data, they both seem to work in the same ways: Understanding natural language
and interpreting massive amounts of data in different ways. I'd be interested
to see how they are different underneath.

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jc4p
I don't understand the Eliza one, am I missing something?

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stan_rogers
Eliza was the most fun you could have with the TRS-80 Model 1 you couldn't
afford at the local Radio Shack (it was always the program running on the
display model in my home town). I'd wander in, a relatively balanced teen
thinking of the day a few months hence when I could actually afford a really
expensive toy, and wind up leaving a borderline psychotic looking for a real,
flesh-and-blood Rogerian therapist to smack but good.

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kunalmodi
how very un-apple, the original voice commands wouldn't even tell you the time

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aculver
My iPhone 4 does.

"What time is it?" "The time is 9:14 PM."

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Splines
Spoiler alert.

I'm looking forward to poking around and finding some of these on my own.

