
Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown - nreece
https://www.stonetemple.com/great-knowledge-box-showdown/
======
escapologybb
Having used both of them, I really couldn't live without Siri to be honest.
I'm quadriplegic, and whilst obviously I wouldn't die without Siri my life is
immeasurably better with her.

Some of the killer features of Siri for me are being able to to write emails,
send messages and get quick answers to general questions throughout the day.
She is much better at the first two than she is at the last one though, but
even then she is not too bad.

And now that Apple has hooked her into much more of iOS in iOS 8, it means
that more of the OS is open to me than before just by simply using my voice.
And the "Hey Siri!" feature is one of the best accessibility features they've
added so far.

~~~
eddieroger
I never considered using Siri this way, which feels strange to me since I've
spent a lot of time thinking about the other Accessibility features of iOS
(mostly VoiceOver). Have you ever written up your experiences with iPhone
accessibility? I'd be interested to read it.

~~~
jonknee
> I never considered using Siri this way

In what way? The OP seems to use it in the most basic way possible--dictation
and simple searches.

~~~
Xurinos
I can't speak for the other two systems compared, but to be clear, OP's
examples involve more than "dictation and simple searches"; Siri also controls
the device. Without entering the text messaging or email apps, one can tell
the virtual secretary to read and write messages and emails. Assuming Siri
understands your voice well enough.

Fun specific example at the lock screen after holding down the iPhone's button
for a couple seconds: "Read the latest message from my wife to me." Then,
still at the lock screen, "Reply to my wife I love you".

Maybe it's just my experience, but I did not care much for Siri until she
allowed me greater control over my device. When she first came out, you could
not ask her to read the screen; later, the program was able to toggle
assisting configuration like VoiceOver by command.

~~~
escapologybb
^This

Siri was essentially a curiosity for me until they allowed me greater control
over the device, but I use my iPhone in exactly the way you've just described.

Along with "am I meeting with my physiotherapist today?", and "arrange an
appointment with my doctor, physiotherapist and partner" at which point Siri
creates the appointment in the calendar and sends an email invite to the
parties mentioned. Assuming those people are in your contacts obviously.

------
b2themax
FWIW, I just switched from Windows Phone to iOS -- from the 1020 to iPhone6+.
Personally, I preferred Cortana over Siri. And it basically comes down to
speed and responsiveness. Cortana is much quicker to launch, and much quicker
to find results. I haven't noticed any discernable difference in their query
results. And actually, for one of the my most used queries - "What is the
weather today?" \-- I dont even use it on iOS because the stock weather app is
disappointing, I use Yahoo. Cortana telling me the weather was much more
usable. Siri is just so freaking slow, that I rarely use her.

~~~
at-fates-hands
Agreed on Cortana.

There are some things I feel Cortana does that Siri and Google Now does.

Every morning Cortana gives me the weather, appointments on my calendar, news
stories and how long my commute will take given the current traffic
conditions. It also learns when I normally leave for work, so about 10 minutes
before I usually leave, I get an update on how long it will take to get home
given the current conditions.

To me, Cortana is more like an assistant. You can set stuff so its off limits
and she will ignore, and likewise, tell her to remember certain reminders like
you pointed out.

Do either Google Now or Siri have these features that actively learn stuff
about your preferences?

~~~
wjoe
Google Now does the same with commute times, and seems to automatically work
out where you live and work. Same with appointment reminders, assuming you
added a specific location to your calendar event - it's a bit hit and miss for
me whether these reminders actually come up, but sometimes it tells me "Leave
now to get to this appointment on time".

Things like these are a much more useful part of it than voice detection, I
very rarely interact with it via voice, and tend to just do searches through
my normal browser. It also hooks into Gmail and can give you reminders about
things like flights you've booked, although that raises questions about
privacy, and whether you really want Google to be trawling through your
emails.

~~~
com2kid
> Google Now does the same with commute times

Eh, it also does it at really inappropriate times.

About 30 minutes after I get into the office it starts telling me how long
it'd take me to get home, and that card stays up in Google Now until I
actually do go home!

------
sytelus
_There were not random queries. In fact, they were picked because we felt they
were likely to trigger a knowledge panel._

For a good believable test your sampling methodology is very important. In
fact, you _want_ to have a random sample that is free of biases instead of
somebody cherry picking queries. Perhaps you may do random weighted sample of
queries with weights = frequency which represents usage pattern more closely.
In any case, it's very important to describe your sampling methodology or
otherwise this kind of testing has little value.

~~~
apendleton
Out of curiosity, how would you propose taking a random sample of all possible
questions?

~~~
sytelus
If you want to do this kind of test with more discipline, you would give out
random phones to randomly selected N people who have never used any of these
services before. Then log each query they do for a week or two. Afterwards you
can run same queries through all 3 services, generate results and do human
judgement on mechanical turk about which one is the best. The science of
measuring these stuff is complex and I've omitted many complexities here, for
example, you want to do multiple judgement for same query, you need someway to
measure judgement quality itself, you need great judgement guidelines that
covers edge cases etc. Usually in organizations that work with big data, you
will find competent measurement team building tools for these kind of
measurements with years of investment.

------
chetanahuja
Even though the study (albeit informal) did not include personal assistant
functionality, that's where Google Now (as manifested in an Android phone
connected to a google account) really shines, in that like a real personal
assistant, it brings you relevant information _before you even ask_. Around
this time last year, I used to be startled by a timely reminder on the home
screen widget about the next thing I was about to do (reminder to leave now
for a meeting across town scheduled for a half hour from now, or automagic
notification about a flight cancellation etc). But by now, I'm so used to this
functionality that I feel slightly annoyed if I actually have to ask for such
information (which is almost always a voice query to my phone at this point).

~~~
ironcrucible
I used to be a heavy Android user until I bought my first Windows Phone about
six months ago. So far, Cortana has been one of the biggest[1] reasons I
haven't switched back to Android, despite what feels like a lack of commitment
and focus from Microsoft[2].

Her location-based and people-based reminders have been a killer feature for
me. I can open Cortana and say "Next time I talk to my mother, remind me to
ask her for her cheesey corn recipe". Then, next time I open the messaging app
to text my mother, or open the email app to email her, or when the phone's GPS
realizes I'm over at her house, Cortana will show that reminder[3].

It also works for location-based reminders: "Next time I'm at the hardware
store, remind me to buy softener salt". It's been about six months since I've
last used Android, but I don't think Google Now could do these types of
reminders when I switched.

[1]. Two other reasons: I much prefer "Live Tiles" to widgets or app buttons,
and the Lumia line's cameras blow most other phones out of the water.

[2]. According to the /r/WindowsPhone subreddit, Microsoft tends to update
their apps on Android and iOS long before they update them on Windows Phone.
Additionally, apps on the other two platforms tend to be more feature-
complete. This is all anecdotal though, so take it with a grain of salt.

[3]. [http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB](http://imgur.com/DBQ9sjB)
[http://imgur.com/fll3uCi](http://imgur.com/fll3uCi)

~~~
Toddarooski
Google Now does do location-based reminders. I've never tried the "Next time
I'm talking to my mom" thing, though.

~~~
ironcrucible
I'd be interested to know if Google Now can do people reminders. Unfortunately
I sold my last Android device so I'm unable to test it myself, but a quick
search brings up this article[1] which suggests that it doesn't exist yet.
Either way, I'm sure it's only a matter of time until both Siri and Google Now
can do it too (which is a good thing, I've found it incredibly useful).

[1].
[https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3122344?hl=en](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/3122344?hl=en)

~~~
eco
It can't do reminders when you are around people yet but there have been
clues[1] that it's coming found when poking inside the Google Search app. It's
expected to make use of the leaked Google Nearby[2] which will
"...periodically turn on the mic, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and similar features..."
to aid with proximity.

1\. [http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/03/17/rumor-remind-me-
when...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/03/17/rumor-remind-me-when-im-with-
this-person-may-be-coming-to-google-now/) 2\.
[http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/06/06/exclusive-google-
wil...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/06/06/exclusive-google-will-soon-
introduce-nearby-to-let-other-people-places-and-things-know-when-youre-
around/)

------
walterbell
Who owns the key patents for voice recognition - AT&T, Nuance, IBM? When will
they be expire and be available for use in open-source speech recognition?

Edit: some data at [http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-
ver...](http://www.quora.com/Is-anyone-working-on-an-open-source-version-of-
Siri?share=1) &
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4987875)

~~~
syllogism
Actually I think most of the work has been done in academia --- certainly
that's where the recent deep learning stuff has come from. So, I don't think
the important stuff is patented. (In general it's very hard to lock down ML
improvements under patent. Once we can do it one way, and understand a little
bit about what's working, we can usually replicate that performance with
another technique.)

The big problem for open source speech recognition is training data.

~~~
melling
First, these are two different problems to solve. Voice recognition and deep
learning are different fields.

Is training really the issue for voice recognition? It has been a problem that
has almost been solved for over a decade. Last year I saw this impressive use
of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, running in a VM on a Mac, that pretty
much worked to code by voice.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI)

The developer mentioned that he didn't have any luck with Sphinx.

Xah Lee summarized the talk here:
[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)

~~~
IshKebab
I've tried to use sphinx, but the problem was lack of training data (you have
to supply it yourself pretty much!). It did have some data that was supposed
to recognise numbers, but it didn't work (I mean, it ran, but the recognition
was awful even when it only had to pick between 10 options).

Training is a _huge_ issue for voice recognition. It's the only way Google and
Apple have managed to take voice recognition from "works 80% of the time, but
that is still bad enough to be totally usable" to "this actually works!".
Maybe you don't remember how bad voice recognition was 10 years ago.

To give you an idea how important it is, on OSX you have the option to
download data to improve offline voice recognition. It's something like 500
MB. And that's the _result_ of the training.

~~~
mikeash
I think there may be some confusion as to what "training" means. When it comes
to voice recognition, it makes me (and I suspect others) think of the older
software which required a user to read a bunch of text to it to train the
software to your specific voice before it could do any kind of decent job
understanding you. Now, everything is speaker-agnostic and works out of the
box for anybody. Different kind of training.

------
msoad
Some query patterns I use in Google that you might be interested in

    
    
        Translate {words} to {language}
        My flights
        My schedule
        My packages
        What time is at {city}?
        How tall/old/heavy is {important person}?
        {description of a photos} in my photos (like 'ocean in my photos')
        Note: if you have G+ photos. description doesn't need to be typed in the photo meta info
        compare {food} and {food} (nutritions)

~~~
msoad
alarm for 5 minutes

~~~
cheald
"Wake me at 6 AM"

"Remind me to check my air filter when I get home"

------
masterjack
Oh awesome, let's see... how many atoms are there in the universe?

"The number of atoms in the entire observable universe is estimated to be
within the range of 1078 to 1082."

Thank you Google!
[http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+uni...](http://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+atoms+are+in+the+universe)]

~~~
inopinatus
Try it on Wolfram Alpha.

Actually, they all seem to me pretty limited compared to the answers you get
from Wolfram Alpha.

Also c.f. the responses to one of their test questions, "how much is a quarter
cup of butter?". Google makes fun of the inquiry. Wolfram Alpha gives you a
thorough nutritional profile, and links to variations based on international
cup sizing and different types of butter.

~~~
oculus42
Wolfram Alpha is amazing at discerning the intention of the question.

In the article, the question "How old is the Lincoln Tunnel" struck me as
incorrectly formatted for the parser (I know, that's the point), so I asked
Siri, "When was the Lincoln Tunnel built." The Wikipedia article on the
Lincoln Tunnel was returned. Wolfram Alpha was listed under other sources, so
I chose that. The response? "1937"

~~~
taliesinb
I've noticed lately that many times things I _know_ Alpha will slam-dunk don't
get routed to it by Siri. I'm not aware of the details of the deal we have
with them but from my observations of Siri it looks like Apple might be
looking for certain keywords (such as how, what, why, etc) before it tries
routing anything to Alpha. I hope they can relax that in future.

Luckily if you say "Wolfram XXX" instead of just "XXX" Siri will route your
question straight to Alpha no-questions-asked.

------
tbrock
It seemed to me that Cortana returned the most correct answers without any
extra fluff. The google results seemed to have the same accuracy but the phone
said so much extra information in that monotonic voice that the clarity of the
result was lost in the noise.

~~~
psbp
It makes sense that it would answer the question first and then give relevant
info. Most of the factual questions that I ask would be related to a broader
context.

------
mmastrac
As an Android user, I've found that Siri tends to be generally better than
Google Now. I don't usually ask my phone for trivia, but rather to do
something. Most of the time I'll get routed to a search query when I'm looking
to command the phone instead.

This is somewhat frustrating if you don't know the magic incantation to make
Google Now do what you are asking it to do. Siri's engineers have done a
better job anticipating the various forms of the commands and handling nearly
all of them.

~~~
ark15
I am an Android phone user, past iPhone user and current iPad user and my
experience has been the exact opposite. Google Now always understands me
better than Siri.

When Siri fails for me, I sometimes ask my 7 year old to talk the same thing
to Siri and she gets better results. My daughter has a more 'American' accent
than me so I have concluded that Android is better at hearing through accents
than iOS.

(I haven't yet read the original article but wanted to quickly comment since
our observations are completely opposite)

EDIT - iOS tablet user = iPad user.

------
Houshalter
A while back I created a toy IRC bot that answers questions like this just by
searching reddit and taking the top comment. It works surprisingly well for
questions that are likely to have been asked before. And when it does work,
the result is much better than a dry wikipedia excerpt.

I then added some simple machine learning to filter search results for the
most relevant threads which improved it quite a bit.

~~~
mrfusion
That might actually make a new kind of search engine. You should put it on the
web?

~~~
jonknee
That would be huge--after all these years a Reddit search engine that works!

------
yhlasx
All things considered, no surprises here. Extreme majority of Google's profits
depend on how well their search works. Same is not true for Apple with siri,
or microsoft with Bing.

------
mark_l_watson
I think these results were slightly biased because questions seemed to have
been chosen to trigger Google search infobox results.

BTW, I worked with Knowledge Graph last year when I consulted at Google. It is
an incredibly nice project. The team, who helped me when I needed help, was
great - constantly improving the platform.

I am also using the IBM Watson APIs right now while helping another customer,
so I feel like I am getting a broad view of what is available.

I expect that Knowledge Box, Cordova, Siri, IBM Watson, etc. are all going to
get much, much better in the coming years and will change the way most people
use computing devices. Exciting times!

~~~
pinkyand
How does Watson compares to the Google technology in your opinion ?

~~~
mark_l_watson
I think they are very different.

Knowledge Graph builds on linked data and semantic web technologies to encode
knowledge that is served on an efficient scalable platform.

IBM Watson is a system for ingesting large amounts of text and for then
allowing natural language queries on the information in the text.

Both are valuable properties.

------
guardian5x
One of the killer features of Cortana is that she gets back to you if she
wants additional information. You can almost have something like a dialogue. I
don't think that test has taken that into account at all.

~~~
tdicola
When you're looking for the answer to something quickly why would you want to
have a back and forth game vs. just getting the answer immediately?

~~~
nostromo
Questions are often ambiguous.

"What's the population of New York?"

~~~
tdicola
Google Now tells me the population of New York city, which is probably what
most people want to know. If I wanted to know New York state I ask it again
what is the population of New York state and it tells me. This is far better
than every single query for what's the population of of New York asking to
clarify if you mean city or state IMHO.

~~~
surreal
The second question doesn't even have to be "What is the population of New
York State" – a follow-up of just "How about the State" / "I meant the State"
is transformed on-screen into "What is the population of New York State"
(despite "New York" and "population" not being mentioned the second time).
Similarly "where's the nearest Chili's" followed by "phone them", for example.

------
rayiner
I think this analysis is kind of pointless. Who asks their phone trivia
questions? You want directions, reminders, etc. Siri seems a lot smarter about
following spoken context in that situation.

~~~
HelloMcFly
I can't speak extensively for Siri (infrequent use on my iPad) or Google Now
(no Android), but I've never had to repeat an instruction to Cortana for a
reminder or directions. Not repeating myself when giving voice instruction is
essentially my holy grail.

~~~
rayiner
I haven't tried cortana. Google now is really awful at being a personal
assistant because it doesn't keep much context.

~~~
wutbrodo
I haven't used Siri in ages; what kind of context does it keep? I know that
Google Voice Search will do coreference across consecutive queries (i.e.
resolving "it" and "him" accurately).

~~~
rayiner
Just tried this:

Me: "Siri, find me a target."

<finds several targets>

Me: "Directions."

Siri: "Which target?"

Me: "Third one."

<gives directions to third one in list>

Also:

Me: "Siri, find me restaurants."

<lists restaurants>

Me: "Review for Blue Duck Tavern"

<lists review>

Me: "Other restaurants"

<lists restaurants>

Me: "Reservation for Founding Farmers."

Google Now will do some coreferences, but Siri is almost modal. You can talk
to it like an assistant instead of trying to formulate everything as a search
query. I had a Nexus 5 almost a year before getting my 6+, and I was always
jealous of how much more practically useful Siri was on my wife's iPhone 5.

~~~
wycats
Just tried this on my Moto X:

Me: "Find me a target"

<nearest target shows up>

Me: "Directions"

<changes to "directions to target">

<shows a list of targets to select>

Me: "first one"

<chooses Portland Galleria Target>

------
BigChiefSmokem
I would rank Cortana as the best and Siri as the worst.

------
w-ll
Slightly OT, but in school I remember a teach talking about how good voice to
text has gotten but was stuck, stating it was roughly about a 70% accuracy,
but that we were pretty much at a wall there and haven't moved much in the
last decade.

Has there been any major advances in voice recognition other than just growing
your speech corpus?

~~~
bane
I've actually taken to dictating most of my texts on Android. It's faster for
me than typing or swype-style keyboards and it's really very accurate until I
need to use a strange proper name it doesn't understand. I'd say it easily
gets about 90% of what I say, and it figures out the correct context for words
like "there" "their" "they're" and "to" and "too" so far completely correct.

 _edit_ thought I'd add this. I just had a conversation with a united agent
and they probably understood less than 70% of what I was saying. it was beyond
frustrating I wish that I was actually talking to my phone instead.

~~~
joshschreuder
How do you write text messages in private and not have your messages
overheard? I think I would be quite self concious that I'm talking into my
phone and not directing it at anyone (I rarely use Siri for this reason)

~~~
wutbrodo
Yea I'm with you. I do voice searches/typing CONSTANTLY when I'm at home,
particularly on weekend mornings when I'm checking my schedule/weather/texting
friends to organize my activities for the day while getting ready. Barring the
occasional query when I'm on the sidewalk and not too near anyone, I don't
really use them outside much.

------
mrfusion
Side note; It's frusterating how long it takes Siri to launch. sometimes I
feel like I'm holding down the home button for 5 seconds before Siri comes up.

And usually I'm trying to decide between a one sentence typing task or asking
Siri to do it. The five second wait really throws off my time "profit margin".

------
joyeuse6701
As a huge halo fan, it makes me happy that Cortana is slowly becoming a well
known name =). Having said that, I'd really like to give her a try, I would
hope that it would exceed google now on my moto x which for the most part has
been very useful while driving.

------
emersive
I recently bought an iPhone 6, and have really started using Siri for the
first time. And Siri has actually surprised me in a good way at how well she
understands what I say. I don't do anything too crazy with her. Set alarm at x
time, remind me to do x when I get home, Call so and so, send text message to
x.

I work on a UX team of three. One of our guys has a MotoX, One guy has a
Windows Phone, I have an iPhone 6, and based off of what happens at work it
seems that Google Now and Siri are slightly more functional.

This is from merely observations, but it seems like Google Now is faster than
Siri. And Siri is better at accurately hearing/understanding the words you
say.

------
boyaka
In regards to understanding voice input, I have been thoroughly impressed with
Google's ability to do this ever since I started using their 1-800-GOOG-411
service. I didn't get my first smartphone with data until 2009 (Droid), so the
service was really handy for me before that. I'm sure it also gave Google a
ton of data to help them improve their capabilities (even mentions that in the
Wikipedia article [1]).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411)

------
aresant
The article concludes that google is dramatically ahead, which is no suprise

but I AM suprised, anecdotally, how good Siri is vs previous iterations on my
iphone 6 and OS 8

It feels close to "good enough" for the majority of functions I actually use
eg: dictate an email, get directions, lookup a contact, and dial a phone
number.

My sense is that Apple will nail the base functions so that most users, self
included, won't notice a difference between the two.

~~~
kumarm
50% is good enough if its done by Apple. 90% not good enough if its not done
by Apple.

This is how I interpret most responses when people talk about Apple.

~~~
modfodder
Well, as accurate as I feel your statement is, I'd also say sometimes it
depends on the 10% missing from the products not done by Apple. If it's an
important 10% that Apple has nailed (or close enough) then sometimes the 50%
is more valuable than the 90%.

But we all have our biases as well. (Even as an Apple user I fully expect
Google to always win the Knowledge Vault race. Its in their wheelhouse more so
than Apple's.)

~~~
chetanahuja
_" Well, as accurate as I feel your statement is, I'd also say sometimes it
depends on the 10% missing from the products not done by Apple. If it's an
important 10% that Apple has nailed (or close enough) then sometimes the 50%
is more valuable than the 90%"_

Heh, you not only proved kumarm's point about apple fanboi'sm but served the
proof on a silver platter with a little side of dessert.

~~~
modfodder
I believe that is fanboi'sm in general, but if you feel better you about
yourself you can keep thinking it is just apple users.

------
beams_of_light
Anecdotal I know, but it's strange that so many responses in this thread find
Siri more useful than Google. I use an iPad and a Galaxy S3, and when I ask
Siri questions, more of than not, she fails to give me an answer or provide
meaningful search results. I can ask Google to find me any retail business
locally and get proper results, call them with voice commands, etc. Siri
chokes on a lot of those requests.

------
melling
Someone submitted this and deleted it a bit before this submission.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430202)

Anyway, there I was trying to find out which speech recognition software was
more accurate. How do these compare to Dragon?

It seems like we're quite close to being able to actually using voice
dictation without the frustration.

~~~
dmethvin
I use Google's voice dictation frequently for text and email, because my fat
fingers don't like onscreen keyboards. It often gets the dictation of an
entire paragraph totally right. It's impressive.

------
frik
How do such personal agents work? I mean after the speech recognition and NLP
(part-of-speech tagging, named-entity recognition, etc):

Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik WolframAlpha)
Do they use (scientific) ontologies or are the templates more flat and stored
in a SQL database? [and web search results as fallback]

~~~
taliesinb
> Do they use template databases for different topics? (like afaik
> WolframAlpha)

What do you mean by a template database?

~~~
frik
NLP sentence templates:

"How tall [object]?" / "[object] height"

"Becoming a [job]"

"How much is a [unit] of [object]?"

"How old is [object]"

"When is the next [event]"

My question is: Do Siri/Cortana/GoogleNow use such flat templates (per topic)
or do the use an IR ontology?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_\(information_science\))

~~~
taliesinb
We don't use flat templates in Alpha. We use a full context-free grammar that
turns the question into a symbolic representation of what the user wants,
which can naturally involve chaining. E.g. "when was the president of the US
was born".

Then we execute that symbolic representation using a variety of strategies.
There are funnily enough quite a few cases where we can understand the
question but don't have the curated algorithms to actually answer it.

------
wil421
I havent used Cortana but in my experiences Siri has been much more accurate
in guessing what I said. Google now on my S4 is horrible when I try to use it.
Most of the time I have to talk like a robot to get something right.

That being said I really like Google Now but the accuracy of speech to text is
what killed it for me.

~~~
gtk40
That's interesting. What accent do you have? I am consistently surprised at
how well my S3 reads my voice. It can get it even when I am tired and half-
pronouncing words or even singing them (at least with "What does the fox
say"). But I also generally use it at my apartment (very quiet) and I have a
pretty standard American accent.

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wil421
My accent is "standard American" if you met me you wouldnt be able to tell
where I was from unless I said certain words. I'm from the South but by no
means do I have any sort of Southern drawl.

I use it frequently in the car so maybe the background noise is affecting it.

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allanjenn
ibm's Watson would knock em' out instantly if it were incorporated in a mobile
platform
[https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672](https://twitter.com/allanbritto_/status/520053077110300672)

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Quequau
I just wish there was some way to have this sort of functionality, without
handing over all that data to various companies who in turn use it in
unpredictable ways so that they can monetize the service.

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iaw
IBM should have an Ask Watson app. From what I've read it seems like Watson
would run circles around all three of them.

edit: And #12 on the front page right now appears to be essentially just that.

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twvance
Can someone tell me which Android phone they used in the video?

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mortalkastor
There's no Android phone, Google Now is running on an iPhone 5(s).

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goronbjorn
Jane > all three

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diafygi
My test for when these are truly advanced:

"What's going to be on my ballot?"

Can Watson even answer this?

