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Siri

Which Smart Assistant is the smartest

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Silicon Valley has been promising life-changing personal digital assistants for years, but we all know most are semi-useful at best. 

A new research project to measure the IQs of these "smart assistants" concluded that Google is the smartest but has an IQ equivalent to a six-year-old (Google received a score of 47.28 while a typical 6-year-old would receive a 55.5). An average adult would rate between 85-115 points.

Where does the "digital golden child" (aka Siri) score? It received a very disappointing 23.9.  Siri was outsmarted by Microsoft's Cortana and Baidu. 

The results showed that these assistants had made significant improvements over the last two years but that they still have a long way to go before they deliver on their real promise.

Privacy and the digital assistants

Apple triumphantly became the first major tech company to include a digital assistant with every iPhone 4s. As we bought into the dream, we were enthralled by all the wonderful possibilities that this technology would enable. 

Apple went all-in with the privacy chip, and soon Siri was surpassed by Alexa and the Google Assistant. Most notable was the launch of Amazon's Alexa in 2014 which had a much better ability to understand natural language commands and had the first real consumer implementation of far-field microphone technology. Amazon's microphone technology coupled with artificial intelligence in the cloud meant it could pick up commands from a distance even in relatively noisy environments. Something Apple certainly couldn't do. 

While Amazon opened up its skills technology to the world, Apple carefully guarded its assistant enforcing strict privacy controls. In the Snowden era, privacy is important, but consumers are typically more interested in convenience. 

Pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence, Google decided to use its incredibly vast trove of user data to train its artificial intelligence and machine learning engines. This unmatched access to valuable data (think Google Voice, Google Maps driving patterns, likes/dislikes in Gmail, etc.) has allowed the sultan of search to become the king of digital assistants. 

Many believe that Apple's lack of development of Siri caused many prominent employees to leave the Siri program. Most noticeable were the departures of the Siri co-founders Adam Cheyer and Dag Kittlaus. Not wanting to retire and watch from the sidelines, they created a new digital assistant leveraging the most modern technologies, under a new banner "Viv Labs. Viv Labs was supposed to be an independent digital assistant that would work across many products and companies. Helas they sold to Samsung for ~$200M, and now we wait to see how they will use the technology. 

Google is all in with the Google Assitant

On October 4, 2017, most tech analysts watched as Google unveiled its 2017 crop of technologies. They launched two phones, two speaker-assistants, a refreshed VR headset, Bluetooth headphones and a new laptop. We could see how the new MadebyGoogle style was infused in everything they launched. 

Even though everything seemed well designed and manufactured, the most striking message was that Google was embedded it's Google Assistant in everything. 

The Google Assistant now lives in every new Google product and in most cases is the unique differentiator for that product. 

The Google assistant and its unique Artificial Intelligence engines:

  • Allow its Google Home Max speaker to auto-tune its sound profile taking into account the characteristics of the location it is in
  • Allow it's smartphone to use a single camera to generate bokeh and blurred photo backgrounds (which Samsung, HTC, and Apple deliver using two cameras)
  • Allow its Google Buds Bluetooth earphones to break down the communication barrier by making Google translate voice easier to use in the real world
  • Allow its Pixel Chromebook laptop competitor to use Google Lens to identify elements in a picture (aka a famous person on a web page or a landmark in a picture)

Google is gambling that its Assistant will be a key product differentiator and they may be right. I have owned iPhones since the very first version. I owned every Apple Newton Apple every released and spent way too much money on Newton accessories. I am not a fan-boy but loved the tech. 

This is the year I upgrade my personal phone; I opted to jump to the Google Pixel 2XL instead of the iPhone X. 

  • I need a device that is more customizable thank what Apple allows. Think of the Chinese citizens that can no longer install VPN clients on their Apple products because Apple banned these apps from its Chinese app store to comply with Chinese law. To make things worse, Apple does not allow them to sideload any apps, so these customers are stuck. On Android, you can toggle a switch to sideload apps. Sideloading does increase your cyber risk, but sometimes that is an acceptable outcome. 
  • I was also tired and frustrated with Siri and Google can help me be more efficient in more situations. 

I believe that Google CEO Sundar Pichai is right when he says we are entering an AI first world. 

Conclusion

Assistants will be the front end to this new artificial intelligence first world we are entering into. Apple has more money than most countries and could surprise everyone with a significant upgrade to Siri, but without the enormous troves of data Amazon and Google have about users, it will be an arduous journey. Apple is not in trouble. Apple is not dead. Apple is a vibrant company that continues to find new ways to create billion dollar business' (Apple music, Apple watch, etc.). 

In the short term, I doubt the lackluster performance of Siri will hinder its growth, but I am convinced it will have an impact on its longer-term viability (unless it decides to jump all in and spend some of its cash on buying maturity for Siri). 

Hey Siri Cheat Sheet

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

All digital assistants are complicated creatures that force you to learn a new query language. Siri is no exception. It can do a mind numbing number of activities. How do you remember everything it can accomplish? 

A new site called Hey-Siri.io currently lists over 480 different commands with all of the different variations and permutations available neatly bundled in 35 categories. You can filter results with IOS or MAC and English or German.

So far it looks like the site author will maintain the site as Apple adds new abilities to Siri. 

Artificial Intelligence will power the future

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Image by Tristan Schmurr used under creative commons license

The world is about to get smarter

Ask what artificial intelligence is to someone walking down the street and you will likely hear common names like Cortana, Google now and Siri.

Truth is these are not the artificial intelligence systems of the future, they are mere parlour tricks. How many times have you tried to use Siri, got frustrated and just gave up?

Future AI will be in the cloud

During Apple’s latest keynote speech, they made a big deal about performing “more intelligent” functions directly on your device. The justification for the dumbing of their AI is that they are the privacy company and privacy means your data should never be analyzed in the cloud.

Truly useful AI will be customized to the needs, wants and desired of each individual user.

I will suggest that this unfortunate position will bite Apple in the ass as it tries to compete with the other giants willing to do what it is not.

Truly useful AI

For AI to be truly useful, it must:

  • always be available everywhere you want to use it
  • be personalized and provide the information you need exactly when you need it with no fuss or complication
  • be usable as a natural extension of your everyday life

It must be everywhere

We are currently living in a siloed world where everyone tries to trap you in their ecosystem. Eventually AI will be sprinkled everywhere in everything and will follow the user.

Nowhere is the first generation of this concept more apparent than the Amazon Echo. Like many, I laughed at it, thinking it was the most absurd creation in the world. Why would I want to buy another intelligent assistant when I already had one on my phone. Then I had a chance to use it and it was a revelation. Once it is setup, the Echo disappears and you feel like you are talking to your house. I realized that the simple fact that I could talk to it without pressing a button or finding my phone was incredibly freeing.

AI of the future will be in all places, all the time. AI will be in your house, your car, your mobile device, built into your office and everywhere in between. It will be there when you want it without any cognitive stress (without having to think whether it is available).

It must be personalized

As a security leader, I am conscious of the incredibly tumultuous topic of personal privacy. Proponents say that once it is lost, it is impossible to gain back and they are right. But in order to move forward, we will need to adjust to the new reality of limited or differentiated privacy.

Truth is Siri is rather annoying. So annoying in fact that I rarely use it. Even though it is more difficult, I keep going back to the Google search app on my iPhone. Why? Because it works better. Google sees my email, calendar and location. It knows what I search for. It knows the stocks I follow and the people I interact with. Google has never been shy about using the information provided by its users. Its voice recognition engine is several generations better than Apple’s because its tools are always learning from every user interaction and those learnings are quickly made available to the entire population of customers. I am more likely to get a “good answer” from Google than Apple.

As the need for apps diminishes, the true differentiator of platforms will become intelligent AI, something Apple will have a tough time doing with its privacy stance.

Photos in IOS 10 will get much starter. It will allow you to search for some predefined scenes (beach, snow, etc) and categories of things (landmarks, dogs, etc). But the engine will only be able to index images on that specific device. Indexes will not be portable between devices and images not on a MAC, ipad or iphone will not benefit from these improvements. And searchable indexes made on one device aren't available on another.

Google Photos on the other hand has a highly evolved neural network that benefits from the hundreds of millions of images uploaded monthly by its users. It can identify not only that an image contains a dog but can determine that the the picture contains a Siberian husky. Because it indexes faces of people in your pictures, you can ask it to find a “beach picture of your aunt Gertrude taken last year in Venice”. Apple can’t do that. Apple won’t be able to do that until it changes its stance on privacy.

I will also use this space as an opportunity to remind users that although Apple protects your privacy, nothing else does. If you use Facebook with the Facebook app, it tracks were you are and what you are doing. If you browse the web, you are being tracked, by ad networks, websites and search engines. Being truly private is difficult and complicated. It requires a careful planning that the average user cannot do. Even the TOR proxy network isn’t totally private unless you take the necessary precautions. So the moral of the story is that much of what Apple is selling is security theatre.

“We respond to the feeling of security not the reality”
— Bruce Schneier

The last pilar is natural interaction

All of the available assistants today require you to use some standardized query format. Sure Google now supports close to 150 different queries but you still have to remember what it can do and remember to ask it, instead of performing the function yourself.

This leads to frustration and eventually you give up on that tool. The Amazon Echo is the closest to supporting natural queries but start adding skills and you will quickly forget the format it will respond to.

None of the assistants today are good but they will get better. Viv Labs (from the creators of Siri) are trying to bridge this gap by allowing the AI to automatically learn new skills when challenged and grow without human intervention. The goal is to build the skill quickly and automatically if it doesn’t already exist. This large available response set is critical. You have to subconsciously believe that it will respond correctly regardless of what you ask it

The second part of this equation is the way you interact with it. You should not be force to learn a special syntax or change the way you talk. The AI should adapt to you. It should learn your style and allow you to ask questions anyway you want and provide you the right answer (wether your are British nobility or a high school drop out from the intercity with slang based speech. It must allow you to be who you are and respond the way you expect it to respond.

Conclusion

The coming explosion of AI is exciting since things that are dumb will be connected and gain intelligence. Distributed highly available, customized and accurate AI will materially change the way we live. I believe it will impact humanity as much as the industrial revolution did.
Computers will disappear and everything will be be become a portal to your personal AI. Your AI profile will follow-you and will be available everywhere (from a store changing room, to your office, your car, your portable smart-device and even you refrigerator.)

Creators of Siri to launch next generation AI assistant May 9

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Siri, Google Now and Cortana launched with great fanfare. We expected great things and for the most part, they are all disappointing. Truth is none of them really lived up to our expectations.

The creators of Siri have been hard at work creating the next generation of AI, which they claim will be able to handle much more complex tasks. The new AI will be able to parse natural language queries and will be able to handle chained commands. We expect you will be able to ask it to find a flight Toronto to Los Angeles next Thursday in the afternoon priced between $300-$700. And it will be able to do all of this without kicking you out to another app. 

Integration with important services will be critical and it is expected to launch with at least 50 name brand partners from Uber to GrubHub. 

Forrester research believes consumers spend 80% of their smartphone time in as little as 5 apps. Like most of you, I have too many apps on my phone. My apps are all soloed and don't talk to each other. My smartphone doesn't really feel smart when I ask it to buy movie tickets and it sends me to an app or website. Truth be told, my phone's built in assistant is nothing more than a circus performer: fun to watch but not really helpful.

As an iPhone owner, I worry that Apple's walled garden will prevent me from being able to use the Viv technology when it is eventually made available to the public. A good strong digital assistant may be enough to persuade me to switch platforms, but for now I wait for Monday's demonstration. 

If Viv is everything we expect it to be, then it could end up owning the most lucrative platform of the future.

iPhone users can now use OK Siri to verbally control their phones

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Image by Bernard Goldbach under Creative Commons License

Image by Bernard Goldbach under Creative Commons License

Most iPhone users watched in awe when Motorola's Moto X gained always on voice Control. You could say OK Google and then simply issue your command. Without ever touching your device. Then Google created a new launcher that allowed you to voice control, your device anytime you where in the launcher. 

It seems iPhone users were left out in the cold until now. 

Before you get too excited, it is important to remember that OK Siri is a hack for jailbroken iPhone's only. If you have any security concerns, you should not jailbreak your device. 

Installation

Once you install the hack, you have to turn on the always listening mode in the Activator settings (look for OKSiri). A little microphone icon then shows up in the status bar and the device is listening for your commands. You start any command by saying OK Siri. 

PRactically you'll have to wait a fraction of a second between saying OK SIri and issuing your command (to give the system time to react). Also once you have performed the desired action and press the home button to come back into IOS land, the OK Siri agent will need a couple of seconds to re-initialize in the background.

Motorola's MotoX was great because the phone is always listening, even when the screen is locked. OK Siri does the same which means you can issue commands even to a locked phone (which is a nice touch).

Annoyances

So it is an interesting addition but not without its problems. For an unexplained reason, the agent seems to freezes sometimes which disables the always listening functionality. If you wait a couple of minutes, it comes back all by itself.  

The speech recognition of the agent is no where near that of Google or Apple. This means you may need to repeat your command a couple of times. 

Conclusion

You can download this hack from the Big Boss Cydia repository right now for free. Ultimately I am a security nut and will NOT jailbreak my main phone because it opens up too many security vulnerabilities but if your device is already jailbroken, you can take this add-on for a spin. If you don't like it, you can just remove it.