The Path Siri is Taking Towards Human Intelligence. Or Not

The technical challenges of a personal voice assistant in a car rise dramatically above the informal use in a home for music, weather and recipes. There may be multiple people in the car yelling, and the danger level far exceeds the kitchen, baking chocolate chip cookies from Alexa’s best recipe or asking Siri to play a song.

Image credit: BMW

BMW, along with other car makers, is particularly aware of this. For a good survey of how BMW views the technical aspects of the human-car interaction, see this enlightening article at Tech Crunch. “BMW says in-car digital assistants have to go beyond being ‘Echo Dots in a cup holder’.”

And, yes, according to the article, that’s been done.

Speaking of personal voice assistants, I’ll pair the above with this long but delightful article by the esteemed Douglas Hofstadter. (That’s him, the Indiana University professor who wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach. ) Dr. Hofstadter delves into the nuances of machine translation of languages in “The Shallowness of Google Translate.”

These two articles raise an interesting point for me. Namely, our current technology is a lot better at manipulating text and producing speech than it is at putting real human-like understanding behind those processes. We know that all too well from Siri. The first part is a lot easier than the second part in this evolution. As a result, it sounds like we’re talking to an entity (or translating through one), but it’ll be a long time before we’re really happy with the sophistication and perceived success of the dialog. How will companies like BMW, in cars, and Apple, with Siri, deal with that?

There will be plenty of frustration as companies present voice assistants in the best light, but the consumer ends up endlessly disappointed. Case in point: Siri on HomePod. Apple designed for one kind of performance and reviewers expected something different or better. (For more on this, see page 2.) It was a natural human reaction.

Another classic case in point was when I saw Jeremy Clarkson on TV trying to give voice directions to a car’s navigation system. The car adamantly refused to understand and had no Plan B. That is to say, the car’s system had no way of knowing, with any kind of machine introspection or error recovery mechanism, that it was failing to understand the human. It just kept on flubbing, and Mr. Clarkson quickly gave up. How could the car company justify that level of interaction going into production?

We’re going to be in that phase for awhile, but my surmise from the article about BMW above is that the company recognizes the nature of that kind of problem in the driving environment. Perhaps it’ll be that level of challenge that lifts up all our (not so) smart speakers.

One way to solve this problem may well be developing expertise in machine learning, especially specialized chips that are powerful enough to work locally. They won’t have latency or connectedness issues. Here’s an example from another discipline, medicine. “Machine learning techniques show promise for supporting medical decisions.”

Where this machine learning goes will be interesting to watch. It may not end up being quite so human after all.

Next Page: The News Debris For The Week of February 26th. The secret success of the Apple Watch.

Page 2 – News Debris For The Week of February 26th

The Secret Success of the Apple Watch

Two separate estimates confirm that Apple sold over 17 million Apple Watches last year. In this report from MacRumors a fairly detailed picture of the amazing success of the Apple Watch is presented. “Apple Watch Outsold All Competing Smartwatches Combined Last Year.” There, a senior research analyst with IDC notes:

Consumer preferences have shifted to more sophisticated devices and towards well recognized brands.”

Apple Watch Series 3 LTE

My take in that is that Apple is able to build new products that integrate well into its own ecosphere and thereby become more pleasing and enduring. Other companies can sell products that are less expensive, maybe look cool, but don’t become part of what the pros call a “total system solution.” So the other smartwatches end up in a drawer.

In that light, when Apple might ship a Series 4 model remains up in the air. History suggests that it may well be in September of 2018, but Apple has shown recently that it’s ready to give up a slavish devotion to annual schedules in favor of major breakthroughs. This was discussed on the Mac Observer’s Daily Observations podcast from March 1st.

We’re reaching the point now in 2018 where Series 0 customers from 2015 may well be considering a upgrade, further fueling the sales numbers. The sales curve for the Apple Watch could very well end up looking like the early iPhone. That is, the slow growth part of the exponential rise generates great criticism that later fades as the curve is climbs exponentially. We’re seeing that kick in.

More Debris

• Speaking of building an ecosystem and seamlessly integrating itself into our daily lives, Amazon is doing just that with its package delivery system that will soon feature the Ring home security doorbell system. “Why Amazon Can Crush Apple in the Smart-Home Market” The title sounds incendiary, but follow me here. Amazon is building one kind of infrastructure and Apple is building a different one because each sells a different class of products. That’s why the author sees Alexa crushing Siri.

HomePod, Echo, and Home. Each recognizes speech; each has its own ecosystem to support.

But Apple is also building one of its infrastructures around (Apple) music, TV entertainment, and very secure home automation. That dictates the design of HomePod. And in that design, Apple is focusing on music in a way that doesn’t cater to an open system design for music services. And so, “Spotify considers flagship smartphones and smart speakers from Amazon, Apple, and Google a threat to its business.” Who saw that coming?

The point is that one has to have the big picture in mind before comparing products that seem to look and work alike but support vastly different agendas and ecosystems.

• This last week, I wrote about how my iPhone X had become my new second screen, replacing an iPad for that specific use. Unknown to me, two other authors were also writing about larger iPhone displays. They have some great analysis and supporting information.

• Bloomberg: “Why Apple Is Going Bigger on Bigger iPhone Screens:QuickTake.“


• Above Avalon: “The iPhone’s Turning Point.”

• And if that happens to whet your appetite for where Apple may going in 2018, here’s another Bloomberg article by Mark Gurman and Debby Wu that peers into what Apple may have in store. Check it out. “Apple Plans Giant High-End iPhone, Lower-Priced Model.”

Apple Inc. is preparing to release a trio of new smartphones later this year: the largest iPhone ever, an upgraded handset the same size as the current iPhone X and a less expensive model with some of the flagship phone’s key features.

So there you have it. A short peek into the future and how the major players are building systems to integrate completely into our lives. That’s why Amazon tried to get into the smartphone business a few years ago. But that product failed. The question is, how well will each player build new products that augment their ecosystems and attempt to squeeze each other out?

Mayfield Robotics Kuri. Get ready.

And I haven’t even delved into robot companions here. “Family Robot Companions Are Evolving Fast, Will Soon Be Common.”

Take a deep breath.

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Particle Debris is a generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article of the week (preamble on page one) followed on page two by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holiday weeks.

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