shownotes_MCM20111023

Introduction
  Siri is artificial intelligence (AI), not simply voice recognition
  There is a huge difference
  Interprets what is said, uses history to learn from it, uses context to derive meaning
  I also suspect that Apple is using the aggregate knowledge from Siri input to their servers to help make Siri smarter. She can learn.
Siri has powerful ancestry
  SRI International, founded as Stanford Research Institute
    One of the world's largest contract research institutes.
    Established by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946 and made private in the '70s
  Siri has its roots in the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes (CALO) project which was funded out of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency )
    CALO was inspired by Radar O'Reilly in MASH. An assistant who always knew what the captain wanted sometimes before he did.
    Project involved over 300 of the top minds in fields relating to A.I.
    Adam Cheyer was head of the project and is now director of engineering for Apple’s iPhone group.
    CALO was supposed to allow a machine to have dialog and natural-language understanding, vision, speech, machine learning, planning, reasoning, service delegation and integrate them all into a… human-like assistant that can help you get things done
    The Siri project was designed to take the AI technology from CALO and turn it into a consumer product.
    For the speech part Apple also licenses Nuance which is also based on technology spun out from SRI
    SRI began development of Siri in 2007 and spun out the project in 2008.
      They released an App for iOS
      Apple acquired Siri in 2010
Why Siri is different
  It has voice recognition and more
    There are four elements to a machine that can function like a person
    1) speech
    2) Decision making algorithms
    3) Data - Siri gets this from the integrated apps and the web (Wikipedia, wolfram alpha, Yelp, etc)
    4) Agency, the ability to execute tasks on your behalf.
  Most existing voice systems rely on specific commands. Key word triggers that need to know what you want to do.
  Siri is designed to not require those (although in current form is does to a certain degree)
  It applies "reasoning" to try and figure out what you mean.
    That reasoning is the application of those 4 elements of machine AI
  Also can rely on past responses and context to derive the meaning of your requests.
Why is Siri such a big deal
  It's the first wide spread consumer application of this type of technology
  Millions of people now have Siri. It's giving the first AI technology to a mainstream audience, asking them to use it, and they are.
  It's arguably comparable to what Apple did in the 80s by taking computer technology and making it mainstream.
  It represents a big shift it he ways we can interact with computers
    Like the move from text commands to the mouse and GUI
    Now we can move from mouse to natural speech
  Remember this is still BETA, but it's pretty incredible beta.
  Apple now owns this technology and the years of research that went into it
    The Siri team is reportedly one of the largest teams at Apple
    They also have the talent and have hired on more in the past few years
    No doubt Google and Microsoft will try and catch up
      Google's Android VP Andy Rubin said at the All Things Digital conference, "I don't believe that your phone should be an assistant. Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone."
      Google is concerned enough about Siri's potential that is has shifted a key speech recognition engineer, Dave Burke, from the U.K. to join the Android team at Google's Mountain View. Calif. headquarters,
    Apple has a significant lead
    Use response and adoption may go slower than Apple wants
      Speaking to a device in public can be a very public and often socially awkward way to interact.
      iPhone 4S does have Bluetooth 4.0 which allows low power short range operation.
        Talks of things like watches that could act as mic for Siri input
  It's only the beginning
    As TidBits points out, disruptive innovation doesn't happen overnight, but often seems that way in retrospect
    Siri is the seed of disruptive change.
    A paradigm shift to a Star Trek future where voice and speech may be the primary interface to data
    It's not going to happen overnight. Just like the mouse wasn't understood by many when it was first introduced.