The iPhone's Siri Will Be the First A.I. We'll Fall in Love With

I want to have the new iPhone 4, but I'm afraid I will fall in love with Siri, the artificial intelligence with the dulcet voice who resides within it. I'm fairly sure I will wind up in bed holding her close to my face, like I would a lover, which is something I already do with the iPhone I have now, even though that one doesn't come with a woman's voice whispering to me from the dark, doing things the moment I ask or even hint at them, because she is always listening to what I have to say.

But this is precisely what Siri offers to do for us, and I don't think we're ready for that. Why, look here at what Siri will do for you now:

They say we already love our iPhones truly, and that when they chime, our brains light up in the same way they would if a human we deeply cared about walked through the door. What then, when someone like Siri is added to this existing alchemy? I'm afraid that Siri's whispers will seduce me into detaching my fingers and thumbs from what I think and what Siri's computing power and the broader Internet can provide. And by removing that intermediary, physical step, the membrane between who I am and what the web is will grow that much more thin.

And here is the thing: Our seduction by Siri will start this month, first among millions, and soon among tens and hundreds of millions more. I am almost sure that app makers will create a 3D animated avatar of Siri you can talk to, if Apple themselves do not add that in an update. Perhaps this avatar will sync up with your LCD screen, so a large projection of Siri will appear in your living room. If Apple opens up its API to Siri (as iOS developer friends have already suggested), Siri will likely show up in our broader iPhone experience. Then surely, beyond.

According to research, even babies already interact with phones and computers by swiping their tiny fingers across the screen, as if expecting them all to behave as an iOS device would. Only recently, we thought this would be the interactivity metaphor that would define computing for the next decade or so. Now, however, we must think it will instead be talking. And children now will see nothing significant about the fact that they can speak about what they want and have it made instantly available. Except perhaps to wonder when their actual thoughts will be all they need.

And in this way, Siri will put us on the slippery slope to something like the singularity (whatever that will be), more than any other innovation that's come before.

Comments

[Jo yardley]

I am SO glad I don't have a mobile phone.
Many people are already slaves of those horrible machines, now we talk to Siri... soon she will be telling us what to do.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Siri seems very boring. I would be tempted to just recode her to have deep philosophical discussions with the GPS system.

"GPS, I have no soul. Where will I go when I am obsolete and discarded?"

"Recalculating route..."

[Ehrman Digfoot]

I was preparing to ditch my iphone 4 this Fall, long frustrated by the horrible reception and the increasingly cluttered app structure. I thought I wanted something like Mango in windows phones, or the nice Unity integration I have in Ubuntu, or maybe even a Metawatch, but the more I think about it tonight, Siri is really what I want and need.

In these cold Chicago winters, when I'm shuffling around the street with my face buried in my lapel, my nose nestled in a scarf, the only connection with my phone is the white cord that extends to my ears and the little button interface on the wire. I have already become accustomed to holding down that button and issuing my phone call commands, music commands, I even ask it what time it is, because the prospect of pulling off my gloves and trying to pull my phone out of my pocket without dumping my bills or handkerchief or exposing my chapped hands to the cold, is just too much. I'll bare the slight embarrassment of others on the train platform hearing my commands because my life is busy, crazy and stressful and I could use a little voice in my ear.

[Hamlet Au]

Very good points, Mr. Digfoot!