Waiting for Siri: Don't Hold Your Breath
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Waiting for Siri: Don't Hold Your Breath
I’m an optimist about most tech, but when I think about “Smarter Siri,” the context-aware version of Apple’s voice assistant that can carry out multi-step requests, all I see is trouble. I hope I’m proven wrong, but what I see are the kinds of fundamental challenges that aren’t easily solved by throwing more engineers at the problem or spending more time on them. They’re the kinds of challenges that simply may not be solvable given the technology available today.
Yet some of the commentary I’ve seen about Apple’s promised AI-infused Siri seems to assume away the legions of hurdles that need to be overcome for it to work. So today, I thought I’d lay out those issues and unknowns that make me skeptical that what was promised at WWDC 2024 will be possible anytime soon.