COURTESY OF DAG KITTLAUS
SIRI
RISING
pull relevant resources for humans to consult on their own. If
the search engine defined the second generation of the web, Siri’s
co-founders were confident the
do engine would define the third.
The do engine was designed to
be a participant in the life at hand
— one that could anticipate what
you wanted before you wanted
it, and make it yours before you
could ask. Siri’s creators planned,
though never implemented, a way
for Siri to assist waylaid travelers:
The assistant could preempt the
frustration caused by a delayed
plane by suggesting alternate
flights, trains departing shortly,
or car rental companies with vehicles available.
This Siri — the Siri of the past
— offers a glimpse at what the Siri
of the future may provide, and a
blueprint for how a growing wave
of artificially intelligent assistants
will slot into our lives. The goal
is a human-enhancing and potentially indispensable assistant that
could supplement the limitations
of our minds and free us from
mundane and tedious tasks.
Siri’s backers know Apple’s version of the assistant has not yet
lived up to its potential. “The Siri
team saw the future, defined the
HUFFINGTON
01.27.13
future and built the first working
version of the future,” says Gary
Morgenthaler, a partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, one of the two first
venture capital firms to invest in
Siri. “So it’s disappointing to those
of us that were part of the original
team to see how slowly that’s progressed out of the acquired company into the marketplace.”
But as a new wave of virtual
assistants compete to take on our
to-do lists, Apple is under growing
pressure to use the technology it
already has and turn Siri into the
multitasking, proactive helper it
once was. Siri’s history suggests a
fantastical future of virtual assistants is coming; where we now see
Siri as a footnote to the iPhone’s
legacy, some day soon the iPhone
may be remembered as a footnote
to Siri.
“A kinder, gentler HAL is on
way its way to the mainstream for
Siri’s cofounders
from left to
right: Adam
Cheyer, Dag
Kittlaus and
Tom Gruber.