SIRI RISING: The Inside Story Of Siri's Origins - - And Why She Could Overshadow The i. Phone. The world got its first inkling of the quick wit that would make Apple’s Siri an icon during a packed press conference held before an auditorium of tech elite. That press conference was actually Siri's second coming- out party. When the virtual assistant first launched in early 2. Phone app called Siri created by a 2. Apple would later acquire. Back then, Siri boasted an even more irreverent tone - - and a more robust set of skills.
Like fiction writers dreaming up a character, Dag Kittlaus, Siri's co- founder and chief executive, and Harry Saddler, a design expert, had carefully crafted the assistant's attitude and backstory. It was to be . The Siri that Apple introduced in October 2. It was scaled to serve millions of people and programmed to operate internationally.
It had acquired a voice with which to speak its answers, where before it had offered only written responses. And it was deeply integrated into the i. Phone, so that it could tap into about a dozen of Apple's own tools to handle simple tasks like scheduling a meeting, replying to emails or checking the weather.
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As impressive as those talents were, most failed to realize that Apple's version of Siri lacked many of the features once built into the program. This, after all, was no ordinary i. Phone app, but the progeny of the largest artificial intelligence project in U.
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S. At its original debut, in 2. Siri had been able to connect with 4. Yelp and Stub. Hub to Rotten Tomatoes and Wolfram Alpha - - then return a single answer that integrated the best details culled from those diverse sources. It had been able to buy tickets, reserve a table and summon a taxi, all without a user having to open another app, register for a separate service or place a call. It was already on the verge of “intuiting” a user's pet peeves and preferences to the point that it would have been able to seamlessly match its suggestions to his or her personality. At a 2. 01. 0 tech conference, Siri co- founder Tom Gruber demonstrated the app's reach: Telling the assistant, “I’d like a romantic place for Italian food near my office,” yielded an answer that seamlessly combined facts from Citysearch, Gayot, Yelp, Yahoo! Local, All. Menus.
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As conceived by its creators, Siri was supposed to be a . While a search engine used stilted keywords to create lists of links, a do engine could carry a conversation, then decide and act. Had one too many drinks? The ability to coordinate a Google search for a ride home might elude you, but a do engine could translate a muttered, . The startup's goal was not to build a better search engine, but to pioneer an entirely new paradigm for accessing the Internet, one that would let artificially intelligent agents summon the answers people needed, rather than 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. Siri's history suggests a fantastical future of virtual assistants is coming; where we now see Siri as a footnote to the i. Phone's legacy, some day soon the i.
Phone may be remembered as a footnote to Siri.“A kinder, gentler HAL is on way its way to the mainstream for sure,” says Kittlaus. In 2. 00. 3, the agency's investment arm, DARPA, tapped the non- profit research institute SRI International to lead a five- year, 5. Although it wasn't the project's mission, this helper, the Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes, or CALO, would ultimately provide the inspiration and model for Siri. The Defense Department's financial backing, $1.
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The undertaking was “by any measure, the largest AI program in history,” says David Israel, one of the lead researchers on CALO. The CALO project was part of the PAL (Personal Assistant that Learns) program, funded by the Defense Department's investment arm, DARPA.
At least to some people, it seemed as if the serious- minded federal government was taking a flier on the stuff of 9- year- old boys’ sci- fi fantasies.“CALO was put together at a time when many people said AI was a waste of time,” explains Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and associate professor at Stanford University. The project reunited, for the first time in decades, independent disciplines of artificial intelligence that had been deemed too complex to cooperate. It also demonstrated that a machine could learn in real time through its lived experience, as a human being does. Previously, artificial intelligence software had been coached . Every part of CALO instead had to learn . Founded in 1. 94. Stanford University trustees seeking research for .
The institute leads research projects funded by government agencies and corporations, then spins out its most promising technologies into standalone startups. The inkjet printer, LCD screen and Disneyland are all among the institute’s brainchildren. The Menlo Park lab also gained renown for counting, among its researchers, Silicon Valley legend Doug Engelbart, who in the 1. Adam Cheyer, an engineer at the institute, was already drawing comparisons to Engelbart, well before he launched what would eventually become Siri. The dark- haired, soft- spoken engineer - - a one- time Rubik’s Cube champion who could solve the puzzle in just 2.
Engelbart’s ingenuity, but also his “people first” approach to technology. Engelbart maintained that machines should be used to augment human intellect and capabilities.
The objective was “not trying to replace humans in any respect, but trying to have devices, hardware and software that make humans more effective at what they already do,” explains Israel, who remembers Cheyer and Engelbart having lengthy discussions in the research institute’s cafeteria. Where other people saw chores on a to- do list, Cheyer saw learning opportunities for virtual assistants. During an earlier stint at SRI in the 1.
Cheyer, then straight out of a master's program in computer science, built a small army of prototype assistants. Cheyer’s kitchen helper, for example, could track the contents of his fridge and place grocery orders online when milk ran low. At SRI, Cheyer worked on assembling all the pieces produced by the CALO project’s 2. The “research- grade” virtual assistant Cheyer helped build - - also called CALO - - was still too rough around the edges to be installed in white- collar workers' office PCs. But CALO was capable of performing an impressive variety of tasks that once seemed exclusive to human assistants.
Say your colleague canceled shortly before a meeting. CALO, knowledgeable about each person’s role on a project, could discern whether to cancel the meeting, and if needed, reschedule, issue new invitations and pin down a conference room. If the meeting went ahead as planned, CALO could assemble (and rank) all the documents and emails you’d need to be up to speed on the topic at hand.
The assistant would listen in on the meeting, and, afterward, deliver a typed transcript of who said what and outline any specific tasks laid out during the conversation. CALO was also able to help put together presentations, organize files into folders, sort incoming messages and automate expense reports, among a host of other tasks. Cheyer split his time between training CALO and assisting SRI's Vanguard program, a parallel effort launched in 2.
Deustche Telekom and Motorola probe the future of a promising new gadget called the smartphone. The Vanguard program developed its own prototype assistant, more limited than CALO, but more feasible. The prototype dazzled a general manager at Motorola by the name of Dag Kittlaus. A native mid- Westerner once likened to a “baby- faced Nordic Brad Pitt,” Kittlaus supplemented his office routine with a daredevil's diet of activities - - chasing tornadoes, jumping from planes and earning a black belt in Hapkido.
He was a sci- fi buff partial to authors like Arthur C. Clarke (who helped pen the screenplay for . When Kittlaus failed to persuade Motorola to adopt Vanguard’s technology, he quit the company in 2. SRI. Soon after, he found himself on a plane to California for a retreat with Cheyer and several SRI colleagues. Their mission for the weekend: figure out how to harness the best ideas from CALO and Vanguard to seed a startup. It was at the Cypress Inn at Half Moon Bay, a quiet, coastal town just south of San Francisco, that the vision for Siri was born.
This mobile virtual assistant - - like CALO, and in tune with Engelbart’s thesis - - would be put to work relieving humanity of low- grade mental busywork. The working nickname for this assistant was HAL.
The proposed tagline: “HAL’s back - - but this time he’s good.”From left to right: Mark Drummond (then SRI's executive director of ventures and licensing), Norman Winarsky (vice president of SRI Ventures and a member of Siri's board), Dag Kittlaus, Didier Guzzoni (then Cheyer's Ph.