AI in the Mobile: Ask me Anything

Having a robot just do the damn thing for you can be the breaking point

Feature by Alex Cole | 31 Oct 2011

It’s been tossed around that the first real casualty of the smartphone isn’t regular mobiles or computers or board games, but the pub argument. These days after a major debate kicks up in a pub, it’s downright silly to let it go on longer than a few minutes without someone pulling out their phone and settling the question in a matter of seconds. Doesn’t have to be pure facts, either – it’s just as easy to dig up the results of massive internet polls about who was the best Bond or whether is best for dinner or breakfast.

So seeing Apple’s new phone drop last month, despite not having all that much new and fancy, signalled the end of yet another time-honoured tradition: asking anyone for anything. I’m not just talking about regular old internet searches or getting restaurant reviews. If Siri, the whizz-bang robo assistant baked into the new iPhones, actually takes off, it’ll mean the end of bothering to ask for anything.

Apple ain’t the first to do voice recognition, Siri was just a humble app before this, and even Wolfram Alpha, the computational site which answers most of those oddball questions, has been around for a few years now. But putting all these together as a no-brainer for people makes a big difference. It’s the context that matters. Moving around some plans while you’re at home isn’t a problem, but when you’re out and your fat fingers aren’t up to complicated scheduling, having a robot just do the damn thing for you when you tell it to, where you tell it to, can be the breaking point.

It remains to be seen if anyone will use it, of course. Giving orders to your phone in public – hell, even in private, is still a generation away from feeling even remotely not weird. Putting aside all the Star Trek comparisons, it’s an even worse feeling than talking on a Bluetooth headset, since you’re actually talking to no one. And look ridiculous.

But all of that weirdness may be worth it if you can just ask your robo phone where to hide a body. Not that you’d need to or anything.