<story><title>Siri creator shows off first public demo of Viv</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/siri-creator-shows-off-first-public-demo-of-viv-the-intelligent-interface-for-everything/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsaul</author><text>Impressive demo, but yet i can&amp;#x27;t help thinking that the &amp;quot;big&amp;quot; question still remain largely unsolved for those services.&lt;p&gt;Two points :&lt;p&gt;1&amp;#x2F; viv keeps mentioning a &amp;quot;breakthrough&amp;quot; in computer science because they managed to create a program that will scan a network of services and fill the parameters from the query. Now, those guys aren&amp;#x27;t jokers, so i presume there is definitely something fantastic behind, yet i can&amp;#x27;t help thinking that once you&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;understood&amp;quot; the intent, it sounds quite close to a sql &amp;#x2F; graphql query planner.&lt;p&gt;2&amp;#x2F; Which leads to the big question : guessing the intent. Every time i hear people mention &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;understanding&amp;quot;,  i show them this : &amp;quot;hey siri, please do NOT set a timer for 4 minutes, i beg you&amp;quot;. The fact is, it&amp;#x27;s just a trick. It recognize words, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t understand anything, it doesn&amp;#x27;t have concepts, knowledge or any experience. It&amp;#x27;s a dumb program that never had any life or sense to understand anything.&lt;p&gt;If i say &amp;quot;find me a good ticket for Chicago tonight&amp;quot;. How will it know that i&amp;#x27;m talking about the rock band that&amp;#x27;s playing tonight in Paris, France, since there&amp;#x27;s absolutely not a chance that a human being asks for a plane ticket for such a big trip just a few hours in advance ?&lt;p&gt;This is, to me, &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; big and interesting question that online assistants makers needs to solve. Now of course, viv is aiming for a product release this year, so they&amp;#x27;re building an intermediate solution, where developers will manually associate keywords to services, in an &amp;quot;easy&amp;quot; way. And it will sort of work.&lt;p&gt;Yet i&amp;#x27;m still waiting for the real &amp;quot;big&amp;quot; advance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mortenjorck</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  If i say &amp;quot;find me a good ticket for Chicago tonight&amp;quot;. How 
  will it know that i&amp;#x27;m talking about the rock band that&amp;#x27;s 
  playing tonight in Paris, France, since there&amp;#x27;s absolutely 
  not a chance that a human being asks for a plane ticket for 
  such a big trip just a few hours in advance ?
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I don&amp;#x27;t even need an assistant system to figure out based on context which I&amp;#x27;m talking about: All I want is one that can simply ask clarifying questions. &amp;quot;Did you mean Chicago the city, or Chicago the band?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I had an amusing Siri interaction a few months ago where I asked &amp;quot;what language is spoken in Shanghai?&amp;quot; (I can never remember if it&amp;#x27;s Mandarin or Cantonese). Siri came back with a very well-reasoned, completely out-of-place answer of &amp;quot;Hindi&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;claymill&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;690386752683577344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;claymill&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;690386752683577344&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Siri creator shows off first public demo of Viv</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/siri-creator-shows-off-first-public-demo-of-viv-the-intelligent-interface-for-everything/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsaul</author><text>Impressive demo, but yet i can&amp;#x27;t help thinking that the &amp;quot;big&amp;quot; question still remain largely unsolved for those services.&lt;p&gt;Two points :&lt;p&gt;1&amp;#x2F; viv keeps mentioning a &amp;quot;breakthrough&amp;quot; in computer science because they managed to create a program that will scan a network of services and fill the parameters from the query. Now, those guys aren&amp;#x27;t jokers, so i presume there is definitely something fantastic behind, yet i can&amp;#x27;t help thinking that once you&amp;#x27;ve &amp;quot;understood&amp;quot; the intent, it sounds quite close to a sql &amp;#x2F; graphql query planner.&lt;p&gt;2&amp;#x2F; Which leads to the big question : guessing the intent. Every time i hear people mention &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;understanding&amp;quot;,  i show them this : &amp;quot;hey siri, please do NOT set a timer for 4 minutes, i beg you&amp;quot;. The fact is, it&amp;#x27;s just a trick. It recognize words, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t understand anything, it doesn&amp;#x27;t have concepts, knowledge or any experience. It&amp;#x27;s a dumb program that never had any life or sense to understand anything.&lt;p&gt;If i say &amp;quot;find me a good ticket for Chicago tonight&amp;quot;. How will it know that i&amp;#x27;m talking about the rock band that&amp;#x27;s playing tonight in Paris, France, since there&amp;#x27;s absolutely not a chance that a human being asks for a plane ticket for such a big trip just a few hours in advance ?&lt;p&gt;This is, to me, &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; big and interesting question that online assistants makers needs to solve. Now of course, viv is aiming for a product release this year, so they&amp;#x27;re building an intermediate solution, where developers will manually associate keywords to services, in an &amp;quot;easy&amp;quot; way. And it will sort of work.&lt;p&gt;Yet i&amp;#x27;m still waiting for the real &amp;quot;big&amp;quot; advance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ndarilek</author><text>&amp;quot;If i say &amp;quot;find me a good ticket for Chicago tonight&amp;quot;. How will it know that i&amp;#x27;m talking about the rock band that&amp;#x27;s playing tonight in Paris, France, since there&amp;#x27;s absolutely not a chance that a human being asks for a plane ticket for such a big trip just a few hours in advance ?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Funny, your &amp;quot;absolutely not a chance&amp;quot; interpretation was mine. Maybe there was a death in the family. Maybe you need to visit a friend short notice. Maybe I&amp;#x27;m being a bit pedantic, but I was with you until that point. :)</text></comment>