why does siri only work if i have internet connection?

It needs internet even for just asking math becuase it has a server. (guzzoni.apple.com) If it cant connect to the server, it will not work. The reason for this is becuase they want you to always pay for the cellular service. If you stop paying for the service, siri stops working. It will also make it difficult if some things need interent, when some dont. Hope this helps!

It also does all the math ect on the server. Nothing is done in the physical phone. Once the server has the answer, it sends it back to the iphone which does the command. I know this because I made a proxy that allows me to hack siri and give custom commands/ respnces. Its called siri proxy. I made a youtube video on youtube. Just go to www.youtube.com/jbaybayjbaybay and just look on my channel for a vid about siriproxy.

drofdarb wrote:

Planned obsolescence my friends. If apple allows all the features on all the phones, there would never be a reason to upgrade.

Because, of course, technology never changes or improves, and nothing new is ever invented so Apple has to parcel out the features a few every year, right?

No I did not missed anything. You lack the skill to understand that Siri is not a command based interface with a simple verb -> object paradigm.

Here read the things involved to make Siri works.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/smart-takes/say-command-how-speech-recognition-w ill-change-the-world/19895?tag=content;siu-container

An iPhone is more than capable of recognizing my voice and understanding the content without the internet.

Obviously Siri will need an internet connection to find local business numbers or find the weather forcast etc but the debate here, is why does it need to be connected to perform completely internal tasks, like setting calender events or even just writing text?

Some people have proposed that the reason apple have elected to make this software require connectivity for all situations is in the design and architecture, someone mentioned object paradigm, someone else mentioned it may be an incentive to maintain a phone contract. These are all good points and the answer may well be a combination of them all.

I propose that it may also have something to do with data collection. Think about it, if Siri connects to the Apple server for every question that people around the world ask it, the second we ask it, how much would that information be worth to advertisers and corporations? The information could also be used to create better products in the future and to enslave the human race (probably not the last one though).

Anyway until Apple makes an official statement as to why they made this design choice we'll never know for sure.

veda28 wrote:

An iPhone is more than capable of recognizing my voice and understanding the content without the internet.

Yes simple verb -> object as in voice command (a fixed list of things that are allowed to execute)

Obviously Siri will need an internet connection to find local business numbers or find the weather forcast etc but the debate here, is why does it need to be connected to perform completely internal tasks, like setting calender events or even just writing text?

The intelligent (brain) is on the server via Internet.

Some people have proposed that the reason apple have elected to make this software require connectivity for all situations is in the design and architecture, someone mentioned object paradigm, someone else mentioned it may be an incentive to maintain a phone contract. These are all good points and the answer may well be a combination of them all.

That's right.

I propose that it may also have something to do with data collection. Think about it, if Siri connects to the Apple server for every question that people around the world ask it, the second we ask it, how much would that information be worth to advertisers and corporations? The information could also be used to create better products in the future and to enslave the human race (probably not the last one though).

I think you've mistaken Apple for Google.

See this limk.

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2012/06/apple-wins-surprising-anti-b ig-brother-surveillance-patent.html

To your last sentence, I totally agreed.

ckuan wrote:

The intelligent (brain) is on the server via Internet.

*Sigh* Yes, we have estabished that Siri connects to the "intelligent (brain)", as you so eloquently put it, on the server... but what I've been saying this whole time is - it does not need any intelligent (brain), mystical voodoo or magical powers to recognize my speech and complete a basic task, like writing notes, leaving reminders or scheduling events. The iPhone is more than capable of doing these things on it's own, without the server and without the internet, as evidenced by the fact that my old *** iPod Touch can complete basic voice control commands (btw so could my Windows XP computer 10 years ago).

Apple could have designed Siri to work without a connection to the server when an internet connect is unnavailable, but they didn't. So it seems my question still remains unanswered and that Apple's choice to make Siri require the internet in order to contact it's magical servers (which btw need to be upgraded because they can't handle the traffic) for every single function shall remain an illusive mystery.

I think you've mistaken Apple for Google.

I agree that Apple is definitely not Google, that doesn't mean that the information gathered from Siri isn't worth a lot of money.

Even IBM is suspicious ---> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2150579/IBM-bans-Siri-fears-iPhon e-personal-assistant-send-confidential-data-Apple-HQ.html

I agree that Apple is definitely not Google, that's doesn't mean that the information gathered from Siri isn't worth a lot of money.

I don't mind Apple has my info, since I'm a Apple's customer and if they can build sometime I like, I would certainly buy it. At least they are not selling my info.

Even IBM is suspicious ---> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2150579/IBM-bans-Siri-fears-iPhon e-personal-assistant-send-confidential-data-Apple-HQ.html

That's how you prevent competition creeping in. IBM is just scared, not proven.

Wow. "But what many Apple users might not realise is that the handy application beams every single thing they say to it back to the company's servers."

Every phonecall I make goes through British Telecom's equipment. As is every fax. Everything I put on iCloud goes onto Apple's servers. Everything I store in Dropbox is stored in Dropbox's servers. Everything I put in SkyDrive is put into Microsoft's servers. Etc, etc, etc...... Welcome to the world.

veda28 wrote:

*Sigh* Yes, we have estabished that Siri connects to the "intelligent (brain)", as you so eloquently put it, on the server... but what I've been saying this whole time is - it does not need any intelligent (brain), mystical voodoo or magical powers to recognize my speech and complete a basic task, like writing notes, leaving reminders or scheduling events. The iPhone is more than capable of doing these things on it's own, without the server and without the internet,

It's so gratifying to know that you are far more knowledgeable about the current state-of-the-art of speaker independent voice recognition and natural language processing than the people who work with it for a living every day (like me).

veda28 wrote:

I propose that it may also have something to do with data collection. Think about it, if Siri connects to the Apple server for every question that people around the world ask it, the second we ask it, how much would that information be worth to advertisers and corporations? The information could also be used to create better products in the future and to enslave the human race (probably not the last one though).

They made this design choice because an iPhone is not powerful enough to perform speaker independent voice recognition and natural language processing. But you are right about data collection, although for the wrong reason (or maybe only partly the wrong) reason. Voice recognition is REALLY hard, if you want the computer not only to parse the spoken word correctly, but also understand it. So Nuance (who provide the servers used by Siri) have been collecting voice samples for analysis for years. When Siri or Dragon Dictation (also a Nuance product) makes a mistake and you correct it that correction goes back to the servers and ultimately improves the recognition in the future. In addition to just collecting voice samples, Nuance collects questions. So if 1,000 people ask they same question after the first few they will have the answer cached, providing faster response. And when the server can't find the answer human beings get notified so the answer can be found for the future.

So in a way Siri is Apple's (and Nuance's) experiment to improve voice recognition and natural language processing by collecting data from millions of users.

Google also has some speech enabled products, BTW, for the same reason. To collect voice and content samples. And so does Microsoft.

Of course, once they know what questions people ask that is useful for marketing purposes also.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

They made this design choice because an iPhone is not powerful enough to perform speaker independent voice recognition and natural language processing. But you are right about data collection, although for the wrong reason (or maybe only partly the wrong) reason. Voice recognition is REALLY hard, if you want the computer not only to parse the spoken word correctly, but also understand it. So Nuance (who provide the servers used by Siri) have been collecting voice samples for analysis for years...

You seem very knowledgeable in this area. I get that voice recognition is really hard, but the fact is, I had dictation software on my windows XP computer back in 2002 (can't remember the computer specs but it would be nothing compared to even a phone today) and it worked well. It even learned the idiosyncrasies of different users and learned from its mistakes. The other fact is, if I turn Siri off on my iPhone 4S I can use voice control to control the music player and launch facetime, without a connection to the internet. The iPhone 4S is at the very least definitely capable of doing these things without internet. It is also feasible that it is capable of doing other simple tasks, like making reminders, scheduling diary events etc without the internet. Anyway... it'd be cool if Siri didn't need internet for these basic tasks so that it doesn't become completely useless when the Siri servers are overloaded, or when I'm in a blackspot.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

It's so gratifying to know that you are far more knowledgeable about the current state-of-the-art of speaker independent voice recognition and natural language processing than the people who work with it for a living every day (like me).

I choose to take this comment literally. Thank you 😉

The dictation software you (and I) used in 2002 was probably Nuance's Dragon product (which they bought from the scientist who developed it). If you recall, you had to "train" it for several hours by reading text that it already knew so it could learn your pronounciation. Siri is "speaker independent" - it doesn't have to know your voice; it matches your voice to millions of others until it finds a match that it can understand.

The big difference between Siri and Voice Control is the algorithms that each implements. Voice Control is what is called a "word spotter". It knows only a dozen works or so. If you say anything that it doesn't recognize it throws it away. It also requires that the first word you speak be one it knows, and you are limited to only 3 or 4. Each word that it knows is like a button you press, so "call Jan" recognizes "call", causing it to virtually tap the Contacts app, then look for a word that sounds like "Jan". And it gets it wrong more often than right.

Siri attempts to perform natural language processing - that is, to actually understand what you say rather than just react to a couple of words. It cheats (in the view of true Artificial Intelligence researchers) in that it does this statistically, by searching a massive database for the same words until it finds a close match to all of the words in your question. IBM's Watson does the same thing, but with a much larger database.

It would be interesting and useful if the iPhone used a hybrid approach, and used word spotting on the phone for "call jan" and only went to the server for something more complicated. But then Apple would not be able to record your request to add to its database of sounds.