Is Siri Artificial Intelligence?

Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is often in the eye of the beholder. Consider the Turing Test:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Perhaps if you explain why you're asking this question, someone might be able to give you a more specific answer.

In honor of your user name, you might want to read up on Ada Lovelace, thought by some to be one of the first computer programers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

The best way I could describe Siri is a voice to text query that gets its answers from an internet search. Without an internet connection Siri can't function. Sort answer, no, it's not artificial intelligence.

Only if Google is an AI. Siri is simply a speech to text engine. Once the question is in text format it is submitted to different information sources including the Internet and Wolfram Alpha. Of these Wolfram comes closest to being an AI, but it has a narrow domain centered on statistics and calculations. This is generally true of all existing AI wannabes today; they can know a lot about a narrow range of subjects. Almost all of them work by "word spotting" and statistical methods; they don't really think and don't take actions based on the results. So they don't really qualify.

Siri essentially has a huge database of questions that people have asked or requests they have made. When you ask Siri something it searches that database for the last time that question was asked, and returns the answer that was given. If Siri can't find your question in the database it says it can't understand the question.

What makes AI difficult is understanding what is asked, or "parsing" the request. What is obvious to you is not obvious to a computer. Consider the statement "Time files like an arrow." You have no trouble understanding what this means. But the computer parsing it has several different interpretations. Your interpretation is that time moves swiftly, the same way an arrow moves swiftly. In other words, its a metaphor. Computer's usually don't "get" metaphors. So one interpretation turns "time" into a verb; the sentence then tells you to measure the speed of insects the same way you would measure the speed of an arrow. Another is that a "time fly" is a newly discovered species of insect, and this insect has a preference for arrows - as in "Fruit flies like a banana." There's actually a whole presentation that my associate, a researcher into AI, delivers to conferences that starts with this example.

I've gone on too long on this subject, but it's my field, so I tend to go overboard.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

I've gone on too long on this subject, but it's my field, so I tend to go overboard.

Not at all! You provide some of the best deep (relatively speaking) background on the forum. I always greatly enjoy and learn from your explanations.

No Siri is not Artificial Intelligence... It's a personal secretary... You tell it what to do and it does it...

AI might be able to do this: But dont worry Schwarzenegger is here:

That's an excellent explanation Lawrence. I'll have to use it the next time my non-techie friends ask me why its so difficult to program an AI.

That's a good explanation Lawrence. Thanks for sharing it. Very interesting indeed.