Personally, I would say that we are still transitioning into the age of artificial intelligence, but there are also those who argue that we are already in it. Just compare the advancement of virtual assistants from the beginning of this decade to understand how much AI capabilities have improved but not enough, according to the former head of Crab, Bill stasior.
Stasior has led the development of Apple's virtual assistant since 2012 and earlier this year left his position at Cupertino to join the executive committee of Avellino Labs genetic testing and testing company.
Each year working with Siri, however, gives him enough credit to evaluate that all virtual assistants today still “do not live up to their promise to understand us as naturally as other humans,” as reported. Business insider.
The executive explained that one of the main reasons why most virtual assistants are designed to handle specific tasks, realizing the obvious: this technology is not able to understand the world in the same way as humans.
When you want to talk to an assistant, you are opening the door to almost any task or any question. There is an incredibly wide variety of languages ​​and ways to express ourselves. And having that general capability, we are still far away (from virtual assistants achieving this).
Among some of the more complex functions, Stasior pointed out that Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant, and Google Assistant are at the forefront of Apple's technology in recognizing different voices. In Siri's case, she identifies different voice users on HomePod s with iOS 13 which has been around on Amazon and Google systems since 2017.
In addition, while Amazon is teaching Alexa to understand the emotional state of his voice, Stasior said that Apple, until the time the executive was in the company, did not have the same plans. This, however, does not make Apple's assistant less capable, but with fewer functions due to restrictions on Apple's systems.
In iOS 13, Siri gain some welcome new features such as the ability to read messages on AirPods. In addition, Apple has expanded SiriKit (the wizard's development API) to allow the tool to connect to third party music services and podcasts.
