Apple Siri – Nose job.

The privacy religion may prevent the AI fix.

• In stamping his authority on Apple’s AI efforts, John Giannandrea has an opportunity to fix the problems that are plaguing Siri but runs the risk of running up against Apple’s deepening religion on privacy.
• The head of Apple Siri has (been?) moved into another role completing the rout of the old guard, opening the way for Giannandrea to remake Siri and Apple’s AI in the image he sees fit.
• In the last 12 months, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa have distanced themselves from Siri in terms of performance and Apple’s fragmentation of the Siri platform has made things much worse.
• Siri has three big problems.
  • First, differential privacy: which is the system that Apple uses to ensure that user data in its cloud is unintelligible to anyone but the user himself.
  • This allows Apple to understand broader trends of its usage but not what individual users are doing.
  • Apple has used this to promote its’ security and privacy and as a reason to choose iOS over Android.
  • However, RFM research (see here) has found that this limits the quality of the algorithms that Apple can train as the data set has been compromised.
  • Consequently, although Apple collects only slightly less voice data than Google does with its assistant, I believe that it is unable to make use of most of it.
  • This has been a substantial hindrance to its ability to improve and become more intuitive and useful.
  • Second, fragmentation: Apple has committed the mortal sin of the technology industry by fragmenting the Siri platform.
  • By implementing the agent on the device rather than in the cloud, Apple has ensured that the user experience of Siri varies from one device to another.
  • For example, Siri on Apple TV has a different set of skill domains than on the iPhone and the HomePod is incapable of doing some of the most basic things that are available on the iPhone.
  • This also limits the ability to use Siri to control devices from one another.
  • Furthermore, the third-party skills are all implemented on the device meaning that if the user enables Siri on the iPhone to call an Uber, all of his other devices will remain unable to do it.
  • I think that there is a reasonably straight forward fix by moving Siri completely to the cloud which would be a great feature to announce at WWDC this year.
  • Third, cloak and dagger: Apple is a closed and secretive organisation which does not work well when it comes to the AI community.
  • Siri is driven by AI and the AI community works on openness and collaboration which is at odds with the way that Apple does things.
  • Apple has opened up a little bit and has begun sharing and publishing some of its methodologies for Siri (see here) which will need to increase with time if Apple wishes to benefit from the learnings of others in the community.
  • This does not mean giving away key proprietary and differentiating algorithms but being more open about solving the many problems that everyone faces when trying to develop intelligent machines.
• If these three issues can be addressed, then Siri has a good chance to close the gap that Alexa and Google Assistant have created while Siri has been labouring under its shortcomings.
• I think that this is important as Samsung’s dogged loyalty to the awful Bixby assistant is becoming a reason not to buy a Samsung product and the last thing iOS needs is a similar millstone.
• Hence, I am hopeful that Siri will be reunified and sent to live in the cloud like everyone else but this will raise the question of user privacy.
• If Facebook’s results (see here) are anything to go by, the vast majority of users simply don’t care that much meaning that Apple is cutting off its nose to spite its face in pushing its privacy agenda so hard.
• Apple needs to resolve this conflict or face the prospect of its AI (and therefore its Digital Life services) remaining third rate.