Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and asks where they may lead.
Welcome to the future: people in the US can now carry an artificial intelligence around in their pocket, where it waits patiently to be told what to do.
Siri, an iPhone app that understands spoken commands and uses the web to carry them out, is a spin-off from a US military project to develop an artificially intelligent assistant.
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Many people鈥檚 experience of a 鈥渧irtual assistant鈥 may be limited to Microsoft鈥檚 annoying classic Mr Clippy. But in the week we spent together, my AI assistant has performed admirably in finding me restaurants, or the location of the nearest coffee shop. It wasn鈥檛 even stumped when I asked 鈥渄o I need my umbrella today?鈥 coming straight back with the local weather forecast.
Help me out here
A typical command might be: 鈥淩eserve a table for two at a good French restaurant in San Francisco.鈥 Siri responds by presenting a list of top-rated restaurants that can be booked on . If you say which time you want, it can book you a table without your lifting a finger.
In some ways Siri is just a fancy front-end to the 35 sites it can connect to, from to . But what鈥檚 new is the way it can decode the intentions of its master or mistress and use those sites to put them into action.
Doing that requires the ability to actually understand the meaning of words you use, not just passing on keywords blindly, says Siri co-founder .
鈥淏ook a four-star restaurant in Boston seems pretty straightforward,鈥 says Cheyer, 鈥渦ntil you realise that Book is a city in the US, and Star is also a city in the US, and there are 13 Bostons, and Star is also the name of a restaurant.鈥
Interpretation explosion
To cut through what Cheyer calls the 鈥渃ombinatorial explosion of interpretations鈥, Siri uses your location, and the history of the commands you鈥檝e given. It knows that 鈥渂ook鈥 is most likely a command verb, unless you happen to be near the city of Book.
Siri attaches probabilities to the interpretation of each word and cross-references with your location and other data, some of which you must provide yourself.
To send email reminders, Siri obviously needs to know your email address. To 鈥渇ind me the flower shop closest to work鈥, it needs to know where you work. To pay bills or buy airline tickets, features planned for future releases, it would need access to your credit card.
Can I trust you?
That raises the question of how far we are willing to trust a piece of software that can go and do things for us based on what it 鈥渢hinks鈥 we mean, a topic that occupies some engineers working on artificial intelligence. The more data, and power, you give your virtual assistant, the more damage it could do.
Siri may be simple, and always shows its interpretation of a command before carrying it out. But it gives users a preview of a new balance between privacy, trust and convenience that the expansion of AI into everyday life is likely to engender.
鈥淒o I tell it my home?鈥 says Cheyer. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a little creepy. But then I can say 鈥榝ind me a restaurant near my home鈥 and it will understand.鈥
Siri鈥檚 creators are wise to move cautiously, starting with entertainment services and other non-critical tasks. Future, more competent versions, may prompt a little soul-searching from users.
Read previous Innovation columns: The relentless rise of the digital worker, What use is a smartbook?, The sinister powers of crowdsourcing, Making a map for everyone, by everyone, Where next for social networking?, The dizzying ambition of Wolfram Alpha, Can technology persuade us to stop trashing the planet?, You Facebook, you Tweet, now lifelog, The psychology of Google Wave.
