Although Siri has learned a lot of new tricks since the service was launched October 2011, the AI only perform tasks Apple engineers explicitly implement. While Siri is beholden to the Apple ecosystem, a new stealth startup called Viv Labs is aiming to build a better AI, one that can teach itself to "answer almost any query and perform almost any function" using your "personal preferences and a near-infinite web of connections."
Viv Labs is co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, all of whom worked on Siri during their time at Apple. Named after the Latin word for live, the team is hoping that some day Viv will be used in a bevy of Internet of things devices thanks to its innate ability to make co-relations based on data, a feature that is currently unavailable in services like Google Now, Siri and Cortana.
Google Now has a huge knowledge graph—you can ask questions like 'Where was Abraham Lincoln born?' And it can name the city. You can also say, 'What is the population?' of a city and it'll bring up a chart and answer. But you cannot say, 'What is the population of the city where Abraham Lincoln was born?'" The system may have the data for both these components, but it has no ability to put them together, either to answer a query or to make a smart suggestion. Like Siri, it can't do anything that coders haven't explicitly programmed it to do.
The idea behind Viv is that the AI can overcome these challenges by generating its programming on the fly. If you ask the AI a question like "Book a ticket when Manchester United are in town", it will look through the available sources of information — in this case the football team based out of your city, Manchester United's match schedule, and ticketing vendors for ticket availability — and give you the relevant results, all in a fraction of a second. Cheyer says that this functionality will change the way we look at software.
I'm extremely proud of Siri and the impact it's had on the world, but in many ways it could have been more. Now I want to do something bigger than mobile, bigger than consumer, bigger than desktop or enterprise. I want to do something that could fundamentally change the way software is built.
To learn more about the capabilities of Viv, head over to Wired's feature on Viv Labs from the link below.
Source: Wired
Reader comments
Creators of Siri working on Viv, a complex AI that can teach itself
The idea is nice, and I get what they're trying to say, but they need to give a better examples. Because the one listed in the article, "What's the population of the city Lincoln was born in?" may not be answerable by Google now, but Wolfram Alpha, and by extension, Siri, can answer that easily and accurately (just checked it to be sure).
I get what they're trying to say though. They're trying to make a smarter AI, that actually interprets your query and actually interprets the query to give the best answer possible. But some engines can already do that, namely Wolfram Alpha for its amazing computational engine allowing complex, multi-part searches, and Siri (their own creation ironically) for its natural language interpretations.
Still interested in how it will turn out though. Any bets as to when Apple buys Viv and merges it with Siri? XD
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He is right about the Example. Siri can answer that question.
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Please don't say that Siri is trying to become like Cortana..... Cortana knows and learns about you.
At least Cortana updates bi-weekly. Xd. Maybe they will be inspired. And make it better. :3
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Don't you mean "innate" ability? Not inane ability? Maybe a Freudian slip?
I agree about better examples. Why would someone want to know the population of the town where Lincoln was born?
True AI should anticipate intent. It should be trying to understand why you are asking the question and provide a full answer in that context. Even better, it should anticipate the question before you ask it. If you like Man U, the AI should have already looked up the schedule and have three options ready for you when you mention Man U.
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