Why Siri Failed - an honest take

I worked on Siri right out of Waterloo, hired on as an IC3. This story isn’t about me (my life is far more incredible than a chat app), but about Siri.

When I was hired, Siri occupied a tiny building in front of Infinite Loop (the building before Apple Park). The building had two sections, imagine two tiny towers. Both 3 floors high, and in the middle a little section for sitting, and a cafe (tiny one room) for coffee and snacks.

Everyone was super lovely (seriously not just saying that). Especially the Italians. They taught me about C-appa-ccinos, some crazy Italian way of making coffee. I was this simple small town kid. I’d already traveled a ton, been to Italy, but this was the first time I made Italian friends. Turned out to be lucrative since they introduced me to my first girlfriend there.

Beyond the girlfriend thing, I was super happy to be part of the team. The Director invited me in for a meeting one day to ask me my opinion about Siri. I was 22. I had literally no life experience beyond materializing trips to far off countries (a skill I am still good at).

But they brought me into the room and asked what I thought! Obviously, my answers were ill thought out.

But now I’ve had time to think. And now I know what happened...

You see when Siri was brought in front of Steve Jobs, he was ill. The main features they tooted to him was the Interface to the phone. A different way to interact with the device.

Let me say that again. The main feature shown to Steve Jobs (remember he was sick at the time) and ai was not everywhere. These guys obviously wanted a buyout (despite what they might say, 100 million dollars is a fun sum for anyone). The interface to the iPhone was sold to him. And he bought it.

Now that was a genius move. Siri has been an incredible purchase for Apple. Paying many times over for the brand. The jokes. The marketing. All was Siri. I wrote about the humour of Siri, embodied in the Lady of Death that wrote the ai’s humour. I’ve written about her before. I will not repeat myself here.

The interface, was both the selling feature for fans and Steve, but also the weakness. You see they lost sight of the ai dream. That General artificial intelligence, was actually a possibility. People kept chasing the dream of a Sentient Intelligence like our own. Which at the time definitely was not possible. But a artificial general intelligence, with outputs and behaviors similar to us, but not at all like us, was actually a possibility.

Hell they even hired an ai expert. I’m sure he was very busy in fancy lunches, when he should’ve been attending very conference and reading every single paper he could get his hands on - like his life depended on it.

We weren’t focused on that though. We were dead set on the interface. Overhaul after overhaul, we were trying to find the right software formula for the perfect interface. We tried at one point to buy out a British ai outfit. But again they were focused on one tiny sliver of the General Artificial Intelligence piece... the context layer. In essence short form memory...

But not the intelligence to actually use that memory in a useful way.

So there you have it. The reason why Siri is touting newfound abilities (using Gemini under the hood). Which is fine, but this is not what we were promised.

We were promised a Generally Intelligent assistant. What we got was a new way to say:

“Hey Siri, text mom I’ll be home in an hour.”