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Siri is a joke

John6Plus

John6Plus

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 19, 2014
365
41
Holland, MI
So the Red Sox are - right now - playing in a postseason game. I swear I have asked this exact question before: “Hey Siri, how are the Red Sox doing?” and gotten the score. Instead, the attached screenshot is what happened.

Did it have a stroke? Dimentia setting in? How could I possibly be asking what their win total from 2017 was? I mean it was hilarious when it just announced “The answer is 93” - but not helpful.

MLB even advertised using Siri for the postseason. Not a good look.
 

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Packers1958 said:
It is an ambiguous question. "How are the Red Sox doing?" Doing what? Making ice cream? Bowling? Knitting, etc. Now if you asked Siri "What is the score in the Red Sox game?" You probably will get the correct info.
Click to expand...

In my experience, Siri is pretty useless. Not much has changed since it was released.

I attached a screenshot of google assistant to show what kind of response an intelligent assistant should be able to give to a question like that.
 

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braddick said:
Well... Siri's not wrong. . .
Click to expand...
Hmm, that’s how they were doing a year ago. Also. “The answer is 93.” 93 what?

And yes it is mildly vague, but I’m pretty sure I’ve asked that question before.

I just asked how the patriots did yesterday, and it gave me the expected response. I asked how the Red Sox are doing tonight, and, nope. (See attached.)

I know it’s nitpicking - and I wouldn’t trust google or Alexa to be perfect, in fact I don’t trust them at all for other reasons, but we have a looooooooong way to go before digital assistants even have the *appearance* of AI.
[doublepost=1538791181][/doublepost]
T5BRICK said:
In my experience, Siri is pretty useless. Not much has changed since it was released.

I attached a screenshot of google assistant to show what kind of response an intelligent assistant should be able to give to a question like that.
Click to expand...
Yup, and I’m 99% sure Siri has done it right before with that exact question. I don’t like when “machine learning” makes something dumber. It may be because it’s the playoffs and the matchup not set until 2 days ago, but that’s a pretty pathetic excuse if so. It may be a data failure on MLB’s part even.

But it’s a time sensitive question - with an obvious top of the news answer - but it failed. I’m baffled more than anything, and professionally curious :)
 

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John6Plus said:
So the Red Sox are - right now - playing in a postseason game. I swear I have asked this exact question before: “Hey Siri, how are the Red Sox doing?” and gotten the score. Instead, the attached screenshot is what happened.


Did it have a stroke? Dimentia setting in? How could I possibly be asking what their win total from 2017 was? I mean it was hilarious when it just announced “The answer is 93” - but not helpful.


MLB even advertised using Siri for the postseason. Not a good look.
Click to expand...


Siri is a joke according to you because....red sox.

Works great for me but I don’t ask Siri about the Red Sox.
 
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Siri has got bad, since iOS 12 beta. It used to be able to play my playlists easily now since ios12 official came out it can’t even do it right.

I say....Music, playlist 80’s (the exact name one of my playlists) (this command did work numerous times in the past) now it likes to say here’s what I found for an 80’s radio station. Seems like Siri became dumb
 
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The problem is that Alexa and Google Assistant advanced a lot quicker than Siri did. I'm not sure if Siri just isn't an Apple priority or what, but Alexa and Google's ability to understand context is what sets them apart. I hope Siri catches up.
 
Packers1958 said:
It is an ambiguous question. "How are the Red Sox doing?" Doing what? Making ice cream? Bowling? Knitting, etc. Now if you asked Siri "What is the score in the Red Sox game?" You probably will get the correct info.
Click to expand...
I’ve asked it how a team was doing, worded exactly the same, during a game and it gave the correct response.
 
mritech said:
Siri has got bad, since iOS 12 beta. It used to be able to play my playlists easily now since ios12 official came out it can’t even do it right.

I say....Music, playlist 80’s (the exact name one of my playlists) (this command did work numerous times in the past) now it likes to say here’s what I found for an 80’s radio station. Seems like Siri became dumb
Click to expand...

Caveman Siri.
 
Not knowing its definition, the other day I asked Siri multiple times to define steganography. After several attempts the nearest to the sound that came out of my mouth was;

“Ok, I found this on the web for ‘Define stuck in a coffee’”

Now knowing what steganography is, I’ve concluded Siri is either incredibly clever and the result hides a message therein, or incredibly stupid.

I’m leaning towards stupid, heh.

Google voice nailed it first time.
 
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I asked the same question the OP did just now, and I was given correct information.

OP, check and see if George H. Ruth is in your family tree (Bambino curse). That could explain some things with the results.
 
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thedieselwind said:
The problem is that Alexa and Google Assistant advanced a lot quicker than Siri did. I'm not sure if Siri just isn't an Apple priority or what, but Alexa and Google's ability to understand context is what sets them apart. I hope Siri catches up.
Click to expand...
It’s not as good as Alexa or the google assistant but it’s quite capable for a lot of things.
 
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I have found Siri very useful. If I ask for a ball game score, she replies with the right answer. If I ask he to an an item to my grocery list, she complies.

Is Siri perfect? No, but she is a help to me.

Can Siri be improved? We Aplle promised huge improvements in Siri and I have not seen them.
 
Living in Chicago, and a huge Cubs fan, Red Sox are my second favorites. I'm rooting for Boston all the way. I wanted a Cubs Red Sox World Series so badly... Anyway, if I ask Siri "How are the Red Sox doing?" she said "Better than the Cubs, Paul." I cried a little.

No, she didn't. I am kidding. LOL
 
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Bottom line: Amazon and Google have raised the bar, and Apple has not been able to keep up. I think this is common knowledge in tech circles.
The thing I find most frustrating is that voice dictation is supposed to save you time over typing, but nine times out of ten Siri will get just one or two words wrong, and the amount of time it takes to correct them completely negates the time saved in dictating in the first place. On an Apple Watch you have to start from scratch and dictate the whole thing again.
 
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Driving home yesterday and my gf sent me a message that she was at the supermarket, and asked if we need anything. I dictated back, “Please get olive oil”. What actually got sent was “Please get all of oil”. Siri reads it back and it sounded ok to me. It’s just the way Scots pronounce “olive”.

Scottish accents and voice recognition don’t get on, unfortunately. (video is nsfw or younger ears. nothing too bad though)
 
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