Apple announced Siri as a voice-activated “personal assistant” available exclusively in the iPhone 4S.
Siri reminds of a few projects from the past, but it’s the first apparent demonstration of natural language understanding in a consumer product (excluding simplistic natural-language-based games like Zork).
First, it’s the realization of the conversational interface envisioned by Apple’s Knowledge Navigator video in 1987 and a couple other copycat vision videos produced by IBM and Microsoft. I could easily see the Siri user interface expanding to include a digital, three-dimensionally rendered person in the future.
Second, it embodies the inherently social interaction people have with their computers—a thesis put forth by the social interface work of two Stanford researchers (Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves) that lead to the Microsoft Bob user interface project and the Microsoft Agent technology.
Mostly, it reminds me of SHRDLU - a natural language program written way back in 1968 (around the same time as the Mother of All Demos which predicted mouse-based interfaces, windows, and video conferencing) that presented the first compelling demonstration of a conversational interface in which the computer fully understood and operated upon the direction of a user. Although ELIZA existed four years earlier, ELIZA was built on heuristics and dumb pattern matching without any real understanding or memory of its conversation with humans.
There are other projects over the years like mention expert systems. Recent products in popular technology include IBM’s Watson and CYC, which can analyze the Web and direct answers to natural language queries, and Wolfram Alpha (also used as a source in Siri), which acts a computation engine to deliver or derive answers to natural language query from an organized database of facts.
SHRDLU was developed as part of a PhD dissertation generations ago both in Moore’s Law and human terms, and the original source code in LISP is still available. Despite press excitement that Siri was based on a DARPA-funded CALO project, many aspects of SHRDLU share similarities with Siri. The SHRDLU computer program was able to perform actions, ask questions to clarify any ambiguous requests, recall the history the conversation, learn new terminology.
Below is a transcript of a conversation used in SHRDLU demo:
- Person: PICK UP A BIG RED BLOCK.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: GRASP THE PYRAMID.
- Computer: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHICH PYRAMID YOU MEAN.
- Person: FIND A BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER THAN THE ONE YOU ARE HOLDING AND PUT IT INTO THE BOX.
- Computer: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER THAN THE ONE I AM HOLDING.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: WHAT DOES THE BOX CONTAIN?
- Computer: THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLUE BLOCK.
- Person: WHAT IS THE PYRAMID SUPPORTED BY?
- Computer: THE BOX.
- Person: HOW MANY BLOCKS ARE NOT IN THE BOX?
- Computer: FOUR OF THEM.
- Person: IS AT LEAST ONE OF THEM NARROWER THAN THE ONE WHICH I TOLD YOU TO PICK UP?
- Computer: YES, THE RED CUBE.
- Person: IS IT SUPPORTED?
- Computer: YES, BY THE TABLE.
- Person: CAN THE TABLE PICK UP BLOCKS?
- Computer: NO.
- Person: CAN A PYRAMID BE SUPPORTED BY A BLOCK?
- Computer: YES.
- Person: CAN A PYRAMID SUPPORT A PYRAMID?
- Computer: I DON'T KNOW.
- Person: STACK UP TWO PYRAMIDS.
- Computer: I CAN'T.
- Person: WILL YOU PLEASE STACK UP BOTH OF THE RED BLOCKS AND EITHER A GREEN CUBE OR A PYRAMID?
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: WHICH CUBE IS SITTING ON THE TABLE?
- Computer: THE LARGE GREEN ONE WHICH SUPPORTS THE RED PYRAMID.
- Person: IS THERE A LARGE BLOCK BEHIND A PYRAMID?
- Computer: YES, THREE OF THEM: A LARGE RED ONE, A LARGE GREEN CUBE, AND THE BLUE ONE.
- Person: PUT A SMALL ONE ONTO THE GREEN CUBE WHICH SUPPORTS A PYRAMID.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: PUT THE LITTLEST PYRAMID ON TOP OF IT.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: DOES THE SHORTEST THING THE TALLEST PYRAMID'S SUPPORT SUPPORTS SUPPORT ANYTHING GREEN?
- Computer: YES, THE GREEN PYRAMID.
- Person: WHAT COLOR IS IT?
- Computer: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE SHORTEST THING THE TALLEST PYRAMID'S SUPPORT SUPPORTS.
- Computer: RED
- Person: HOW MANY THINGS ARE ON TOP OF GREEN CUBES?
- Computer: I'M NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY "ON TOP OF "IN THE PHRASE "ON TOP OF GREEN CUBES " .
- DO YOU MEAN:
- 1 - DIRECTLY ON THE SURFACE
- 2 - ANWHERE ON TOP OF ?
- Person: 2
- Computer: THREE OF THEM.
- Person: HAD YOU TOUCHED ANY PYRAMID BEFORE YOU PUT THE GREEN ONE ON THE LITTLE CUBE?
- Computer: YES, THE GREEN ONE.
- Person: WHEN DID YOU PICK IT UP?
- Computer: WHILE I WAS STACKING UP THE RED CUBE, A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
- Person: WHY?
- Computer: TO GET RID OF IT.
- Person: WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
- Computer: TO CLEAN OFF THE RED CUBE.
- Person: WHY DID YOU CLEAR OFF THAT CUBE?
- Computer: TO PUT IT ON A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
- Person: WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
- Computer: TO STACK UP THE RED CUBE , A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
- Person: WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
- Computer: BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO.
- Person: HOW DID YOU DO IT?
- Computer: BY PUTTING A LARGE RED BLOCK ON THE TABLE ; THEN LETTING GO OF IT ; THEN PUTTING A LARGE GREEN CUBE ON IT ; THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE ; THEN PUTTING THE RED CUBE ON THAT CUBE; THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE.
- Person: HOW MANY OBJECTS DID YOU TOUCH WHILE YOU WERE DOING IT?
- Computer: FOUR OF THEM.
- Person: WHAT DID THE RED CUBE SUPPORT BEFORE YOU STARTED TO CLEAN IT OFF?
- Computer: THE GREEN PYRAMID.
- Person: THERE WERE FIVE BLOCKS TO THE LEFT OF THE BOX THEN.
- Computer: NO, ONLY FOUR OF THEM: THE RED CUBE, TWO LARGE GREEN CUBES AND A LARGE RED BLOCK.
- Person: PUT THE BLUE PYRAMID ON THE BLOCK IN THE BOX.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: IS THERE ANYTHING WHICH IS BIGGER THAN EVERY PYRAMID BUT IS NOT AS WIDE AS THE THING THAT SUPPORTS IT?
- Computer: YES, THE BLUE BLOCK.
- Person: DOES A STEEPLE
- Computer interrupting: SORRY, I DON'T KNOW THE WORD "STEEPLE".
- Person: A "STEEPLE" IS A STACK WHICH CONTAINS TWO GREEN CUBES AND A PYRAMID.
- Computer: I UNDERSTAND.
- Person: ARE THERE ANY STEEPLES NOW?
- Computer: NO.
- Person: BUILD ONE.
- Computer: OK. (does it)
- Person: CALL THE BIGGEST BLOCK "SUPERBLOCK".
- Computer: OK.
- Person: HAVE YOU PICKED SUPERBLOCK UP SINCE WE BEGAN?
- Computer: YES.
- Person: WHY DID YOU DROP IT?
- Computer: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE SUPERBLOCK.
- I CAN'T EXPLAIN A NON-EXISTENT EVENT.
- Person: IS THERE ANYTHING TO THE RIGHT OF THE RED PYRAMID?
- Computer: YES, FOUR THINGS: THE BOX , THE RED CUBE, THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLOCK NAMED SUPERBLOCK
- Person: THANK YOU.
- Computer: YOU'RE WELCOME!
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