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Siri’s Successor, Viv, Has Its First Public Demo
The people that first brought Siri to Apple’s iPhones just debuted, for the first time, a new artificial intelligence system with seemingly endless possibilities. When Siri was first introduced, her ability to understand and interact with iPhone users was an impressive advancement in artificial intelligence. However, it didn’t take long for users to see the shortcomings of the technology. Siri can only perform tasks that are explicitly implemented by Apple’s engineers. While checking your calendar and making a reservation with the OpenTable restaurant reservation app is no problem, put those two functions together in order to reserve a table on your next available night is a step beyond her capabilities as of now.
Engineers at Viv Labs have been working for years to create a more advanced artificial intelligence system that will not have these same limitations. Viv uses deep learning to go beyond implemented tasks, the system will be able to teach itself in order to perform virtually any task that is asked of it.
On Monday, May 9th, Dag Kittlaus, one of the creators of Siri and CEO of Viv, gave the first public demonstration of the AI virtual system, Viv. Kittlaus began with a simple query, one regarding the weather on that particular day, before showing what Viv can really do by asking, “Will it be warmer than 70-degrees near the Golden gate bridge after 5pm the day after tomorrow?” Each question was answered without a glitch.
Next, Viv’s capabilities in interacting with various apps were displayed. When given the request to send $20 to a friend for the drinks he had bought the night before, Venmo was opened and the entire transaction was finished with just one click. The integration of third-party apps is a clear strength that Siri simply cannot compete with.
Kittlaus has said before that, ““Siri is chapter one of a much longer, bigger story,” which can easily be seen in the demo that he gave yesterday.
