The success of semi-smart voice assistants opens the gates to new convenience and new frustration. We use them in the street, on public transport, in the home , office, even the car, but there’s a problem:

Offline mode

The problem is that most voice assistants, including Siri, don’t have offline modes.

That's frustrating for Apple users. It means you can’t use Siri to control your AirPods when you are in AirPlane Mode, won’t get any data when you try to search your Mac, and can’t discreetly ask for directions using your wired earbuds if you find yourself lost with no network connection in a bad part of town.

I think most of us are sufficiently familiar with Murphy’s Law (“If anything bad can happen, it will") to understand that this lack of an offline mode is a problem waiting to happen for most of us.

Siri's fatal flaw is its need to be online in order to function - it needs to speak to the Siri server to engage in the pattern matching and machine intelligence that drive its breed of semi-AI.

Offline mode

The problem is that most voice assistants, including Siri, don’t have offline modes.

That's frustrating for Apple users. It means you can’t use Siri to control your AirPods when you are in AirPlane Mode, won’t get any data when you try to search your Mac, and can’t discreetly ask for directions using your wired earbuds if you find yourself lost with no network connection in a bad part of town.

I think most of us are sufficiently familiar with Murphy’s Law (“If anything bad can happen, it will") to understand that this lack of an offline mode is a problem waiting to happen for most of us.

Siri's fatal flaw is its need to be online in order to function - it needs to speak to the Siri server to engage in the pattern matching and machine intelligence that drive its breed of semi-AI.

Source: computerworld