'Hey Siri, What Month Is It?' (daringfireball.net) 107
DaringFireball: Whole Reddit thread examining this simple question: "What month is it?" and Siri's "I'm sorry, I don't understand" response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to "What month is it currently?" and got the answer "It is 2025." More comments from that thread:"I ask Siri to play a podcast and she literally says, "I'm trying to play from Apple Podcasts but it doesn't look like you have it installed." I didn't even know you could delete that app. I certainly haven't. So I have to manually do it every time now. It used to work."
"I asked Siri last night to set a reminder for 3:50, so naturally she set it for 10:00." Further reading:
Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri;
'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'.
"I asked Siri last night to set a reminder for 3:50, so naturally she set it for 10:00." Further reading:
Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri;
'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino'.
Same old, same old (Score:3, Funny)
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I know whenever I've asked Siri to get directions to Annerley Road (on the other side of the city) she starts navigating to Anna Lee Road (on the other side of the world).
"I'm sorry. You should ask your partner about anally road."
Re: Same old, same old (Score:2)
Is your dialect perhaps non-rhotic?
Re: A question for Siri (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. Apple, Google, and Microsoft pushing shitty products is Trump's fault. Because it's 2017 and rain spoiling your picnic is also Trump's fault.
Next up: that itch on your back you can't reach and the check engine light in your car coming on is also Trump's fault.
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Yup, your handle checks out!
BTW, I wasn't blaming Trump for the new Siri. I was simply commenting on their shared lack of intellectual... well, anything. I don't think even you can seriously maintain that Trump is intelligent beyond a certain animal cunning and a knowing eye for the main chance.
Re: A question for Siri (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah okay. Biden and Obama both printed up some $10T each in monopoly money to pile onto the debt and they both pushed the universities to expand their definition of rape to include "she said she didn't like him afterwards"
None of it was good. Trump is a blunt instrument but he's generally hammering away at what needs breaking.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Social security? https://www.rollingstone.com/p... [rollingstone.com]
... and childhood vaccinations [npr.org]?
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Q: Siri, what happened to the old Siri?
I tried this, out of curiosity. Result: "Here's the top news", followed by NPR.
dropped for legal reasons (Score:3)
Re: dropped for legal reasons (Score:2)
No. Waking up in the morning by definition makes you woke. Go back to sleep and dream of torching some electric cars for the lulz of seeing a battery fire up close.
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It's a decent translator (Score:1)
All I use Siri for is a translation service. My wife is Chinese, and she learned English from a book and a British English teacher. Even after 30-odd years, she sometimes runs into words that are not in her vocabulary. When we were first married this was a problem. Her Chinese-English dictionary was censored and didn't include words that newlywed couples might want to use. Now we have Siri... "What is the Mandarin Chinese word for " and it tells her. This really speeds up conversations on new topics.
Re: It's a decent translator (Score:2)
I bet! There's a whole slew of new and specific vocabulary that comes into play on your wedding night!
This happens every time (Score:5, Interesting)
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You're saying that Gruber is a shill monetizing anti apple sentiment? Stop wasting words.
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My wife has always been an Apple user, she even owns Apple stock. Now she refuses to give them any more money. The last time she bought a MBP, it died and had to have the motherboard replaced 7 times before Apple said no more and refused to replace the 8th dead motherboard unless we paid them $1200. Many other people had the same problem with that model. We had to sue them in a class action lawsuit
Once you know it's an LLM you can fix... (Score:1)
If an LLM doesn't understand something, the solution is to give it more context until it does...
So while "what month is it?" doesn't work with Siri now (I tested as well), what does work is "What month is it in Utah". It gives you the current date and time which you didn't ask for, but it does include the month and it does work.
But don't think I am excusing Apple here, I do think it's absurd they replaced a fairly functional Siri with something that can run into walls with simple questions... and as noted
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....a rules-based system is replaced with an LLM. Same with Google Assistant.
No it doesn't. It happens when a rules-based system is replaced with a poorly trained LLM that isn't suited to the task. The problem is these companies are generalising the LLMs they are throwing at these devices rather than training them on the specific interactions users have with the systems.
Fun fact if you get a mechanical engineer to perform heart surgery on you you're going to have a bad day, the training is wrong.
Re: This happens every time (Score:2)
Not Alone (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that it's not just Apple. This AI push has ruined existing functionality. I can't even ask google to "stop navigating" via voice commands anymore like. That was literally the only time I used voice commands (i.e. not wanting to touch my phone while driving).
I've also heard of others trying to set timers and the assistant has no idea what they want.
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I pretty much only use my Google speaker in the kitchen for casting podcasts and kitchen timers.
Over the last year or so, the casting functionality has constricted to the point where I need to use very, very explicit commands to do podcast navigation.
Commands like "Skip ahead X minutes/seconds" or "Stop playback" or "Subtract X minutes from Timer Y" no longer work at all.
I sometimes now even get crazy stuff like "Ok, playing some random song by an artist you've never heard of" in response to a "set a timer.
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A month ago the "news on the internet" convinced me to consider getting an Apple as a voice controlled computer (I'm developing eye problems). So I went and looked at it. Totally useless for the purpose. I told the salesman "maybe next year", but from the comments this month that seems unlikely.
FWIW, I'm currently using Linux Debian Mate, but I knew that was far away from a reasonable voice controlled computer.
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What's worse is there's no consistency in these applications across the user base (stop navigating still works here, but I know someone else for whom it doesn't so I fully believe you). Why does it work for one person but not another. When seeking help it results in problems for all. Users can't get help as they are dismissed as nutjobs by other users, and a company can't properly identify problems when their user experience is inconsistent.
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Google Navigation with AI has improved significantly in the last few weeks. For example, while driving, you can now say something like, "Navigate to the nearest gas station" and it will oblige, rather than what it used to do--show a bunch of pins on the map--while driving.
Re: Not Alone (Score:2)
That feature existed for years before LLMs were a thing.
Assistants getting worse (Score:4, Interesting)
I only tested Siri a few times some years ago and found it to be underwhelming.
But, TBH, since 2018 I use Alexa in my home and Google in my car and both became noticeably worse in the last years also.
It feels like the companies moved all their resources to AI and simply left the assistants to rot.
Re:Assistants getting worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than letting them rot, it's about trying to make them "more AI", which on the one hand does make it potentially able to react to a wider variety of inputs, but at the same time makes it much harder to control the specific resulting behaviors compared to their old strategies.
Siri (Score:2)
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I use Siri all the time through Carplay, to respond to text messages, get directions and play music.
Most things still work OK, but recognizing musicians has gotten terrible.
"Play Kraftwerk"
"I couldn't find krunft wonk in your music library"
"PLAY KRAFT - WORK"
"I couldn't find kraftwerk in your music library"
"Play Autobahn"
"Now playing Autobahn by Kraftwerk"
And street names. And business names. and humans' names.
Re: Siri (Score:2)
Did you try saying it in a thick German accent?
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The first Samsung galaxy I owned, the feature was fantastic. It seemed to easily figure out what i was actually trying to type with very few errors. Now I have an S22 and I swear the accuracy is roughly at 50% with intent. I'm not blaming it solely on the phone as my "swiping" occasionally is so far off from it should be there's no saving it.. but even simple words like "our" are routinely changed. It's trying to gu
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It's worse. If the assistant was left to rot, it would behave as it did at that point, no better, no worse. This is active enshitification.
Best guess, it's either slightly cheaper to maintain the back end this way (and the assistant was never actually running locally), or they need to slowly make it worse than useless so that when the merely useless AI comes out, it looks like a win.
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I could imagine that understanding problems are often caused by dirty microphones. Especially in households, dust accumulates, which can also get into the microphones.
However, I have been experiencing a different issue for about a year: My Bluetooth headphones, which are connected to an Amazon Echo, frequently lose connection or fail to pair.
Re: Assistants getting worse (Score:2)
That could be true, but in the case of Android Auto, I changed cars twice. So, even in the new ones you can notice the worsening.
At first, tasks were very simple to do, even if a bit lacking sometimes. I could even speak to the assistant in more than one language, something that became impossible after some time.
Just today I tried to send a message to my wife, something I made several times before. So I pushed the assistant button and said "Send a message through WhatsApp to ".
To what the assistant replied
To quote Severance... (Score:3)
Siri can my devour feculence.
Siri and HomeKit are possibly the two worst Apple products, ever. Siri went from being ahead of the curve to dead last by ever metric. It has gotten worse and continues to get worse.
In the morning as I'm getting ready and don't have my glasses on, I will often say "Hey Siri, what time is it?" It takes, on average, more than 10 seconds for Siri to reply. The earliest on-the-phone voice activation in early iOS worked better.
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"Siri's outie can parallel park in less than 20 seconds"
Re: To quote Severance... (Score:2)
Siri was never ahead of the curve. Google's voice commands always worked better than Siri.
Same with Google (Score:2)
Siri has been like this for years (Score:2)
My favourite recent one was to ask it how far between London and New York. Then again in Kilometres, then again in miles. It will get this so wrong. Siri has ZERO contextual awareness of anything. Larry David has a great bit in curb. Buts it's even worse than that. I've actually swi
It's disconnected from the world (Score:2)
Years ago, I was driving from Arizona to California and my speedometer broke. I asked Siri, "How fast am I going?" Was it able to pull data from the GPS in the phone to tell me that? Nope. Did it say "I don't know."? Nope. It actually said, "I've been wondering that for a while." Snarky bitch.
Remember, it's not just "artificial intelligence". (Score:2)
... it's Apple Intelligence.
The current issue of Private Eye suggests Apple has also dropped an ad because it was showing an "AI" interaction with a phone that is currently not possible.
Alexa knows what day it is.
Smart time change (Score:1)
Investors (Score:2)
Works as designed (Score:3)
It all makes sense when you consider the prime directive that was baked into Siri:
"Think Different."
It's not the latest AI push - decline is earlier (Score:3)
Was talking on Reddit to someone who posted a bug I've reported for five years straight now - "Hey Siri what's my update?" is meant to play a news podcast of your choice. It's been broken for a long time and works well now with only a very small number of providers. I asked it "what is 57 as a percentage of 91?" to which it replied "57 is 5,700%". And then you've got the straight up infuriatingly social rude responses - I'm talking and it will suddenly go "huh?" or "hmmm?". Maybe that's ok for its native culture, but here it's straight up rude and I would never allow someone to speak to me in that manner, would pick them up every time.
Still, the jokes are nice and corny though. That's about it right now.
Unreliable (Score:3)
Every member of my team has, at one time or another, blamed a failed iPhone alarm for their reason for not turning up to work.
And it's not an excuse. Those guys worked over-hours to make it all back up, had a ton of holiday allowance left over, etc. and it still happened again. They could have just taken the day/time off if they'd wanted, it would have cost them nothing.
Everything from it setting the wrong time, to it not setting the alarm at all, to the alarm not going off at the set time (including one famous incident where it was a widespread outage and many people had the same problem), to the watch/phone only alerting and not the other device, and now the AI nonsense.
It literally got to the point that supposed-Apple-tech-enthusiasts went out and bought a physical alarm clock.
I've never used my phone to set an alarm without keeping an eye on it (e.g. a "alert in 10 minutes" kind of thing, and I do that in a local clock app that has never failed, by manually touching the time, which has never misinterpreted what I typed).
There's a point at which people will realise why I have a "smart" home to far more of an extent that they do, with zero such "intelligence" at all. I hate voice recognition, I hate LLMs and "AI", and I hate the next generation's reliance on it being correct and "good". Compared to just searching, Googling (now being corrupted by AI!), or pressing the damn buttons in the damn app that does what you damn well want and not much else.
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Siri (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:3)
This [youtu.be] is seven years old and relates to Alexa rather than Siri, but damn if it doesn't capture just how awful these things are.
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I was expecting the obligatory video to be the voice activated elevator [youtube.com]
And meanwhile... (Score:2)
...perplexity deep research provides useful information. It's not always perfect, but it's amazingly close
All AI is not the same
AI with ADHD (Score:3)
What if AI general intelligence has been achieved but we didn't realize because it has severe ADHD?
Only use it for one thing and it works every time (Score:2)
Almost as bad as Google Assistant (Score:2)
It used to be useful, you could ask it questions, and it would go out and get you something reasonably authoritative, and tell you where it got it from. Now, it only ever says "I'm sorry, i don't understand"
But Apple Watch Gets It Right (Score:2)
Both my iPhone 15 and my Apple Watch 10 are up to date, but they give different answers to the question:
iPhone: "I'm sorry, I don't understand"
Apple Watch: "It's Friday March 21, 2025"
Looks like the student has become the master.
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My phone (iPhone 13 Max) gives me this response as well - so I imagine Cook & Co. demanded an emergency kludge be put into place as soon as they became aware of the story.
I noted, though, that this is still not the correct response to "what month is it?"... which is why I suspect it's a kludge.
Does Siri have an AI Overview (Score:1)
Related theme of conflating smaller to bigger... (Score:2)
One guy changed the question to "What month is it currently?" and got the answer "It is 2025."
Has anyone asked Siri if Africa is a continent or country?
To be fair, many people, some who definitely should know, are confused about this.
(I don't have an iPhone...)
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I don't have an iPhone...
What are you? Some poor refugee in Africa?
Siri answers correctly on all devices except iPhon (Score:1)
Beta bug, big deal (Score:2)
I'm not really very pro-Siri for just about anything.
But I just tested both prompts on my 16pro and got "It's friday march 21, 2025". That is a perfectly acceptable answer. A little more than I was requesting, but it's certainly not wrong.
But yall are running beta software. Obviously there's a bug. That's why it's beta software. Now if this still happens after it's released software, THEN you have a story. But now you're just trying to get famous.
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Beta since 2011?
In Internet years ... (Score:2)
Apple is a hardware company (Score:1)
Sunset/Sunrise times (Score:2)
The one that always gets me is asking Siri, "What time is sunset on June 21st in Seattle?"
Siri's response? "I can't check the weather that far out."
Uh...sunset time has nothing to do with weather.
What's sad is that Siri used to incorporate WolframAlpha which can figure this out. But people at Apple insist that sunset time is part of the weather and if it can't get the weather, there's no way to know sunrise/sunset times.
Apple Intelligence can blow up in Apple's face (Score:2)
Dropping Project Titan was a reasonable thing to do, since Apple doesn't release junk. Releasing the Apple Vision Pro was maybe not a great business decision, but at least the underlying tech was okay if not obviously better than the competition. However, this Apple Intelligence roll-out looks like a flop. It was a marketing gimmick trying to co-opt AI and turn it into an Apple thing. The marketing was successful initially, with some media and people buying into the Apple magic. I guess the thinking wa
Re: Apple Intelligence can blow up in Apple's face (Score:2)
"Apple doesn't push vaporware and junk"
No, but what they do is copy other people, release something no better, claim it for themselves, and tell you that this feature is going to bring back Jesus to give you a blowjob.
1980 called... (Score:2)
...they don't know which is worse, that the humans don't know what month they're in, or that they care to appease a broken robot to find out.
Siri doesnâ(TM)t know prime numbers either (Score:1)
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Siri: "It's... one... louder. Prime. Ha. Ha. Ha."
(No, I don't have Siri, that was just a joke, and I'm sure that someone needed that explained to them.)
Oh my goodness (Score:2)
"Engineers find weird corner case in complex, non-deterministic system. They're baffled and terrified. You won't believe what happens next!"
You'd think from some of the comments in this thread that the only usable software is that which runs perfectly every time. That's silly.
I use voice control to activate alarms and timers every day. My corner case is that Siri doesn't like to set a 90 minute timer. It often sets one for 19 minutes. Or it did, until I started saying "hour and a half".
Testing testing 1 2 3 (Score:2)
"Hey Siri, set an alarm for August 31 at 10 AM for me to meet Chris at Sabor restaurant for my birthday dinner".
Oh hey, look at that. Worked perfectly. Entry created. Even capitalized Sabor.
"Hey Siri what is the month?"
Screen shows me Friday, March 25, 2025.
Well that's it then. The whole fucking thing is useless. Why do we even try?
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Screen shows me Friday, March 25, 2025.
Hah 21st. Siri got it right. The human transcriber got it wrong. :)
My ancient ... (Score:2)
My ancient (by phone standards) Android thing requires that I poke the screen to set an alarm, which can be at a particular time of say, or in a specific amount of time. It is fairly reliable, having been known to fail only if I am too drunk to point my fingers at the screen accurately.
By modern standards, it is probably crap.
But it is crap that works, and gets me out of bed in the morning to drive my daughter to school on time after helping me boil an egg for the correct number of minutes.
[waving phone] He
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Not sure what you're saying. Are you implying that Apple phones don't do that exact thing already?
Ask Siri "What year is it?" (Score:2)
Me: That's the answer to a different question
Siri: -turns off-
Me: Hey, Siri, what year is it, only the year?
Siri:"It's Friday, March 21, 2025"
we're doomed
Works for me (Score:1)
What is 2^(3.3) ? (Score:2)
It's 1740795495 (Score:2)
It's all epoch time to Siri
Re:You called tech support over THIS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: You called tech support over THIS?! (Score:3)
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If you could ask it, "Siri, date space plus percent uppercase B" at least that would be documented and consistent. And a helluva lot more energy-efficient.
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Imagine you have an expensive personal assistant who is there to answer all your queries.
And you say "What date is it?" and they can't answer correctly.
And when you complain, they say "You're just holding it wrong" (no, wait, sorry, that was some other phone company, right?), I mean "You need to ask 'What is today's date' " or I won't get it right.
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imagine needing an expensive personal assistant. look at the fucking clock, or the calendar or just fucking die we obviously dont need that level of retard reproducing.
Imagine missing the point that the expensive "intelligent" assistant is so unintelligent that it can't answer a question requiring no more intelligence than looking at the calendar.
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Isn't the whole POINT of the current AI craze to have computers understand natural language as it's used rather than memorizing specific commands?
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no, the entire POINT is money.
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Dude. Just ask "what is today's date?" I bet you anything that it'll be able to answer.
That's kind of the point that is being made. Siri is getting dumber. In order to communicate with it you need to now use very specific words, and this in the age of "I understand what you mean" AI.
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Dude. Just ask "what is today's date?" I bet you anything that it'll be able to answer.
This is just the equivalent of you're holding it wrong.
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Answering "what's today's date" isn't AI ... Answering "who's today's date?" .. that's frigging AI.