One of the big features of the iPhone 4S that gets talked about a lot is the Siri service; you know the one, it’s basically Apple’s voice control system on the phone, that allows you to talk at it and, erm, make it do things. Like tell you what the weather’s like. Or write a text message to your missus, saying you’re working late, when in fact you’re out with your secretary. Y’know, that kind of thing.
Well, anyway, the word is (according to AndroidAndMe) is that Google are working on their own voice control software, and to be frank, if everything I’m reading comes to pass, the future is going to get very interesting indeed, not least because Google are rumoured to be working on a proper AI robot…
Now, I’ll be completely honest, here, that bit of info is just slightly farfetched, innit? An artificial intelligence that can pass the Turing Test 93% of the time? On the one hand, pull the other one, it’s got bells on. On the other hand, this is Google we’re talking about, and you know they must be up to something like that, right?
Since that bit of the story is a bit way out there, let’s look at something a bit more realistic: the fact that they might be working on their own voice control software, codenamed ‘Majel’. Why it’s codenamed that? Simple, it’s named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, as in the wife of the late Gene Roddenberry, who played the voice of the computer on Star Trek. I reckon it’s fair to say that Google’s vision for this service is, in fact, very heavily modelled on Star Trek, since everyone who talks about it says that exact thing.
So, expect to be talking to future versions of phones like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and if that robot story is true, expect them to respond as if they were really human, to the point where you can’t tell they’re not human, most of the time.
That’s either awesome, or scary. Or both. I haven’t decided yet…
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