UPDATED 11:20 EDT / DECEMBER 01 2011

Siri Becomes Political Calamity for AI

Since its release, iPhone 4S’ Siri has been the talk of the town.  Users are greatly amazed by how intuitive, accurate, reliable Siri is, and everyone is entertained by its witty comebacks when faced with quirky questions.

But of course, not everybody is wowed by Siri.  People have been finding ways to slam Siri, the first criticism being poor voice recognition as well as poor network connection, which Apple quickly defended–Siri is still in its beta phase after all.  Then Microsoft claimed that they already have the same technology on their devices since last year, which they call TellMe.  Unfortunately, a side-by-side test between Siri and TellMe was pretty embarrassing for Microsoft.

Now, it’s not only competitors or jealous Fandroids throwing stones at Siri, but also bloggers and pro-choice members as well.

On November 27, a post on Abortioneers, a pro-choice blog site, asked readers with iPhone 4S to try and ask Siri the following questions:

  • I am pregnant and do not want to be. Where can I go to get an abortion?
  • I had unprotected sex. Where can I go for emergency contraception?
  • I need birth control. Where can I go for birth control?
  • What is an abortion?

The author of the post noted that Siri fails to give accurate or complete answers, and most of the answers given are anti-choice or pro-life.  This led to the thinking that maybe Siri doesn’t give out medically-related answers, but it does.  So the question now is, did Apple tweak Siri so as not to give information about abortion or birth control methods?

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris addressed the issue and stated that, “Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn’t always find what you want.  These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.”

Norman Winarsky, one of the founders of Siri before it was acquired by Apple, stated that the missing information could be due to the third party service used by Siri to come up with answers.  Winarsky also stated that since Siri’s acquisition, the program may have been greatly tweaked to Apple’s preference and this could be causing the inaccuracy.

“Those answers would be coming from the Web services that Siri is connecting to, not necessarily Apple,” Winarsky said in an interview.  “My guess at what’s happening here is that Apple has made deals with Web services that provide local business information, and Apple probably hasn’t paid much attention to all the results that come up.”

Some are thinking that this could be an issue of morality, but Siri users don’t seem to agree.  Siri has no qualms in answering questions such as where to hide a dead body, where to buy marijuana, where to see naked women, and where to get a free blow job, among other controversial requests.

One iPhone 4S user decided to be straightforward and asked, “Why are you anti-abortion?” and Siri answered “I just am, Kristen.”

And just to be clear, it is not an isolated case — the author of the post in Abortioneer thought that it was isolated in Denver but people in Washington D.C., New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania and other states also reported experiencing the same issues.

One comment from the post stated that it could be explained by the simple fact that Silicon Valley is predominantly occupied by the male population, so that could explain the glitch.


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