Siri was incredibly cool when it first came on the iPhone 4s out back in 2011 but times have changed and our expectations are much higher for what a digital personal assistant can do for us. Wired has a huge in-depth new report on a startup called Viv Labs, which was cofounded by three engineers who originally worked on Siri and who are now building a “radical new AI” that will make Siri look positively primitive by comparison.
So what is it about Viv’s new AI project that’s so “radical?” Wired found that many details are hard to come by since Viv Labs operates with an Apple-like secrecy. However, Wired says that “the few outsiders who have gotten a look speak about it in rapturous terms,” while renowned AI expert Oren Etzioni tells the publication that Viv could be “the future of intelligent agents and a multibillion-dollar industry.”
Essentially, it seems like Viv is trying to make a consumer-friendly artificial intelligence assistant that’s capable of learning without any human input and that can predict what we want before we even ask for it. Viv’s founders also tell Wired that they want to make accessing artificial intelligence as natural as accessing electricity and that they’re designing Viv to be in constant communication with something they’re only referring to as a “global brain.”
“I’m extremely proud of Siri and the impact it’s had on the world, but in many ways it could have been more,”Adam Cheyer, on of Viv’s cofounders tells Wired. “Now I want to do something bigger than mobile, bigger than consumer, bigger than desktop or enterprise. I want to do something that could fundamentally change the way software is built.”
Be sure to check out Wired’s full report by clicking the source link below.
