There was a story recently that was picked up and spun by many tech blogs based on a job posting at Apple (no longer available) for a writer to "help the Siri team evolve Siri as a distinct, recognizable character." Of course Siri's dialog is scripted—which must be a massive job—but the listing got a lot of people thinking more directly about the implications of this.
In a segment this morning on NPR, No Mercy For Robots: Experiment Tests How Humans Relate To Machines, Alix Spiegel discusses research into how people react to robots emotionally and shows that humans do honor, for instance, the rule of reciprocity with machines. This is very significant for Apple and Siri. As I have written before, Google (and eventually Facebook) have a huge advantage over Apple in terms of the contextual information that its "intelligent agents" can pull from. What Apple has over its competitors is a ton of information about how people use its products. Not about every piece of data in the world, like Google, or every social interaction, like Facebook, but about the activity in its self-referential walled garden.
In some ways, what Apple knows about its users is more intimate than these others, and that could be the source of its advantage in mobile devices, particularly phones. Steve Jobs liked to think that he knew what consumers wanted before they did, and the company has been acting on that assumption, even after his death. Siri is, in many ways, the apotheosis of this hubristic idea.
But Google does it better. Google Now does a much better job, moment to moment, in anticipating the information that a user needs than Siri.
So what can Siri do better? Have an emotional relationship with a user. And that, it seems, was the point of that job listing. Google Now does not attempt personality, merely efficiency, and given that company's strengths, I think this is a good design decision. But if Apple cannot compete on sheer efficiency, can it make up for it with charm?
This is in fact one of the main uses for "personality" in humans—to make up for deficits. Think of the "class clown" who masks their insecurity with humor. Or the bossy person who is hiding what they don't understand behind bluster. Or the flirtatious person who is actually afraid of intimacy. Why can't this strategy work for machines as well?
Even if Google can best Apple on a tactical level, search for search, can Apple beat Google on a strategic level by creating an emotional bond with its customers? In many ways, Apple has already done this through the design of its products. People love them and treat them with intimacy and attentiveness.
Could it be that the job to "develop and write original dialog to support new Siri capabilities," could be just as important as those capabilities themselves, and the hardware that supports them? This is what is referred to as "emotional design," and it is related, as well, to "behavior design." It is a big part of the future of human-machine interaction. If Apple can excel here, it will earn a place in the internet of things as a master coordinator for the next genration of ubiquitous smart devices.
One question is if and when Apple will open Siri up to developers to make additional personas. This would require a very detailed API, because it is not just a matter of swapping voices. The what is said is as important as how it is said. It is a worthy topic to research whether machines need to talk in the same language and idiom as a user to really connect. Can a perpetually young, female Siri create as strong an emotional bond with a wide variety of users as more custom-built personalities? That would be a whole other round of job postings!
BONUS ROUND: A video of Christoph Bartneck's experiment, mentioned in the NPR segment above, in which a robot begs the subject not to switch it off.
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