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Okay, so tomorrow, Apple’s going to announce iOS 5’s new feature, Assistant, which allows you to control your iPhone 4S using just your voice. Big deal, you might be thinking, somewhat sarcastically. But it is a big deal.
In fact, one of the co-founders of the company behind Apple’s Assistant technology says it’s no less than a “world-changing event.”
Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky has given an interview to 9to5Mac.
It’s a great read: Siri was bought out by Apple in April 2010, two months after their first app hit the App Store. Winarsky explains why the Assistant technology will require a minimum of an A5 processor and 1GB of RAM, but this is the real money quote:
Make no mistake: Apple’s ‘mainstreaming’ Artificial Intelligence in the form of a Virtual Personal Assistant is a groundbreaking event. I’d go so far as to say it is a World-Changing event. Right now a few people dabble in partial AI enabled apps like Google Voice Actions, Vlingo or Nuance Go. Siri was many iterations ahead of these technologies, or at least it was two years ago. This is REAL AI with REAL market use. If the rumors are true, Apple will enable millions upon millions of people to interact with machines with natural language. The PAL will get things done and this is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking another technology revolution. A new computing paradigm shift.
Granted, he helped find the bloody company, but he’s probably right. Apple has revolutionized the way we interact with our computers three different times now. Is tonight the eve of the fourth major revolution?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
