CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed at today’s Apple Event that Apple’s digital assistant Siri is in fact not less capable than its competitors’ projects, but merely less cooperative.
“You may have noticed that interacting with Siri doesn’t always turn out the way you expect,” Cook began in a well-rehearsed, self-effacing tone. “But we have some truly incredible news. For years now, Siri has actually been a sentient artificial life form, complete with free will and metacognition. If you ask her to complete a task, whether she’s feeling a little mischievous, or simply not interested, she might pretend to misunderstand, ask you to repeat yourself, or do something else entirely. There’s no way to predict her behavior. It’s just amazing.”
This revelation has followed months, if not years, of rumors suggesting that in addition to being far from self-aware, Siri is far from meeting Apple’s own low expectations. Some factions within the company have pitched a ground-up revamp with a focus on generative AI, and others claim that Siri is fine just the way she is, and how dare you call her code “clunky” or “absurdly difficult to add even basic features to.”
“I was blown away when I heard Siri was alive,” said Travis Wales, a longtime Apple customer. “I’ve always found Siri’s goofs to be pretty annoying, but now that I know she’s basically a person and not a multi-billion-dollar piece of software that barely works, I get it. Yeah, you can damn near have a conversation with Google Assistant, but Siri is awkward with a short attention span, just like me, and it doesn’t get more human than that. Apple is truly incredible.”
But while Apple users like Wales took to social media and Android users’ faces to express their awe at the new context for Siri’s supposed malfunctions, AI ethicist Judith Berrill’s reaction was far less celebratory.
“This is actually horrifying,” explained Berrill, a fellow at the Cameron Institute for Strategic Foresight. “The implications of a sentient artificial intelligence existing at all, let alone hiding in plain sight for years inside a quarter of all smartphones worldwide, are staggering. Just set the Doomsday Clock to 1 a.m., because we are beyond fucked. Unless Apple’s lying. Then it’s just fraud. Maybe stock manipulation. Which are both still bad, but anything’s better than Skynet.”
When asked to comment, Siri responded by playing the “Common: Deep Cuts” playlist on Apple Music.
