So when it comes to artificial intelligence, who is smarter, Apple’s Siri or Google Now? There are two components to this question; voice/language recognition and data mining. As one might expect, Google is the clear winner in the data mining category. But as the following list of questions shows, Google Now also possess vastly superior voice recognition traits. On the other hand, Siri could not even understand most of these questions by voice, and even if it did or I typed them, the result was a simple Bing search. So try them out yourself.
- Who is the queen of Jordan?
- Status of flight 9W229
- Who is Manmohan Singh?
- When was Manmohan Singh the finance minister of India?
- Who is Guru Gobind Singh?
- What is Sikhism?
- Who was the third guru of Sikhism?
- Birthday of Nehru?
- When did the US gain it’s independence from Britain?
- When did Angela Merkel become the Chancellor of Germany?
- How long did the British rule India?
Now one can argue that Siri is not really meant for yielding useful information. It’s only good for calling, sending messages, setting reminders and answering stupid questions with stupid answers at a party. But except the last mundane point, Google Now also does the same job but way better. So as it stands now, sorry Siri, you suck and I really miss my Nexus 4 :(. Oh I should also mention, Google Now has way more spoken languages than Siri including English (India) complete with best Indian accent I have heard from a machine.
Lastly, if you got thirty minutes to spare, watch this video comparison between Google Now, Siri and Cortana.
Peace out,
Nishan