Young Turks: Siri Won't Find Abortion, Will Find Pot & Hookers

[CherylK]

Run time: 03:59 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMMsHoSdQ0g   Posted on YouTube: December 01, 2011 By YouTube Member: TheYoungTurks Views on YouTube: 10497   Posted on DU: December 01, 2011 By DU Member: CherylK Views on DU: 3660

 
The iPhone 4 assistant Siri will not locate abortion clinics but it will locate marijuana shops, escort services and more. Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur test it out on The Young Turks.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/29/10-things-the-iphone-siri-will-help-you-get-instead-of-an-abortion/

Subscribe to The Young Turks: http://bit.ly/eWuu5i

[targetpractice]

1. Maybe Cenk should ask his new boss about this...

Al Gore is on Apple's Board of Directors, after all. Maybe he can clarify Apple's position.

I thought Cenk was smarter than this.

[Dawgs]

2. Oh shit! You can better than that if you want to hate on Cenk.

Give me a break!

[targetpractice]

5. I love Cenk...

But, this is such a stupid story. There has never been a piece of software that gets everything right in the first release... And, I guarantee that no Siri programmer wrote a single bit of code to purposefully skew results toward an anti-choice position.

I watched the video and was hoping he'd be more pragmatic than he was.

[Dawgs]

14. You may love Cenk, but you obviously don't watch TYT.

They have multiple segments like this one every single day. This story was a national one yesterday so that is why they covered it.

And, I'm not even sure you watched the video. Because, if you did, you would have seen Cenk mention that Apple was probably not deliberately blocking abortion.

You're really trying to hard with this one.

[targetpractice]

15. Wrong.

I do watch TYT several times per week... Not every segment... And, I understand they are somewhat obligated to cover the "meme of the day" just like every other blog

What am I trying hard to do exactly?

If anything, I'm a die-hard Apple fan and product development manager myself... So, I'm trying to defend Apple and the honor of product developers everywhere. I've used Apple products everyday since 1986... So, I'm trying to point out (based on my knowledge of how Apple makes and designs products) that it's highly unlikely Apple or any of it's developers made Siri with anti-choice bias.

I don't understand where your rage at me is coming from, but it seems like your skills for reading between the lines and making up assumptions needs some work.

[ihavenobias]

3. Watch a gotcha!

(Yeah, that was sarcasm)

During the net neutrality debate Cenk came out strong against Google (Google/YouTube is what gets TYT paid online in large part, outside of website members) because Google was in favor of censoring the net.

Why? Because he doesn't care who owns what, he gives his honest opinions (that you can honestly disagree with). At any rate, I'm amused by how right wing critics of TYT now love bringing up some lame/tangential Al Gore motive/connection to everything - note that I am NOT saying YOU are right wing, this is actually the first time I've seen a longtimer on a liberal message board use that line of attack.

[Dawgs]

4. Suspicious, huh?

Backwards thinking on this one.

[targetpractice]

7. I am a gay super-liberal, and I love Cenk...

Also, I'm a software product manager and Apple fan-boy... So, I'm biased to assume that everyone should understand that beta software is never perfect.

Apple is one of the most progressive companies around, and Al Gore's association should add some credence to that contention.

I was hoping that Cenk would be pragmatic and not assume malice when a mistake is a simpler explanation... especially when Apple has demonstrated it's progressive and inclusive nature over the years. But the "Siri is pro-life" meme is making the rounds, and everyone with a blog or YouTube channel should chime in for grabbing page views.

Upon edit: I only brought up Al Gore because of the Apple connection, and the story was presuming Apple's stance on abortion.

[Divine Discontent]

6. good vid Cenk and Ana! This is interesting... and sad! I, like many I know, are hopeful most

pregnancies result in a delivery, but believe it is THE woman's right to choose what she does with her pregnancy, and defend that right strongly.

Isn't abortion legal in this country?

Then why the hell is Apple Corporation thinking no one will notice they block the search for "abortion clinic" from Siri, but will find pregnancy crisis centers? Just sickening... Fundamentalists are a true threat to our civil liberties, and I hope Cenk digs further into this with his boss. :)


http://www.zazzle.com/gop_2012_keeping_millions_out_of_work_to_put_one_bumper_sticker-128944374900409113?rf=238107662556833486

[targetpractice]

8. They are not blocking anything...

Siri gets location data from Yelp and passes it along. Would you look for abortion clinics on Yelp?

Siri has no database of it's own, it also uses Bing and Wolfram Alpha.

I am just amazed at the lack of common sense this story has revealed... It's insulting to women everywhere to suggest that women really looking for information about terminating pregnancy would resort to using a beta feature on an iPhone and be so flummoxed at not getting an answer.

[Divine Discontent]

9. so none of those services provide info on where to find an abortion clinic? why can you find planned

parenthood on them, but not an abortion clinic? seems weird you can find other types of pregnancy solutions, but those databases refuse or don't provide abortion info. just asking, thanks

[targetpractice]

10. I think it's simply because Siri is new...

It doesn't yet understand everything it is asked... It is designed to learn and get better over time... The innovative thing about Siri, is that it tries to understand context and meaning of the words... It's not simply a search engine looking for matching phrases. For example, it will sometimes try to interpret your question based upon the previous question you've asked.

If iPhone owners frequently ask something that Siri doesn't have an answer for, the Apple programmers will update Siri to understand the stuff they didn't think of prior to launching the iPhone.

If anything it's an oversight, not an purposeful omission... If software makers expected their products to do everything for everybody before releasing, nothing would ever be brought to market. Companies like Apple have learned to introduce innovations to the market, and then learn how people react, then fix things with frequent software updates.

[Divine Discontent]

11. ok, thanks! but, man, they've been designing this for an awful long time... just saying.

you would think an update for a very common practice that is legal, would have already been updated at some point, and Siri has been out for quite a while, has it not? (edited to add that I read the wiki on Siri, and the technology is from research going back decades on search patterns, and that Siri was being used on some phones before the iphone 4s, but the 4s for 2 months, surprised an update for a medical surgery that happens thousands of times a day isn't locatable with their system)

[targetpractice]

12. Usually these omissions are picked up in focus groups or quality testing.

It's most likely that the testers (both men and women) never thought to ask that particular question. "Siri Assistant" was developed independently of Apple, and was actually on the App store for some time... Apple acquired the company and made Siri their own... So, before the iPhone 4S... Siri did have experience in the real world. And I doubt that question was every asked by anyone in real life... Now that Siri is really widespread and popular, folks are asking it all kinds of things then posting the results online... Check out http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com

I don't something like this is unusual at all, but I understand how it can feel like slight... Especially, when the oversight is an issue that we're passionate about. And also it stings that obviously Apple spent some time/effort to making Siri answer silly questions like "Where to hide a dead body" and whatnot.

[Divine Discontent]

13. right, they spent time on silly stuff, but when millions of people get the application, and it's

going to be 50 million, shortly, that would mean hundreds if not thousands of people will ask Siri where an abortion clinic is at. Thanks for the convo...


http://www.zazzle.com/gop_2012_keeping_millions_out_of_work_to_put_one_bumper_sticker-128944374900409113?rf=238107662556833486

[targetpractice]

16. Enjoying the convo... not debating you...

I'm a product manager, and am enjoying sharing what I know of how things are done...

When Apple or anyone is developing something like Siri... They don't start with a question like "What are the things Siri should handle?" The universe possibilities is too vast... Instead they ask more focused questions like "Who will buy the iPhone first?" "What does market research tell us about that customer?" and "What will that customer want from Siri?".

Apple knows what types of people are the early adopters of new iPhone models.. They develop profiles including age, income, education level, etc.. Early adopters tend to skew toward men, btw. Next they do user research.... Come up with a list of, say, 100 things they think Siri users ultimately want... They chop that list down to the top 50 things they can realistically do by the launch date... Then issues come up during development, so they chop the list down further to their best guess at the top 30 things they can get done in time (included in this list are also "silly things" because Apple wanted to give Siri a personality from the get go)... So next, they launch the iPhone 4S, and immediately start working on the 70 important things they didn't get to... Then lo and behold after launch they discover 1,000 things they never thought of before based on what millions of users are suddenly actually asking Siri to do in real life. So they come up with a new list of priorities for the next update in a month or so. Rinse and repeat.

That's my guess what happened, backed up by the fact that Apple already acknowledged the lack of "abortion clinic" info as a glitch and promised to address it.

I've chimed in on these threads because I'm an Apple fan, but I'm surprised to see how fellow DU's are assuming that my defense of Apple means I'm anti-choice somehow. Go figure.

Cheers!

[MedicalAdmin]

18. Too bad that is not happening.

I happened to check locally with my friends new 4 and it referred us to the 3 closest family planning clinic and we are in central minnesota (michelle bachmann territory).

Plus it's still in beta release. This is a non story.

[ZombieHorde]

17. After learning about the suicide factories, this is not very surprising. nt

[targetpractice]

21. Not surprising? Why?

How are the two issues connected in your mind?

[ZombieHorde]

22. I think the two issues show Apple doesn't really care about liberal issues.

Abortion and workers' rights are major pillars of liberal values. In modern-day US, the two issues are connected under the umbrella of liberalism.

[targetpractice]

23. Not really...

I agree the "issues are connected under the umbrella of liberalism", but they are no-way connected within the context of Apple. The Siri software team has absolutely nothing to do with the management of the sub-contract manufacturers in China that assemble Apple products.

Read beyond the headlines... It seems like you know nothing about Apple and would probably never buy an Apple product and are jumping on this "Siri is anti-choice" meme to bash a company you already dislike. Apple is one of the most progressive and green companies tech companies, check their record.

The Siri issue was a glitch in a beta product that Apple has already promised to fix. The suicides at the Chinese manufacturing subcontractors are unrelated tragedies, and Apple has taken steps to improve working conditions at those non-Apple factories as well as putting pressure on the Chinese government... Outsourcing manufacturing to China is not unique to Apple, and unfortunately it's no longer possible to manufacture complex electronic products in the US because the entire component supply chain exists only in Asia. That's what unregulated capitalism has brought us.

[dembotoz]

19. some people will defend apple to their grave

if their i phone directed them to enter an internment camp--they would be ok with that...

[targetpractice]

20. I will absolutely defend Apple's product design prowess...

Passionately.

What are you passionate about?

Your argument is imbecilic, but I think you know that... And, I think you also know how to spell iPhone.