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The way Siri converses & jokes with the user is the interface. Not all interfaces are graphical.

saturdaysaint said GUI.

I mentioned GUI as an example of an analogous domain where Google's strengths weren't necessarily of any advantage.

No, he did not. He mentioned GUIs in another part of his comment --and then went on to comment on the AI interface:

"""Google has shown us time and time again that big data isn't an advantage in creating graphical user interfaces. My sense is that the problems in an AI interface involve just as much design and interface expertise as they do data expertise""".

Making a UI disappear is much harder than it seems.

(and I don't mean to compare it to the data mining problem, because you just can't)

Siri very much has an interface -- it's just not the graphical part. The voice interface is still an interface, and still needs to be designed as naturally and nicely as possibly.