TrueKnowledge's answer to Siri, Evi, Arrives

These things might be useful when you can actually have a conversation with them, and they can dialectically guide you to complex answers. When you ask an unambiguous question that can be answered immediately, you've already done all the work that requires intelligence.

My main problem with Evi is the same as the problem I have with Siri - I don't really see a need for it. It's kind of cool at first to have a computer listen to my voice and tell me what I want, but it's only marginally faster than typing it out myself (and not necessarily as accurate).

On a related note, natural-language processing may be useful in this context for people who aren't very tech-savvy, but after years of using less intelligent search engines, I've mentally trained myself not to use complete sentences in web search. For example:

'When does the nearest Duane Reade close?'

vs.

'Duane Reade hours 10036'.

The former might be more natural for the average person, but I knew without even testing those out that the latter would be more likely to give me the what I was looking for. (The same applies to the less-natural 'When does Duane Reade close 10036?'

The latter is faster to type, and if you're used to using search engines frequently, it's actually a lot more 'natural' than the first one, despite not being a complete sentence. So for me, the appeal of interacting with a human-like computer is outweighed by the annoyance of having to think like I'm talking to a human, not a computer.

That's not to discredit all the hard work that went into these - this is essentially the first generation, and I think a lot of great stuff can be built off of these tools. But at the time being, I can't imagine using Evi or Siri in daily life.