Apple’s much ballyhooed artificial intelligence system conked out yesterday for several hours as many iPhone toting folks were forced to resort to actually typing things into their phones like some sort of monkey.
Siri isn’t just a simple piece of voice control software. To function properly, Siri must communicate with one of Apple’s servers for additional information. For example, when you ask Siri what the weather is like in Nashville, Tenn., it plays an elaborate game of telephone with a main database that has the information, and then updates you with the answer.
The problem here is that Siri was unable to connect to itself, unable to have a conversation with its own enormous decentralized hive mind. It was back up by the end of the day. When the Mobile Beat reporter asked Siri where it had been all day, it brought back the names of various hair salons and day spas. We all have days like that, Siri.
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