Former Apple engineer on Siri: Outdated code, hard to beat ChatGPT

Since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene, a lot of people have been looking at the smart assistants in their mobile phones, and the discussion of whether such AI can replace traditional voice-enabled smart assistants is often brought up.

Recently, former Apple engineer John Bukey addressed the topic in an interview, arguing that Siri's code design is outdated and complex, and that it is unlikely to become as powerful as ChatGPT.

Burkey said that Siri's ability to answer simple questions such as "what's the weather like today" and "can you play this song" is extracted by filtering through a database of stored information, resulting in a limited number of requests that Siri can answer. The number of requests Siri can answer is limited, and engineers must constantly add new information to expand its functionality.

Meanwhile, according to the engineer, even updating Siri's basic functionality would take weeks due to its outdated code, and it could take around a year if it wanted to include features like ChatGPT's integrated search.

It's worth noting that earlier this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that voice assistants like Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa were "dumb as a rock".

Interestingly, Apple Siri co-founder Adam Cheyer disagreed, saying that ChatGPT's ability to write articles and develop code automatically makes existing voice assistants on the market look stupid.