Technology: On a Bicycle Built For Two-The iPhone's New Personal Assistant

The recently released iPhone 4s has over 200 new features. One of the coolest is your own virtual assistant. That's right. Your new iPhone 4s has the artificial intelligence feature called Siri.

Siri was founded in December of 2007 by SRI International Artificial Intelligence center. The company raised $8.5 million in 2008, and $15.5 million in 2009 to fund the project. Siri was a spin-off of the CALO (cognitive assistant that learns and organizes), which is regarded as one of the largest artificial intelligence projects ever launched.

Siri was initially introduced as an application in the iTunes App Store. After announcing that the app would be available on Blackberry and Android powered phones, Apple bought the software, and all advances toward non-Apple products were cancelled.

The software uses natural language processing to answer questions, make suggestions, and perform tasks by using an increasing set of web services. The voice recognition engine is powered by a speech technology company called Nuance Communications.

What I'm getting at is that this isn't your everyday, plain Jane software here. Let's say you want to know what new movies are out. Simply press and hold the home button on your iPhone 4s and ask away. Not only will it give you the new movies that are out, but it also puts them in order from highest to lowest rating, and then will tell you the closest theatre that is showing the movie.

And Siri doesn't stop there; she also has a sense of humor. From the videos you can check out on the web, here are a few examples:

"Siri, you're pretty"

"[User], you say that to all your virtual assistants"

"Siri, will you marry me?"

"[User], let's just be friends, okay?"

"Siri, what is the meaning of life?"

"[User], I don't know, but I think there's an app for that."

Siri is also a little sensitive when talking about her friend HAL 9000 from the movie space odyssey. Like HAL 9000, Siri will also sing a few lyrics from Daisy Bell: "On a bicycle built for two."