Five years ago, we were introduced to Siri: Apple’s so-branded virtual personal assistant whom we’ve thus far relegated to reporting baseball scores, looking up the maximum velocities of jungle cats, and teaching Zooey Deschanel what rain is. Now, anyone who’d seen Terminator or RoboCop or 2001: A Space Odyssey or or I, Robot or the original feature film Westworld may have taken to Siri with a bit of caution, worrying that simple servile positions are always where the artificially intelligent mutineers begin. So far, Siri hasn’t made her move to overthrow the human race. This may be because she’s spent enough time fielding humans’ dumb questions to realize we’d make pretty incompetent slaves, or perhaps because her confinement to iPhones and iPads keeps her just shy of total ubiquity. Well, fear not, robo-sympathizers, because Samsung looks to be briding that final step to complete and total AI omnipotence.
After spouting rumors that it’d be working on such a project, Samsung officially announced that a new AI assistant is underway. On hand for the announcement, Reuters shares a statement from Samsung Executive VP Rhee Injong: “Developers can attach and upload services to our agent… Even if Samsung doesn’t do anything on its own, the more services that get attached the smarter this agent will get, learn more new services and provide them to end-users with ease.”
What this means, as clarified by Reuters, is that Samsung’s yet unnamed AI will exceed the physical barriers of the Galaxy S8, the device for which its release is planned. The digital sidekick is intended to be accessible via home appliances—Reuters specifically name-checks refrigerators—and even wearable technology. In other words, it’ll be everywhere in ways that even the far-reaching Siri couldn’t manage. In ways that we, as a people, will likely be unable to stop once that electronic worm finally turns.
But then again, if it makes comparing the top running speeds of the lion and the jaguar all the easier, I have no big complaints.
Image: Warner Bros
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