When Apple first launched “Siri“, your own “personal assistant” as they called it, people loved the concept. Siri had a name, it is a “she”, and she is funny. Siri as a technology was revolutionary – it’s novel and often a useful tool in times of boredom, yet it is also practical.
But is there a darker side to Siri? If one begins to read between the lines of mainstream media hype, a disturbing pattern seems to be appearing. We reported recently on an autistic boy who has become “best friends” with Siri (you can read about that here), and it was a story that the media covered heavily.
Today, a story is spreading about how “Siri saved a young man’s life” in Tennessee. While the technology behind Siri is useful, some are wondering if humans aren’t being conditioned to put all of our trust into artificial intelligence – something Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have both warned humanity about in the last few months alone.
Today The New York Post reported the following story:
Eighteen-year-old Sam Ray says the voice recognition service on his iPhone — famously named Siri — called emergency dispatchers after his truck fell on him while he tried to make repairs.
Ray tells media outlets that a jack collapsed, pinning him under nearly 5,000 pounds of metal in a location where he couldn’t be easily seen or heard. He says he was trying to get free when he heard Siri activate.
He says: “I said ‘Call 911,’ and that was all it said.”
Rutherford County dispatcher Christina Lee says she first thought it was a mistaken pocket-dial, but then she heard his screams for help and sent crews, who rescued him.
Ray and Lee met Friday for the first time after the July 2 incident.
So, what do you think? Is this story just another step into the world of having humanity brainwashed into putting trust into Artificial Intelligence, or is it simply a wonderful piece of tech that some people read too much into?