Surprising Discovery on Siri by Apple

Apparently, Siri won't find an abortion clinic for you, but it will find Planned Parenthood institutions.

This shows the original source of this discovery, while this video shows Siri in action.

In RWBY, every girl is Best Girl.

I lost when they asked "Find me a hooker" and it found one.

OK, just what exactly went wrong when Apple was programming that thing? I have a hard time imagining that they actually decided to single out abortion clinics for censorship compared to all of the other stuff SIRI could find! It's gotta be some sort of lobbyist group or odd hiccup in the system that causes abortion clinics to get blocked of all things...

edited 1st Dec '11 5:56:48 AM by SgtRicko

After reading some more, it appears to be a bug in the coding. When you say "Abortion clinic" it seeks with keyword "Abortion", which is not used by the clinics in their names. So Siri won't find any clinics that have name "abortion" on them. However, like Young Turks demosntrated, it doesn not block them. Seach for "Plan Parenthood" creates results, as appreatently "pregnancy crisis".

Basicly, Apple needs to patch that makes "abortion <=> pregnancy" or something so that it seeks correct stuff.

Still...

"Find me a hooker" "This escort is not far from you"

The best hypothesis I've heard to explain this is that the majority of people who programmed and tested Siri were men - which meant that while all the fiddly details in things that men would want to find were worked out, things that women specifically might want to search for were never tested - which leads to problems like this (or, I've also seen, difficulties in finding Plan B, Rape helplines or domestic violence shelters).

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^ A programming bug sounds much more plausible.

edited 1st Dec '11 9:33:27 AM by storyyeller

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Apple has copped to it being faulty without their knowledge.

Also, its worse than just the fact that it gives out info on hookers but not on abortion clinics: asking for abortion clinics leads some women to Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which are anti-abortion fronts meant to brow-beat women into having pregnancies and give out intentionally misleading and false medical information.

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

We're seriously holding a computer program up to moral and ethical human standards?

Guys, Apple's a cool company and all, and Jobs was a smart man, but he wasn't the Christ, and the company isn't the church.

Though Lord knows that whenever Apple finally spearheads robotics and is successful at it, people will short, "Of course they didn't give it a vagina, sexist bastards!"

Rather to say this would be a bad thing, had it not turned out that it's a glitch in coding. If they had deliberatly left out abortion clinics, it would be pushing on a propaganda, but in this case, it turn out to be simple oversight in the code. I expect them to patch it ASAP to get this incident under wraps.

Of course. It's a tool; made by humans, for humans. What other standards would you have us use? The dolphin ones?

Meaning what, exactly? Sense, your statement makes none.

Quite the opposite, as we've known since the days of Betamax vs VHS that your platform will fail if we can't use it for porn.

edited 1st Dec '11 6:36:37 PM by GreatLich

My point is, why in the world are we holding a computer program up to moral and ethical human standards when it itself is incapable of holding said standards. We hold it to human use, because it was, as you say, made by humans for humans. Simple enough, you wouldn't make it for someone else other than who it was intended for. But it's a program, designed to carry out certain functions based on indifferent input from an external source. Morals or ethics never come into the equation.

It's akin to calling my computer a faggot because when I search for "porn", homosexual porn appears first before heterosexual porn, or calling Google racist because their background color by default is white.

Doesn't surprise me. That's the price of euphemisms.

I was originally thinking it was because it had the word "abort" and was taking it as a command.

edited 1st Dec '11 9:08:38 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Newfagle, someone wrote that computer program and thus someone put those things into program. If a program would return "Church" for every attempt to seek "Atheism", someone would have decided that said program returns those results.

Beside, we do not hold program responsible, we hold the company/people behind the program responsible.

Except we already have a perfectly logical reason for the problem: doublespeak on the part of abortion clinics.

So, unless there happens to be a fuckton of abortion clinics with that in the name, or that advertise a lot, I imagine it won't return a lot of hits. That, and about 87% of the US doesn't even have an abortion clinic, so it's quite possible in a lot of places that it has nothing to show you...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Someone posted an alternate link in another thread that shows it is not only "abortion" that Siri seems ill-equipped to deal with, but questions regarding birth-control and emergency contraception.

Here it is.

edited 2nd Dec '11 4:59:54 AM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

That, too, I could chalk up to contraceptives not actually being widely available in the country.

I mean, if it actually gives you hits for Planned Parethood, it obvously does recognize things that actually are common.

I am now known as Flyboy.

"That, too, I could chalk up to contraceptives not actually being widely available in the country."

I have no idea where you live, but I'm pretty sure nearly every gas station stocks condoms. Anyway, all you have to do to corroborate your hypothesis is do a google search.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:05:50 AM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

The burden of proof is on the accuser kashchei.

hashtagsarestupid

Since you're so well versed in the codes of debate, you must explain to me how USAF's statement fails to qualify as an accusation when mine apparently does not.

Besides, my own google results would be irrelevant to anyone who lives outside of my city.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:33:24 AM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

an accusation was made against the defendant (Apple) and USA took it upon himself to come to it's defence. it's up to a surrogate accuser to poke holes in that defence and perform a google search.

hashtagsarestupid

An "accusation" was made with corroborating evidence. The defense was not. There is no onus on a "surrogate accuser" to do anything when the defense is speculative and unfounded. Does that clear things up for you?

I'm not objecting to doing the google search, which I've done for my own purposes a number of times in any case. The point is that the onus isn't on me. And, as I've said, my personalized google hits are useless, because they're location based. Also, I don't use an iPhone, so I have no idea what Siri would say to me should I put the same search terms forward to her.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:43:03 AM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

The point is is that the obligation is on the accuser to validate/debunk the evidence presented by the defence, how ever as you can only do a google search on your local area*

your request on the part of USA is reasonable.

Otherwise the onus is on you.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:55:29 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

"The point is is that the obligation is on the accuser to validate/debunk the evidence presented by the defence"

Exactly; there has been no evidence presented by the defense, so there is nothing to debunk. Please read a little more carefully in the future so as to spare us this talking in circles and wasting time.

"which for the record was added while I was writing my previous post"

That's a strangely petty comment, especially since it apparently took you three minutes to write that post.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:59:38 AM by kashchei

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?

You accused me of wilfully overlooking your posts. I'm not going let that stand regardless of your opinion rising it.

edited 2nd Dec '11 6:05:51 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

I was just making sure that you saw the edit, since you had not responded to it. Chill with the persecution complex.

And better than thy stroke; why swellest thou then?