The hub-bub surrounding the, delicately put, suggestion bias by Apple's Siri has become a fascinating case study on how entitled people feel toward technology. Most people, at present, are using her for silly party tricks (allegedly, if you say "I'm feeling lonely" she might recommend an escort service...though we just tried and she only said "If you say so," so either Siri wised up or, gasp, something published online was false). Nevertheless, upon discovering a perceived bias regarding Siri's position on family planning, the iPhone community was in an uproar. Now, I don't want to talk about that specific issue at all...but the idea of a user feeling entitled for a specific, accurate answer made me think about entitlement in online and mobile search on a broader scale.
Given that Siri gives one clear answer (rather than a variety for the user to determine accuracy) her services are akin to Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" function, or a more sophisticated version of Cha-Cha. I'm curious about the possibility of integrating sponsored ads with these platforms (and how much of an uproar that may cause). But, imagine if you asked Siri to suggest a great first date restaurant in Hell's Kitchen and her recommendation was actually a paid advertisement. The main question with that scenario, is whether there will come a time when the convenience of getting a single answer outweighs the benefit of more organic and/or trustworthy result? Certainly, there could be many opportunities for specific stores to create a mobile assistant app by, say, Amazon where you could ask for a certain type of book and she'd make a recommendation that you could buy right there, or listen to the first few pages being read using native technology on your mobile. The idea of the assistant is interesting, the idea of the biased assistant (especially biased toward specific, possibly paid-for, content) could be a very interesting proposition for the future of technology.
Thoughts??
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