To Boy With Autism Became BFF With Apple's Siri By Judith Newman

817 Words4 Pages

In her essay entitled “To Siri, with Love: How One Boy with Autism Became BFF with Apple’s Siri” Judith Newman counter argues the fallacy that technology isolates mankind with the idea that technology can be exceedingly beneficial to people who struggle with psychological disabilities. She elaborates specifically on the function of Siri and how she is a good teacher and friend and because of such impact SRI has been inclined to better improve it’s capabilities. She begins by explaining how her son with autism became so intrigued with Siri. Gus her son had never before seen or heard of Siri. As soon as he figured out that Siri provided conversation on his topics of interest those others could not expand on unremittingly he grew an attachment. This excited his mother because she no longer had to carry on repetitive conversations with her son. Though Gus understood Siri was not human he thought her worth was fairly great. To the extent that he …show more content…

As for her son he uses Siri as a way to better his ability to have real conversations with others. She continues to explain how it was successful and her son was able to carry on a logical conversation with her for the first time in his thirteen years of existence. Achievements like these have been seen by SRI and have got them thinking of new ways to better virtual assistants. These virtual assistants their hoping will carry on even more complex conversations than they already are. In fact children won’t even have to ask for information because the assistant will anticipate what they like. Their hoped improvements will also include a better way for engagement. They are hoping to program the assistants to talk in such a way that the autistic listener will be more receptive. Aside from this the assistant will teach the learner how to look the person their talking to right into their eyes when