Android Chief: A Phone Is Not A Personal Assistant

A clear Siri diss.

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Siri, the iPhone 4S's artificially intelligent "personal assistant" may be winning over the hearts and minds of millions of consumers, but at least one high profile member of the tech community is not a fan. Andy Rubin, Google's head of Android, took the stage at AllThingsD's AsiaD conference today and suggested that Apple's new killer app was misguided.

“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant," Rubin said. "Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”

While the latest version of Android doesn't feature an interactive AI system, it does offer new and improved voice transcription for dictating text messages, emails and notes.

Rubin said he wasn't yet sold on AIs like Siri being the wave of the future.

“We’ll see how pervasive it gets,” he said.

More with the Android boss at AllThingsD.

[AllThingsD]

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