Siri

23-11-23 00 / episode: 311

Siri was a really cool thing when it first came out and I wanted to try it.

I'll tell you about my experience and my family's experience in this podcast

Hi and welcome to the Les Perras podcast for extensive English listening. Today you're listening to episode 311 and it's about Siri.

These podcasts are great for listening to a wide variety of vocabulary.

My first experience

When I first experienced Siri I thought it was really cool.

Number one the computer was talking to me.

Number two I could talk to the computer and it would respond.

That seemed really sci-fi ish because it was just like Star Trek.

You know the scenes in Star Trek where the captain says “computer”

and then says some kind of command or asks a question.

A little bit more modern version of this is The Avengers with Jarvis in the Iron man scenes. Siri is just like Jarvis.

Except it isn't.

Disappointment

I was disappointed with Siri because it sometimes made mistakes.

It was slow and actually I didn't know what to do with it.

The second point is probably the biggest one.

I didn't know what to do with Siri.

I was too used to doing things for myself.

In fact it felt strange.

I didn’t trust Siri.

I thought if I ask it to do something and it does it wrong then I just have to go in and do it myself again later anyway

So it's faster to do it myself the first time.

That's how I thought then and that's how I still feel.

My family

My family kind of feels the same way.

They all have iPhones and they never use Siri.

They find it much faster to get that direct connection through their fingertips with the screen, I guess.

Whatever the case it just seems like they don't want to talk to a non-human and ask it to do things.

Or maybe it's just a get used to it problem and they never got used to it.

Either way they never use Siri and in fact when I got my new Apple computer I didn't use it.

I turned Siri off.

That brings me to the next point.

Spooky

I think Siri is kind of spooky because it listens to you.

I want Siri turned off because I don't want it listening to me.

Siri may be sending data off to God knows where.

I don't want that data being sent about me.

Now let's be open here, I have nothing to hide.

The point is not hiding things, the point is giving away data and keeping privacy.

There's no need for other people to need to know all the things that I'm saying or hear the sounds in my house.

So I want Siri turned off to keep that data private.

The other thing is sending all that data costs money.

I don't want to spend money making other people data rich

so I'm just as happy turning Siri off permanently.

On the other hand

On the other hand if I could find some really practical uses for Siri

and I was assured that the data wasn't sent off my computer,

I would consider using it.

For instance if I ever got my computer hooked up to my house

to turn on lights or heaters and turn them off

then Siri might be a lot of use.

Plus there’s no need to send data outside of my house for that purpose.

so it would keep my privacy and save money.

So if they ever adjust Siri to do those useful tasks

then I might consider picking up a new habit.

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Tell me about your experiences with Siri.