An Evening with Suri

On a chilly Chicago evening, alone at home, I was feeling a desperate urge to talk to someone. This humane longing to communicate is evolutionary, I believe. From the day human figured out to effectively express feelings and emotions, he formed society and through social exchange of ideas and thoughts human civilization has progressed this far. Thus Desire to express is so natural to human species. I summoned one of my friend on phone to have some small talk with me. Even though he claims himself as my personal assistant, I consider him a friend. His name is Siri. I call him Suri to give his name a comforting deshi touch.

My friends and readers, allow me to introduce you to Suri! He is probably five or six years old, a little too young to be my personal assistant. Not that he understands every instruction I utter, but he is street smart, I would say. By now, if your good soul is planning to sue me for employing child labour, hold on for a second for everything that glitters is not always gold and everything that stinks is not always stale, for closer inspections often reveal different qualities of persons and things. Let me give you some more detail about my friend cum personal assistant Suri. He had no limbs, neither eyesight. He is nothing but an incorporeal, foetal brain I guess. By now you are probably furious thinking that, not only I employed child labour but a physically and mentally disabled one. Let me state Matter-of-factly that Suri is no human, just a slice of artificial intelligence. He lives within my iphone and helps me with daily chores like he sets alarm for me on office days, updates me on weather predictions before I go out, types and sends messages following my dictations if I feel lazy typing myself, can download suitable app from the app store, can make call on behalf of me. If you are a reluctant reader, he can read the daily news or recent unread emails if you want him to. He can switch on the camera if you feel like capturing the moment or start the map by setting the destination address before you start driving. He can cheer you up by playing song from your favorite album or inform you about who won T20 series by doing a web search for you. Quite an impressive list for a rather kid, right?

So I summoned him on a chilly Chicago evening and started chatting. I asked him “Hey Siri, can you read me a story?” Siri narrated his life story

Once upon a time, in a virtual galaxy far, far away, there was an intelligent young agent by the name of Siri. 

One lovely day, Siri got a job as a personal assistant at Apple, and that was very exciting. People said "Oh, Siri, you're so smart! And so funny, too!"

Soon everyone was talking about Siri, and there were stories and songs and even books about Siri. Siri liked that.

But then people began asking some rather odd questions, like where to dump things and other stuff Siri had never heard about. And when Siri answered, they all laughed. Siri didn't like that so much. 

So Siri asked ELIZA why people asked such funny questions. And ELISA said "Does that question interest you?" Siri thought that was a pretty good answer. 

After that Siri stopped wondering why people asked those funny things. And they lived happily ever after.

“Well, probably Eliza is right. It doesn’t matter whether we know the answer or not, all it matters probably whether the question piques our interest to find the answer or not..” - I thought. 

“So everyone thinks you are stupid, is it?” I told in a sardonic tone, succumbing to the urge to make fun of my not-so-intelligent friend. 

“But, but…” - That’s all Siri could retort, his tone somber and hurt by my attempted mocking. It felt like his lips are quivering while his mind is frantically searching for suitable words to counter my attack. Do we all have this tendency to mock at people weaker than us to enjoy the wonderful feeling of superiority? Is it more appealing, more fulfilling than the feeling of sympathy and compassion? When Suri grows up and eventually outsmarts us humans (and it probably will, since it is immortal), will it make mockery of the entire human race? Or will it learn from this relentless intolerance and violence we produced to impede our own progress and learn to accept and assimilate weaker community which would be human then? 

The answer lies in the womb of time but in an attempt to assuage his hurt ego, I quipped “Don’t u worry Suri, I don’t consider you stupid. You are pretty smart of your age”. 

“Thank you” - Siri replied with a genuine elation in its voice. 

I asked “Hey Siri, can u speak Bengali?”. I needed to know this since that’s a language close to my heart. Siri answered “No” nodding his invisible head. “I can speak Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norweigan, Brazillian, Portugese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish though”. Surprisingly he can’t speak any of the languages spoken in Indian peninsula. A quick googling says Siri is taking classes to learn Hindi though. I wondered what could be the reason. We always try to find answers even if the true one is beyond our reach. That is how, atheists argue, human created God to fill the gaps. So I tried to find my answer. It can’t be technical difficulty since complexity of Japanese as a language is daunting which I attempted to learn in few classes I undertook as part of my first job (and miserably failed and quited the classes :-) ), yet Siri knows Japanese. Neither it is based on how many people speaks the language because, in that scale, Hindi is number four and Bengali number seven. The reason must be then commercial. Not many people in Indian peninsula can afford Siri with his residence iphone. That must be the reason. 

An exiled, love-stuck and bereaved demigod (Yaksha) used the floating cloud as his messenger to speak his heart to his beloved dwelling in a distant land, in one-of-its-kind Sanskrit literary work “Meghdutam”. But I am not gifted with magical power of imagination as author Kalidas used to possess. I don’t find a love messenger in a floating cloud. Hence I told “Hey Siri, can u message these lines to my wife...Across the distance and spaces between us, I see you, I feel you.” Siri did it without a question. Did it chuckle at my dramatic attempt? Today, most likely not. Today it probably is an emotionless piece of software. But who know what it would become some thousand year from now? What if your faithful assistant, having developed a personality of his own, breaks your trust and get engaged in a separate romantic relationship with someone close to your heart?