The Showdown: Siri | Google | Cortana

#TechforTheTechie: Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing

 by Paul Ekwere

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Being a general tech geek and a fan of all things data and analytics, I woke up this morning and in my spare time started learning something on sentiment analytics.

Sentiment Analysis in the words of a certain Mr Seth Grimes, is a set of methods, typically (but not always) implemented in computer software, that detect, measure, report, and exploit attitudes, opinions, and emotions in online, social, and enterprise information sources. (As an aside, what makes it “analysis” is that you’re doing it systematically, with some goal in mind.)

The reason why I’m all over this right now is because I have a little pet project I'm working on which has to do with analysing my Twitter data but that's beside the point of why I decided to post this actually.

So here's the thing, being a massive Arsenal fan as well (& given my generally short attention span), while deeply embroiled in my research on the logic of deep learning, Twitter APIs and php coding, a random thought popped into my head "I wonder what time the Arsenal game is on today?"

So I decided in the spirit of the moment, what with my mind... well, half my mind still on machine learning, natural language processing and all I decided to run a little (absolutely non-scientific) test to see who does natural language processing better.

Siri (Apple), Google or Microsoft’s very own Cortana.

Very handy for me that I had an iPhone, an android ...scratch that the android phone of the year the OnePlus 2,  and a Microsoft Surface on hand.

So here's what happened.

Click on the link to hear what actually transpired (I actually recorded this). The results are quite interesting.

Spoiler alert, not at all what you'd expect! There's a bit of a surprise at the end as well.

https://soundcloud.com/paul-ekwere/record_0002_arsenal_match_siri

There’s another recording here, just because I'm a massive fan of Cortana (& I know you are too). A word of warning: spoilers! You need to have listened to the first recording before this!

And in case that hyperlink doesn’t work, here’s the link to the second recording.

https://soundcloud.com/paul-ekwere/record_0003_the_cortana_redemp

Okay, my work here is done…. Off to watch that Arsenal game now!

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