What Siri Could Learn From Thanos

Relying on one voice assistant to rule them all might be expecting too much

Illustration: Ben Voldman

To borrow from J.R.R. Tolkien, voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google all aspire to be a little bit like Sauron from Lord of the Rings. If you distill all of their differing methodologies down, they ultimately come down to this: One ring (or, if you will, one A.I.)…