>Why would I do that? If I want to know what Siri can do, I can just say "Siri, (do the thing)" and find out. That's -way- easier than scrolling through a list (and more accurate, to boot; just because she can do it, if I can't figure out an acceptable magical incantation, she can't, for all intents and purposes).
Funny, I'm the opposite. I like the ability to flip through and see "Oh, I didn't know it could do that!" Then I mentally file it away as a thing that exists.
I would never have learned that Siri (via Wolfram Alpha) can tell me what planes are overhead just by trying it except for having read it in a list somewhere, because I would never have thought to ask that. But since I read a list of interesting things that Siri knows, I now know it has that information.
Just trying to guess what capabilities are available is like trying to learn how a unix command works with no man page. "Just run it with every possible flag and see what happens!" It'd be great if Siri could do everything, but she can't, and the search space of possible actions with natural language is far too large to find everything I might use by guesswork. A black box with a manual is better than a black box without one.
In the example you gave, you learned about a specific thing siri can do- tell you what planes are overhead. Now say you know from experience that WA also provides the current altitude and speed of those planes. If you had a strong ToM for Siri you would have a very good intuition about whether you could rely on siri for info as well. As it is, I have no idea. Do you? Don't you think it'd be a much better experience if we did know what to expect?
Funny, I'm the opposite. I like the ability to flip through and see "Oh, I didn't know it could do that!" Then I mentally file it away as a thing that exists.
I would never have learned that Siri (via Wolfram Alpha) can tell me what planes are overhead just by trying it except for having read it in a list somewhere, because I would never have thought to ask that. But since I read a list of interesting things that Siri knows, I now know it has that information.
Just trying to guess what capabilities are available is like trying to learn how a unix command works with no man page. "Just run it with every possible flag and see what happens!" It'd be great if Siri could do everything, but she can't, and the search space of possible actions with natural language is far too large to find everything I might use by guesswork. A black box with a manual is better than a black box without one.