Is Siri Always Right?
Nothing brings my husband, Andrew, and me closer to divorce than our heated disagreements over driving directions. He insists that Google maps is, without question, always right, whereas I believe that sometimes human reason and experience can yield a better way.
Today, we found ourselves on a six-hour car ride from DC to western New York, accompanied by another couple on the way to a wedding of mutual friends. As Andrew diligently followed Siri’s precise directions, before too long, talk turned to the question of Google righteousness.
“Alicia and I have had some of the worst fights of our marriage in the car,” Andrew offered up. Our carmates looked confused. “She’s convinced she knows better than Google maps.” My lady-friend in the back seat next to me smiled and nodded — she and I were clearly both on the same page.
Her fiancé, however, was of a different mind. I said that sometimes Google misinterprets traffic data and accidentally sends you a bad way. “No offense, but I’ll take Google traffic data over your feminine intuition,” he said.
One data point does not a trend make, but three starts to gesture at something meaningful. Just the week before, the same topic had come up with the future Mr. and Mrs. whose wedding we were on the way to witness. In this case, too, the gentleman insisted that Google knew best, whereas the lady was usually confident in the direction provided by her intuition.
Perhaps the trend doesn’t extend beyond the realm of driving, but on the other hand, maybe it does. While not reserved exclusively for women, the tuning of the intuition (not logic, intuition) is a highly feminine pursuit. We ladies often stake our lives and livelihoods on “gut decisions” guided by our intuition’s unique and sometimes instantaneous calculation, based on a multitude of factors. It may not be logical or explicable, but if we learn how to listen to the tell signs, we are almost always right.
The Internet and it’s masterminds (read: Google) can offer us a plethora of information gleaned from data and complex algorithms. In most cases, it can also tell us quite accurately how long it will take to get somewhere and what kind of weather we can expect when we arrive. In response to the following question, however, Google has no answer:
“Siri, what is the best way to my destination?”
Directional optimization (both literal and proverbial) is so subjective and individual, it’s not a query data can typically answer. For my part, I’ll take my intuition over Google’s traffic data any day.
