According to a report from BetaBoston, Apple’s team in Boston working on its Siri speech recognition technology looks to be expanding as the company reportedly leases a new 13,000 square foot office. The report, which cites real estate sources, says the new office at One Broadway is in the Cambridge Innovation Center where Apple currently has a small team occupying two smaller offices:
The three realtors with whom I spoke all said they didn’t believe a build-out of the space had yet begun. Figuring about 200 square feet per employee, 13,000 square feet could mean Apple has room to hire about 65 people locally. Jones Lang LaSalle is representing Apple; Colliers International represents MIT, the landlord. Managing director Peter Bekarian of Jones Lang LaSalle said he couldn’t comment. This is Apple’s third office space in the same building; each one has been progressively larger.
Last year a report profiled Apple’s Boston-based offices noting that the team was working on speech recognition technology for Siri and that Apple had been hiring new talent to do so.
Earlier this year a report in June suggested Apple could be looking to replace Nuance as the speech recognition component used for Siri pointing to several new hires at the company. Today’s report claimed Apple has hired other new members for the new team from BBN Technologies, the storied Cambridge R&D lab that is now part of Raytheon; Actifio, a data management startup; and Amazon.
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Because if Siri can understand Bostonians, it can understand anyone.
Glad to hear people are working on Siri. It needs work.
Or maybe because they can recruit a lot of employees that do AI work from MIT and Harvard. Both are on Broadway.
Has Siri changed at all since it’s introduction? No change for me, it still fails to impress, and half the time I try using it I get the “I’m really sorry” line about not being able to answer questions.
Last time I tried using Siri, it couldn’t even turn on Bluetooth for me! This is a basic function, Android has done it for years. I’m glad Android is finally maturing into a great OS, because iOS badly needs the competition.