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Introducing Siri: DARPA’s Ghost in Apple’s Machine

October 5th, 2011

So their eyes are growing hazy

cos they want to turn it on

so their minds are soft and lazy, well…

give em what they want

— 10,000 Maniacs – Candy Everybody Wants

One of the stocks that I used to kick around in the 1990s was that of a now long dead company calledGeneral Magic. Back then, I looked into the company and learned that it was, in essence, divested from

Apple in 1990. It was made up of former Apple employees and Apple held 10% of the company.

Apple has been thinking about the post PC era (that we’re actually entering now, according to them) sincethe 1980s. Here’s Apple’s Knowledge Navigator concept from 1987:

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8 2011-10-05 23:33



This wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, so they spun it off into General Magic.

If you’ve seen Apple’s Siri in action, that’s the type of thing that General Magic wanted to do back in the1990s. With the old Portico system, users called into the service, rather than the service running on the

phone, as is the case with Siri. Here’s an almost unwatchable promo for General Magic’s Portico product

(circa 1997):

If you’re interested in Siri, definitely read Wired’s, Bill and Andy’s Excellent Adventure II from 1994.The point is that Apple and Apple alumni have been beating around this bush for a very long time.

Flash forward to what Apple unveiled yesterday:


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Now, what’s in a name?

Look closely at the name: Siri. What letters stand out?

See it yet?

S i R I.

SRI = Stanford Research Institute.

It turns out that Apple’s Siri used to be SRI’s Siri, and SRI’s Siri is… Are you ready? A spinoff of DARPA’s PAL (Perceptive Assistant that Learns) program, which SRI called CALO (Cognitive Agentthat Learns and Organizes).

This is SRI’s CALO information page:

SRI International is leading the development of new software that could revolutionize howcomputers support decision-makers.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), under its Perceptive Assistantthat Learns (PAL) program, has awarded SRI the first two phases of a five-year contract todevelop an enduring personalized cognitive assistant. DARPA expects the PAL program togenerate innovative ideas that result in new science, new and fundamental approaches to


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current problems, and new algorithms and tools, and to yield new technology of significantvalue to the military.

SRI has dubbed its new project CALO, for Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes. The

name was inspired by the Latin word “calonis”, which means “soldier’s servant”. Thegoal of the project is to create cognitive software systems, that is, systems that can reason,learn from experience, be told what to do, explain what they are doing, reflect on their

experience, and respond robustly to surprise.

The software, which will learn by interacting with and being advised by its users, will handle

a broad range of interrelated decision-making tasks that have in the past been resistant toautomation. It will have the capability to engage in and lead routine tasks, and to assist whenthe unexpected happens. To focus the research on real problems and to ensure the software

meets requirements such as privacy, security, and trust, the CALO project researchers willthemselves use the technology during its development.

SRI is leading the multidisciplinary CALO project team, and, beyond participating in theresearch program, is also responsible for overall project direction and management and the

development of prototypes.

Here’s more from Venture Beat, Shadowy Government Project Spins Off Siri to Help Direct Your Affairs:

Conspiracy theorists will love this one: A computerized assistant that can help you manage

your day to day life, built atop an artificial intelligence platform developed by the DefenseAdvanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the United States’ internal military research

group. Siri, the startup building the assistant, is today announcing $8.5 million in venturefunding.

As befits its spookish origins, Siri isn’t saying a great deal yet about what it will do.Co-founder Dag Kittlaus, who licensed technology from DARPA’s CALO (Cognitive Agent

that Learns and Organizes) project, calls it “a smarter, more personal interaction paradigm for the Internet.” Unfortunately, that’s about as specific as calling Google “a thing that findsstuff.” Those who want a sneak peek at Siri will instead have to look to CALO.

So here’s what we know about CALO: It’s a concerted effort to take the first real step towardartificial intelligence, with five years of work and $200 million in funding to date. Rather than

being immediately useful, it learns about the user over time, much like a real personalassistant would. As it learns, it becomes capable of making logical associations and initiatingits own actions.


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Siri, Apple's Implementation of DARPA Sponsored Artificial Intelligence Technology

People are going to pay a lot of money to have their asses tracked to within a couple of meters by a devicerunning a civilian version of DARPA’s soldier’s servant software.

The most disturbing aspect of this is not what the iPhone 4s is going to be phoning home to Apple (whichis unknown), or the invasion of The Complex into most aspects of our lives, but the fact that, in general,

people would think that you were nuts for having these reservations at all. I mean, what could possibly bewrong with re-purposed DoD AI software running on a mass market consumer device that persistently

reveals the user’s location to the state?

Ah well, give em what they want.

Posted in Coincidence?, COINTELPRO, Covert Operations, Dictatorship, Economy, Elite, Rise of theMachines, Surveillance, Technology, War | Top Of Page

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Two of eight sentences (out of a 21 page document, "Memorandum for the Attorney General," by John C. Yoo) released under the

Freedom of Information Act related to warrantless surveillance of Americans by the federal government. Source: Federation of

American Scientists.

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