Siri's next frontier is human intelligence, not AI

The key is a new feature called shortcuts, akin to the "routines" in Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. Shortcuts will let you set up Siri to perform an action or series of actions when it hears you speak a particular command. These actions will be able to dig into the functionality of a third-party app: Apple's examples included a shortcut that lets you use a Tile locator gizmo to find your keys, and another that allows you to pull up travel information from within the Kayak app. Shortcuts will be available across the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and HomePod. Their importance to the iOS platform will go beyond Siri itself; power users have begged Apple for more automation features within iOS for years, and that's exactly what shortcuts offer.