The Story Behind Siri -- The Startup

A pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Adam Cheyer has spent most of his life living by what he calls "Verbally Stated Goals" -- that is, continuously striving to do and achieve more each year. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a magician and, in many ways, he did just that: in 2008, as inventor, computer scientist, engineer, and entrepreneur, he co-created the world's first intelligent personal assistant, Siri, with Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber. Siri, Inc. was a technology company borne out of SRI International, a nonprofit research unit, to create a highly clever and personable virtual assistant for smartphone consumers. By 2010, the company had been acquired by Apple Inc., and the Siri app was incorporated into Apple's iPhone 4S handsets. Cheyer became Director of Engineering for the iPhone/iOS team at Apple, where he remained for two years before leaving to spend more time with his family and to pursue personal endeavours. Cheyer is also a founding member of Change.org, a social network for positive social change, and is co-founder of Genetic Finance, which applies advanced artificial intelligence to solve problems within a wide range of industries, including financial trading, insurance, computer networking, and electronics design. Newnham: Take me back to your childhood. What first excited you about technology? Adam Cheyer: As a child, I was allowed to watch an hour of TV a week, and in that time, I got my fill of commercials selling me on the latest toys.