套用艾伦•凯对第一代Mac电脑的点评来说，苹果（Apple）的Siri是第一款“表现出色、值得一评”的语音控制人工智能助手。

    确实非常不错。事实上，科技博客Asymco的贺拉斯•德迪欧此前表示，语音控制或将成为用户界面技术的未来的变革方向。它将颠覆未来的计算机技术，就像曾经的鼠标、滚轮和触摸屏一样。上周三，在个人播客“关键路径”（Critical Path）中，德迪欧发布了名为《回到未来》（Back to the Future）的播客。他展望了下一代完全依靠语音控制的手机，它们不再需要昂贵的触摸屏。

    但上周四的一场事故却为语音技术拉响了警报。从美国东部时间下午2点到7点，Siri遭遇全国性的宕机故障。长达约5小时的时间里，所有美国境内的iPhone 4S用户只要向Siri提问，得到的都是类似“抱歉，无法连接到服务器”的答复，而服务器正是Siri的人工智能中心所在。

    对于德迪欧所展望的未来计算机，这只是其中一个问题。原因不仅在于人工智能尚处于初级阶段——这个问题过去半个多世纪一直存在，同时也在于人工智能目前所依靠的网络和服务器非常不稳定，完全不能指望。

    不幸中的万幸，iPhone仍然配备了触摸屏。

    科技网站VentureBeat率先报道了Siri服务器宕机事件，并通过Twitter及时通报了Siri服务恢复的消息。

    译者：项航

    Apple's (AAPL) Siri, to paraphrase Alan Kay's comment about the original Macintosh, is the first voice-activated artificial intelligent assistant good enough to criticize.

    Good enough, in fact, that Asymco's Horace Dediu has suggested that voice-activation might be the next revolutionary user interface, as disruptive for future computing devices as the mouse, the scroll wheel and the touchscreen were before it. In his Critical Path podcast Wednesday (Back to the Future), he imagined a generation of mobile phones that run entirely on voice activation, without the need for expensive touchscreens.

    So what happened Thursday is a kind of warning flag. From about 2 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT, Siri suffered a nationwide outage. For roughly five hours, any question put to her by an iPhone 4S user in the U.S. was answered by a canned apology to the effect that the network connection to the servers where her intelligence resides was down.

    And that's one of the problems with Dediu's vision of future computing. Not only is AI still in its infancy -- a condition its been in for more than half a century -- but it relies in its current incarnation on networks and servers whose unreliability you can bank on.

    Good thing the iPhone still has a touchscreen.

    Via VentureBeat, which first reported the outage and tweeted when it was over.