Pioneers of AI Hey Siri, who made you?
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Feb 18, 2026 Susan Bennett, the voice actor whose recordings became the original Siri, recalls quirky recording sessions and career impacts. Adam Cheyer, Siri co-founder and AI entrepreneur, traces the assistant's origin, agentic design, business model gaps, and a bold AR prediction. They discuss voice tech evolution, transactions versus knowing, and compensation for voice contributors.
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Networked Assistants Were The Original Vision
- Adam Cheyer envisioned networked assistants in 1993 that discover and orchestrate services across the web.
- He predicted assistants should understand users, find services, and automate tasks end-to-end.
Chat UIs Fall Short Of Full Assistants
- Cheyer argues today’s LLM chat UIs miss three essentials: the right interface, transactional doing, and a viable ecosystem/business model.
- He claims original Siri/Viv combined GUI+language, transaction APIs, and provider-friendly platforms that many modern systems lack.
Knowing Versus Doing Are Different Problems
- Cheyer separates 'knowing' (LLM-style cached knowledge) from 'doing' (transactions, authentication, APIs).
- He emphasizes architectures for doing must support live APIs, credentials, and transactional workflows, not just generation.