Technology is getting better all the time. It's the one constant. That means that despite our frustrations with digital assistants like Siri, they’re getting better too. However, when it comes to trusting them with our health, they're still not good enough.
Interesting new research published in the Nature Digital Medicine medical journal demonstrated the results of scientists putting Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri through a serious of tests. They wanted to see how effective, they would be at providing accurate information on the 50 most commonly used prescription drugs. The short answer is that none of them were completely accurate in providing proper information about the drugs. Let that be the first takeaway. Don’t rely on your digital assistant, regardless of which one(s) you use, for important medical information. But through the testing we can also see the differences in performance, demonstrating current effectiveness of each digital assistant. There’s a clear leader. Google.
Effectiveness range based on testing put Google’s Assistant at 84%-92%. Apple’s Siri following it with 51%-58% and Amazon’s Alexa not far behind at 46%-55%.
Aside from learning how effective these assistants currently are in specific scientific tests, we’re also seeing that Google isn’t far away from near perfecting its technology. Whatever they’ve been doing, it’s clearly working. While Alexa and Siri tend to have more notoriety and PR, Google's Assistant is more effective.
Photo by: GRANT HINDSLEY/AFP/Getty Images