War of the virtual assistants: Google Assistant wins IQ test
What's the story
Ever wondered which virtual assistant, among the many that are available, is smarter? Well, it seems like we have a conclusive answer now.
On Thursday, venture capital firm Loup Ventures released its annual report on digital assistant IQs which, based on a test, found that Google Assistant had the highest IQ, followed by Siri, Alexa, and Cortana.
Here's all about it.
Test
The four virtual assistants had to answer 800 questions each
The four virtual assistants were given a set of 800 questions spanning five topic categories - namely, local, commerce, navigation, information, and command.
Of these questions, Google Assistant was able to answer 86% correctly, followed by Siri which answered 79%.
Alexa and Cortana, however trailed far behind, being able to answer just 61% and 52% of the questions correctly.
Grading
The virtual assistants were graded on two metrics
The virtual assistants were graded on two metrics - their ability to understand a question, and their ability to answer them correctly.
Notably, Google Assistant was able understand all 800 questions, and answer 86% of them currently.
Siri couldn't answer 11 questions, and Alexa misunderstood 13.
Cortana proved to be the slowest one, misunderstanding as many as 19 questions.
Comparison
Since the last tests, virtual assistants have markedly improved
Loup Ventures had conducted a similar test last year, and the improvement seen in virtual assistants since then is quite remarkable.
In the last test, while Google Assistant understood 99% of questions, it could answer only 74.8% correctly.
Meanwhile, Siri could understand 95% of questions, but answered only 66.1% correctly.
Cortana had understood 97% of questions, but could only answer 48.8% correctly.
Quote
Continued improvement will come from more voice-based functions
"With scores nearing 80-90 percent, it begs the question, will these assistants eventually be able to answer everything you ask? The answer is probably not, but continued improvement will come from allowing more and more functions to be controlled by your voice," said Loup Ventures.
Assistant vs Siri
Google outperformed Siri in every category, except one
Coming to the comparison between the top two, Google Assistant, in this year's test, bested Siri in four out of the five aforementioned categories of questions.
Siri only came out on top in the command category, which deals with execution of commands, and seemed to be better with music-related queries.
However, Google Assistant far outperformed every other virtual assistant in the information category.