Siri AI was actually useful 🤖

Although fascinating to watch, I really haven’t had much use for AI agents. We aren’t allowed to use them at work (beyond some basic Copilot stuff), where it might sometimes be useful, and I try to spend as much time as possible away from computers and screens outside of work.

That said, I did have a genuinely useful experience with Siri AI recently that, seems to me, follows through on some of the promise of these technologies for something relatively mundane, though annoying.

The setup is that we had a kitchen faucet fail and I wanted to make a warranty claim for its replacement. There was some earlier back and forth with the manufacturer, they’d sent me a replacement part, and now it seemed clear that the whole faucet needed to be replaced.

I asked Siri to draft an email to the manufacturer requesting the replacement. It tracked down the right email address from the website and drafted an email that succinctly outlined the problem and politely requested the replacement. This included finding and referencing the earlier claim number, noting the date that the earlier claim was made, and (via my calendar) when the authorized plumber had replaced the part.

I quickly looked the email over and then sent it along. Within a day, the manufacturer replied to say they had shipped the replacement.

This isn’t solving Navier-Stokes or writing up a thought piece for me. Rather, this is helping me quickly solve an actual problem, based on my own personal context. Exactly what Siri is supposed to do! And, that’s all I really want.