Editors Note: Norman Winarsky is the Vice President of Ventures and Bill Mark is the Vice President of the Information Computing Sciences Division at renowned research and technology development organization, SRI International. Norman and Bill helped found the Siri venture, of which Norman was also a Board member.

Since its launch in the iPhone 4S, Siri has become a phenomenon, and for good reason. Siri is a revolutionary consumer software product based on breakthroughs in speech and artificial intelligence technology.

Siri has appeared extensively in the media as a new consumer phenomenon, including Dilbert and Jon Stewart. In November, Eric Schmidt testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that Siri was potentially a major threat to Google. Siri has even been the major part of an episode of the sitcom Big Bang Theory on CBS and the subject of numerous parody Tumblr and Twitter accounts.

Without a doubt, Siri was a great achievement for Apple and Steve Jobs, helping to introduce virtual personal assistants to millions of consumers, and changing forever the way we view our smartphones. The team also brilliantly designed Siri to go beyond being a mere tool, giving it a personality, and human-like interaction characteristics.

Do you like me, Siri? Where can I bury a body, Siri?

There is no doubt in our minds that Apple will continue to advance the Siri, technology, and will create new breakthroughs in the virtual personal assistant (VPA) category overall. For example, its clear that Apple is capable of making a Siri API for application developers in the near term, enabling hundreds of thousands of applications to access their own assistant. Soon it will become de rigueur for all applications to offer spoken interaction and meaningful delegation. In fact, we consumers will be surprised and disappointed if or when they dont.

Beyond the laudatory comments and requisite speculation, and because of our central role in creating Siri, we at SRI are often asked whats next?

As we always respond Siri is just the first step in realizing the ultimate virtual personal assistant vision. This post first outlines what we think Siris legacy will be, and then gives the broad strokes of what will mark the next phase(s) of VPA innovation.

To start, Siris greatest effect will be the entirely new industry that it is creating before our eyes. At SRI, we see VPA technology as an essential element of future products in areas ranging from smart TVs, to health care assistance, to virtual tutors in education, and more. VPA is not just a fad, or a trend. It is in many ways the destiny of computing and a decades-long project, or more. As we speak, SRI is spinning out three new startups that are underwritten by the VPA paradigm and our related R&D. They are already VC-funded and preparing their first products for wide use. We think weve only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Technologically speaking, Siris true impact is seen in the new bar it set for what we call practical natural language understanding. Using speech instead of keyboards to communicate with computers is an old dream, but it took more than thirty years to achieve the robustness and performance needed to make speech systems practical for consumers.

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The Future Of The Virtual Personal Assistant