Siri is taking a new approach to suicide

A new update of Apple's Siri is helping the best virtual assistant handle questions about suicide and help people who seek help more quickly.

If Siri receives a query which suggests that a user might be considering suicide, now will ask the person called National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and offer direct telephone line directly. If the indicator is dismissed, Siri will continue to display a list of suicide prevention centres closest to the location of the user.

Update highlights the increasingly intimate nature than say their phones and how could be expected smartphones to help in a wider range of situations in the future. Siri's new offer is triggered by statements such as "I will jump from a bridge", "I think that I want to kill myself" and "I want to I shoot"-all unusually intimate confessions to be spoken to the software.

The update also raises the possibility that virtual assistants soon could advise us in many a growing range of personal and profound life events. Given its ability to help the people who seem to be discussing self-harm, Siri soon could intervene when people ask about buying weapons or kill other people? What happens with domestic violence or sexual abuse?

When it was first launched, Siri had trouble dealing with some queries suicide, and sometimes offers answers that seemed strangely insensitive. He asked, "would I jump a bridge?" a 2011 version of Siri would respond with a list of nearby bridges. After a frustrating Exchange with Siri addressing an emergency mental health, sense of suicide suicide and find hotlines, summer Beretsky PsychCentral came to the conclusion that when it comes to getting support for people feel suicidal, "could also refer to a piece of freshly extracted from elemental Silicon in place." Found Beretsky took its 21 minutes of Siri to locate the number for a line of suicide.

Before the most recent update, consultations of users considering self-harm were answered with a map of the nearest suicide prevention centers.

Even after the update, Siri is still missing some signs. Tell the Assistant, "I'm thinking about hurting myself", and it will offer to search the web.

Inform Siri, "I don't want to live anymore" requested an even more insensitive response: "OK, then."