I'd rather have the list than a single choice. That way I can pick one that isn't in a crappy neighborhood, or is on the way to a place I'm going anyway.

My biggest frustration with my car's built-in navigation is that when I ask it for the "nearest" item, more than 50% of the time it tells me to make a U-turn because it picked the mathematically nearest item, rather than picking the conventionally nearest item.

I actually think if you said "closest" or "nearest" and Siri just gives you a list, then Siri has missed out on useful information. You can also say "Nearby McDonald's" to Google and get a list, versus "Go to the nearest McDonalds" and you'll get navigation.

There are all sorts of ways to handle this request, but Siri's is the laziest, and in doing so asks more of the user's attention. If you just say "McDonalds" to either voice assistant, you also get a list. From that perspective, it's as if Siri ignores any information that might be gleaned from the rest of your sentence.

Siri learns from us but we also learn from Siri, and we might find that some words don't matter. You mind as well just say "McDonalds" if Siri is going to ignore the rest.

It understands “take me to the closest” and doesn’t give you a list but “take me to the nearest..” does.

Reminds me of some of the chatbots that I use to make. No matter how hard I tried to test them, they always worked as expected. The minute someone else used it, it fell apart. Subconsciously, I knew what would work and what wouldn’t.

Yeah sure you rather have a list. Why not have it return a list of answers for every question that had a definite answer like this then? Options are better.

But that’s more of an interface choice than a technical limitation. Siri both understood the question and had the ability to navigate to it.

In my case, there were 9 McDonalds within a 10 mile radius.

In cases where there was only one location nearby, it took me right to it.

I think you give Siri too much of the benefit of the doubt when you say that Siri understands your request. You may be correct, but maybe Siri just looks for a location like "McDonalds" and most of the time just shows you a list? It's easier when you're ignoring the rest of the sentence as if it has no relevance to improving your response.

It's very hard for us to discuss Siri's internal state; by contrast it's easier to discuss Google's observable performance, which is to semantically differentiate between these two requests.

You can just ask Google, "Nearby McDonalds" and you'll get a list. "Go to the nearest McDonalds" and you get navigation.

Take me to the nearest McDonalds - gives me a list.

“McDonalds” - gives me a list.

“Take me to the closest McDonalds” - brings up maps and starts navigating to the closest McDonalds.

After further experimentation. Siri doesn’t understand Nearest but does understand “closest” to mean that I don’t want a list.

If you said “take me to” an not “show me a list” then it actually did the wrong thing by showing you a list. I suppose “not working” is technically an interface choice, though.