“To many, this was the dawn of a new era, where man would be dominated by machines.” But, argues Sankar, that’s not what happened, “Twenty years later, the greatest change to how we relate to computers was the iPad, not HAL.”

It does seem like we have a way to go to get to HAL.

Siri is no HAL. Cleverbot comes closer to passing the Turing test.

But if we can stroke Siri (like an iPad) then conversation is less important, no?

Yes, although after seeing the movie Her I'm convinced conversation will remain important.