A.I. personal digital peer
Today, Siri, Alexa, and Google assistant are sometimes useful, sometimes fun, but honestly very limited. When we ask my personal digital assistant a question, we get a generic answer or, worse, a generic Web search result. Considering that the companies that made them have enormous resources it is really surprising.
In the age of Covid-pandemic, many people spent months locked up away from society. The times when we used to go to the mountains for a couple of days, sit around the fire, talk, eat, drink, play the guitar and sing to the midnight stars may be as foreign to today’s teenager as the nearest galaxy.
I believe, Covid will leave a deep mark, and that, in turn, will change how the next generation interacts with technology.
I have bought a ton of stuff on Amazon so they know what my interests are, I have read many Kindle books and listened to hundreds of Audible books. I have used the search engine thousands of times, bought Google books, and read scientific papers cataloged in Google Scholar.
I could have an endless and most interesting conversation with anyone who matched my interests, of which, I am in dire need.
Yet, Alexa and Siri, and Google assistant ignore that need. For one, they lack a basic short-term memory, cannot carry a basic conversation, cannot continue a train of thought from the morning, or yesterday’s query. They are not able to answer the question by telling a short story and taking into consideration what I have already read, what I have written, what I studied in college, and what friends and associates I have on Facebook and LinkedIn. They do not recommend and connect people based on our deep interests and current pursuits.
I do not want to go to the search bar anymore, I want to have a digital assistant that recognizes me uniquely from one of my kids, the other day I had to unsubscribe from 3 different types of “fart skills” on Alexa. The assistant, in addition to being trained on the general corpus of all knowledge available such as Wikipedia, books, movies, songs, poems, and scientific papers, should be also specifically trained on all my own writings and all the knowledge I personally consumed.
I want that assistant to answer to the unique name in a clear voice with the accent and intonation of my choosing.
I want that assistant to be able to analyze my face for emotional expressions and the level of my interest. I would like the engagement and intonation to change based on my emotional state.
If anyone else is asking for assistance it would invoke their own assistant and hence protect individual privacy.
I want that assistant to have a face of their own that is unique in the world (see GAN generation of faces) and something I can quickly recognize. I would like to be able to read their expressions or even gesticulation.
Finally, I would like my assistant to be able to reach to millions of other people and connect me based on precisely what both parties need, either indirectly, as an intermediary, adjusting for time, culture, language, or other differences.
I want to start my day by, say, Samanta, telling me a synopsis of news that I should know including an update of the stock market, I should be able to pause and resume the update, ask questions, skip uninteresting bits, hear the longer story when needed, and get an article, or book recommendation for today which pertain to my current interest. If my interests match a given person, a meeting, or a message exchange should be arranged. A sense of humor and tact would be of importance. All of that could happen before I even sit in front of my computer to work.
So, will Apple, Google, or Amazon provide such a service? Most likely, yes, eventually.
Many of us would like to develop the next Google, but doing it by providing advertisements based on the search engine results is already taken.
Is there an opportunity for the rest of us to create something amazing? Definitely, just like there are billions of unique people in the world, my description might not interest teenagers or the elderly who have totally different interests and needs from my own.
If you would like to discuss this subject, please contact me on LinkedIn. The opinions presented here are my own and do not represent that of my current employer.
