Dominant Assistant

My personal fascination is very much with tech and gadgets such as personal assistants. I love it and I happily use it. I use my personal assistant several times a day, both on my smartphone, smartwatch and via my smart speaker at home. I often ask different questions such as: “How is the weather today? What's on my agenda next week?" Sometimes I give commands to send a message to someone or to turn off the lights in the kitchen. I use the assistant as the manufacturer intended.

However, I notice that there are also many shortcomings in the current generation of virtual assistants. They do respond, but sometimes you don't get a correct response to your question. They also listen to you continuously (and they see you and/or your surroundings). Is your privacy guaranteed with this? They are also often unable to give a (correct) answer to a follow-up question.

Personal assistants can already do a lot for us, but they are certainly not perfect. I only consider an assistant to be of high quality once they have improved on the following points:

- They know almost everything about factual knowledge and can convey this to the user in an understandable way.

- It is possible to have in-depth conversations with them and advise them.

- They are getting more and more intelligent as the use of (worldwide) AI progresses

- The assistant comes across much more as a real person. It can express emotions and the intonation sounds natural. The assistant also has the ability to empathize with people. It can also laugh, for example, but it can also start a sentence with 'I think' or 'I feel'. It can also come across as doubtful by saying 'um'. (Emotional intelligence)

In short: the perfect assistant is, in my view, just as good or even better than a real person in terms of verbal communication. However, we are not here yet.

The vastly improved virtual assistants are not all roses and roses. The study 'Manifestation of virtual assistants and robots into daily life: vision & challenges’ [1] explains that there are also disadvantages to the development of virtual assistants. For example, there are concerns that companies of the assistants collect data. The microphones and cameras are also always open. Where does this data go and does it compromise your privacy? And if devices can only be operated via the assistant, to what extent does the user still have the option to keep control? Will the assistant replace a human being of flesh and blood? In other words, are you lonely?

I think that in the future the virtual assistant will increasingly invade our personal lives, whether we like it or not. For example, I expect that in the future more and more smart household appliances will become available that you can operate with your voice. I also expect that the assistant will get a good picture of the user. For example, it knows your name, age, gender, hobbies, favorite food, music taste, health, friends and what the user is going to do.

In addition, I expect that commerce will benefit from it. This can lead to you being more likely to order something or more likely to ask for a cup of coffee, for example.

The assistants are also so smart that they have a correct answer to every question or command. In addition, the assistant has a face that makes you more inclined to talk to it as opposed to an abstract shape. This ensures that you as a user will speak more easily to the assistant.

Finally, I expect assistants to impose restrictions on the user. If the user watches a movie for too long or wants to do something unhealthy, the user is discouraged or even prohibited.

I have worked out the concept of a future personal assistant plus the positive and negative consequences for the user in a short film. The film is about a young man named John who lives alone at home. He enjoys watching movies and documentaries, has a job and is very loyal to his personal assistant who helps him in his daily activities. Sometimes his assistant gives him urgent advice not to do something. It is clear to notice that the personal assistant is not always easy to use.

When Frank stays with John for dinner, John is pointed out to eat something else while making the food. However, Frank does not accept what the assistant imposes on him. John now faces a dilemma: will he obey his assistant or will he befriend Frank?

Should we increasingly integrate the digital personal assistants into our lives in the near future? With this film I want to question that.

sources

[1] Rawassizadeh, R., Sen, T., Kim, S. J., Meurisch, C., Keshavarz, H., Mühlhäuser, M., & Pazzani, M. J. (2019). Manifestation of virtual assistants and robots into daily life: vision and challenges. CCF Transactions on Pervasive Computing and Interaction, 1(3), 163–174. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42486-019-00014-1