The world’s 230 million knowledge workers are frazzled. Modern life is an interminable cacophony of emails, notifications, messages, alerts, feeds, data and information. 70% of us look at our phones within 30 minutes of waking up. All this causes stress. With multiple notifications on multiple apps on multiple pages of our devices, where do we start? Who will help us?
Fortunately, almost all of us already have a personal assistant. It’s a piece of software on a device you own: the intelligent assistant (IA). We carry IAs around on our laptops (Microsoft’s Cortana), phones (Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby) and smart speakers (Amazon’s Alexa, Baidu’s Little Fish). You probably have more than one. There are an estimated one billion IA-enabled devices in the world today. With smartphone penetration in the UK and US approaching 70%, it’s easy to believe that there will be as many intelligent assistants as human beings in a just few years. That billions of people will soon have an assistant 24/7 is a staggering prospect.
Driving this change, of course, are the tech giants. IAs are one of their top priorities. Google Assistant stunned the crowd at I/O 2018 with natural-sounding phone calls to unassuming restaurant and hair salon staff. Siri is now making recommendations based on your activity and schedule. Alexa is starting to understand general user intent. Google’s big advertising slogan on digital billboards today is “Make Google do it.”
Fortunately, almost all of us already have a personal assistant. It’s a piece of software on a device you own: the intelligent assistant (IA). We carry IAs around on our laptops (Microsoft’s Cortana), phones (Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby) and smart speakers (Amazon’s Alexa, Baidu’s Little Fish). You probably have more than one. There are an estimated one billion IA-enabled devices in the world today. With smartphone penetration in the UK and US approaching 70%, it’s easy to believe that there will be as many intelligent assistants as human beings in a just few years. That billions of people will soon have an assistant 24/7 is a staggering prospect.
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| Leading Virtual Assistants from Tech Giants |
Source: HBR July 19, 2018
