We know about our algorithmic assistants and their ability to talk, based on a capability that can use your speech patterns to detect what is said and what the request is.
This is important for the use of robotic devices as ‘personal assistant’ and there have been recent innovations with devices that can help you book a table at a restaurant based on your verbal instructions, freeing up your valuable time and we have seen not so subtle adverts where these devices will make your life easier.
This raises a some of points
1
learned helplessness- over reliance on these devices eliminates the experience of actually doing what that device does for you, so , as with any other aspects of leadership, don’t ask a device to do something that you can’t do yourself. If we educate our children to copy our habits of telling a machine to do things, we will , generationally , lose the ability to do them ourselves should the DA ( Digital Assistant) not be around or fail, or simply get the instruction wrong.
2 We then run the risk of living in a bubble, Siddartha like and realising we may have a first world problem of no DA when in fact the third world is still living in extreme poverty so inequality becomes more entrenched and we don’t venture beyond the palace walls or indeed our only exposure to the outside world is via a driverless vehicle. .
3
These machines are acquiring human attibutes being named chatbots, Siri, Cortana or HAL and becoming anthropomorphous.. The test is , would you as a parent allow such devices to be a childminder?, I suspect no one has really thought through that point just yet, or indeed done any research on it ( intuitively how many parents trust their children with other people, never mind machines…?). Would you or your child fall in love with a chatbot?
4 At the other end of the generation scale would you permit your ageing mother and father to rely on a DA or robot to take care of them and cope with the vagaries of old age, dementia and just plain cantankerousness.?
