I don’t use IA – ‘Intelligent Assistants’ – but I have seen a friend struggle with Siri, so I’m not convinced even the Q&A part of IA is quite as advanced as the author of this article would like to think. My own struggles with the mindless ‘assistants’ gatekeeping so many corporate phone numbers probably doesn’t endear me to IA either. Nevertheless, I can see the technology becoming ubiquitous, eventually. At the moment though, it seems to me to be more of a toy than a tool. Does anyone else have more relevant experience with IAs?
Ever since Apple’s Siri heralded the age of intelligent assistants (IAs) four years ago — followed by Microsoft, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook — pundits have complained that intelligent assistant technology isn’t living up to its promise.
Source: Intelligent assistant landscape shows slow growth but huge potential
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NANO 2012
February 15th, 2016 at 11:04 pm
I have Windows 10 here, but refuse to switch on Cortana. It just seems like yet another way of the corporates mining data from me to then set loose their marketing idiots.
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February 16th, 2016 at 7:26 am
Ah, haven’t made the switch yet so I haven’t had to worry about Cortana. lol First time I read about it I thought it was a car [like the Corolla or Cortina].
You may be right about the data mining but don’t you think it’s also part of the great dumbing down? As if ordinary people are incapable of doing/finding anything for themselves?
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February 16th, 2016 at 8:17 am
Me too – a Ford Cortina, just like my parents owned in the early sixties, registration number 466 DBH. Yes, the dumbing down business, screen dependency one might call it I suppose. That’s exactly what the corporate idiots want though, a pliant and compliant user base that can be led by the nose to derive revenue to Google, Apple, Microsoft and their third party cohort vendors. I loathe Neoliberalism and what it’s making of us all.
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February 16th, 2016 at 8:24 am
-giggles- You remember the rego number from way back /then/????
And yes, they’ve been succeeding haven’t they? I think the biggest con of the digital age is the trade-off between privacy and ‘convenience’. More like a rort actually. 😦
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February 15th, 2016 at 11:19 am
I don’t use it, and come to think about it, my friends don’t either. I have heard of some hilarious answers Siri comes up with, and it seems easy to bamboozle her. 🙂
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February 15th, 2016 at 11:54 am
lol – Thanks! I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one unimpressed with this particular ‘gadget’.
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February 15th, 2016 at 9:10 am
I have an iPhone 6, but I never use Siri. Not sure why; I’m sure it would save me some time.
Makes me wonder what the world will look like in ten years. Advances come so quickly now it seems.
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February 15th, 2016 at 11:53 am
Hmm…that’s interesting. I have a theory that there is like a critical mass that any ‘gadget’ has to reach before we all start using it. In the case of IA, perhaps it’s reliability, or ease of use?
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February 15th, 2016 at 12:58 pm
I think ease of use plays a big factor in learning anything new.
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February 15th, 2016 at 2:31 pm
🙂
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