The A.I. Virtual Assistant

And to think I know most about VA’s. Well yes, except for this one.

I just learned about visual assistant some time ago, and as I try to gather more information and history on it, so I asked Google for some help and immediate at the first page I came across Wikipedia and decided it’s the best place to start. So I clicked on the link and the content displays, except it asks me to choose between two links. The first is Virtual Assistant (Occupation), and another one is Virtual Assistant (Artificial Intelligence) with a brief description saying “a bot such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana, etc.” I am familiar with those smart speakers that have been a big hit on homes on most first world countries especially the US, but I never thought they would be called as Virtual Assistant also, which in all logic they are.  

There are four AI’s that dominate the market based on an online poll last 2017 found the most widely used in the US where Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana. Apple and Googles AI’s are installed on their respective smartphone brands. Microsoft on Windows-based personal computers and smart speakers. And Amazon’s Alexa is a famous choice for smart speakers. Samsung has also taken advantage of being leading smartphone market leader and made their own AI named Bixby which is pre-installed on their Galaxy series.

So how do they work?

All of them can be activated by just saying their respective names, and then you can ask questions or even let them check your schedules like “Siri what would be the weather this coming Sunday?” or “Alexa, please play my second favorite playlist.” Mainly, you just need to start a conversation with them, and just like people, they will reply appropriately to the question you ask, if they don’t have an answer they will apologize to you politely. You can have a casual conversation with them as a normal person does. They are constantly updated to add more “skills” so they can do more things. Amazon is boasting their Alexa has 5,000 skills, that is lots of skill for an AI.

Their smart, smart enough to replace humans?

Yes and No.

Yes because let's face it having an AI do all your works will be very economical and that one reason is tempting to all business sectors. Imagine removing yourself from employing people and paying them every time. And today's technology, AI’s becoming more and more smart and skillful. Cheap yet smart; now that is a two thumbs up. Efficiency is always a top priority everywhere, and that field AI shines brighter than humans.

No also because let’s be realistic, how many jobs can a talking box physically do? Zero. Yes, they are smart, but they are just AI’s without any physical body. And even there's a lot of advancements in the field of robotics in the past decades it's still far from anything can be a human substitute. And it’s very expensive to build robots and not to mention its maintenance.

Although AI starts to take few of humans jobs away from humans, those are still in the experimental phase and just a handful of jobs which needs a more efficient solution where humans can’t provide. The human visual assistants would still be around, and the services they provide are more than just computer logic and data but human expertise in understanding and creativity with a goal to make their clients happy and satisfied what makes us superior.

Now let’s see if any AI can make a better blog than this.