IDG Contributor Network: The big unspoken problem with digital assistants
AI-driven digital assistants are fast becoming our way to interfacing with everything. We largely had them in our phones first, then in our homes, but they are coming in our cars, and they are appearing in our offices. Each of these AI virtual assistants is learning with increasing efficiency what we like, what we want, how to anticipate our needs, and, eventually, how to best make us happy. But the big unspoken problem emerging is that each of these things is largely an entirely separate system with virtually no sharing of common information or consistency of experience.
Let’s talk about why that is a problem.
We are complex but consistent
Having separate interfaces for every machine we worked with made sense before we had intelligence in these systems. Having the same controls for a blender as you’d have for a tank would have created problems in both the kitchen and the battlefield (though I can imagine a bender targeting a male demographic that might have sold rather well if it had a cannon and trigger).