Q Series- A slave, a friend, a master — What would you want your digital assistant to be?

Morning coffee thoughts…only questions…

What would you want your future digital assistant to be?

A slave “Alex! Buy me a coffee, you know my taste”

A friend “Tardis, what do you think my suit colour should be? ”

A master “Deep bot.. what is the meaning of life?”

Or do you want it to be all these personas? If you do, what would such an assistant be as a character? Its no more similar to a human, but a multi-talented, multi-personality superhuman assistant. Is assistant really the word then?

What would be the changes (emotional, cognitive, personality) in the user who interacts with such an AI? Would she/he be more demanding ? Would she/he become lazy ? Would she/he go into isolationism depending solely on the AI ? Would she/he try to upgrade herself/himself and become superhuman at every task taking upon the spirit of competition?

What should the AI assistant be? An alt human-form? An avatar? An invisible presence? Male or female? Customised? A voice in your head?

Would you want multiple assistants, each capable of its own separate task, or each equally capable. Would you want them to talk and interact with each other? Would you want each helping each other out?

Would you want them predicting things and doing things for you — Feeling a bit sad, was planning to call mom, call already placed by assistant, assistant briefs mom that child is sad, mom talks to child, says she cooked the favourite cookie and is sending it over, behaviour studied by assistant, recipe gathered by assistant, next time child is sad, cookie is made automatically and labelled as “with love… mom”.

Analysing the city of Cambridge, I find a friend at MIT could keep my secret (I had an imaginary childhood friend called Nivi) , but she makes robots, will she name her next robot Nivi? — Would you want assistants knowing everything about you? Would you reveal your deepest secrets to a machine? Or is a machine more reliable than your chatty friend?

Lets think about the makers of the assistants. Would they want everyone to use their assistants? If so how do they make sure every assistant can learn and customise according to tastes of its user? Or would they create characteristics specific to the assistant, giving them personality, whether the user like it or not? Or would they let the assistant be all-adjusting creating an ever-more-dominating user?

Finally is AI really about creating mindless helpers or creating individuals? Are we giving birth to a species which will be our assistants or are we creating a new species which will co-exist with us? Are we …. creating slaves, friends or masters?

Q Series is a series of questions on a subject not trying to answer anything specific but to invoke thoughts in one’s mind.

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