shanteshmani.medium.com
Artificial Intelligence Powered Digital Assistants
We can all see how Artificial Intelligence-powered digital assistants have gained considerable popularity in recent years.
Their promises and challenges.
We can all see how Artificial Intelligence-powered digital assistants have gained considerable popularity in recent years. Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana have demonstrated significant promises. At the same time, observers continue to question these AI-powered digital assistants due to certain challenges they pose. Read on, as we look at both these aspects.
AI-powered digital assistants: What they are
AI-powered digital assistants are software programs. They might use specific hardware like a smart speaker. Alternatively, you might find them as a feature on your smartphone, laptop, or a wearable device.
These digital assistants take directions or requests from the user. Subsequently, they find information and perform a task. Earlier software programs used rules-based automation to perform tasks for their users. AI-powered digital assistants work very differently though.
These new-generation digital assistants use AI and the following AI capabilities:
- Voice recognition: This helps the digital assistant to establish the authenticity of the user.
- Voice-enabled “Natural Language Processing” (NLP): This AI capability helps these digital assistants to understand the voice requests from users. It also helps them to respond back to users after gathering the required information and completing the task.
- “Machine Learning” (ML): AI-powered digital assistants use the input from the user and other information they gather to complete tasks. These intelligent assistants also use the users’ personal data and their usage history for this purpose. ML helps them to process this data and derive useful patterns out of it.
You can use these AI-powered digital assistants for a variety of purposes. The following are a few examples:
- Controlling devices at home.
- Initiating phone calls or text messages.
- Getting answers to questions without having to look up reference materials.
- Getting up-to-date information about several subjects like weather or traffic.
- Performing simple tasks setting alarms and reminders.
How AI-powered digital assistants work
These intelligent assistants work as follows:
- When a user makes a request, the voice recognition capability of the digital assistant verifies the authenticity of the user.
- NLP capabilities like “Speech-to-Text” convert the natural language of the user into text for further processing.
- Depending on the nature of the request, the digital assistant might access various services on the cloud. For example, if a user requests for up-to-date weather information, then the digital assistant could access leading APIs related weather-related news.
- NLP capabilities like “Text-to-Speech” convert the information into a voice-based response, and the digital assistant provides that to the user.
- As the digital assistant answers more and more queries, it “learns” using ML algorithms. The more tasks it performs, its ML algorithms help it “learn” from the tasks and the preferences of the user. As a result, the digital assistant improves its performance over time.
Build better voice apps. Get more articles & interviews from voice technology experts at voicetechpodcast.com
The advantages of AI-based digital assistants
While you already know the advantages that Apple Siri, Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa offer to individual users, there is more to it! AI-based digital assistants can offer many more advantages.
A few examples are as follows:
- Learning and development: Learning and development are not just about formal education but learning on the job is important too. AI-powered digital assistants can help professionals learn on the job by turning the focus on them. These digital assistants can provide information from the Internet. Moreover, they can observe where the professional is doing well and where he/she needs help. The personalization capabilities of these digital assistants can then give them the support they need.
- Accessibility: People with disabilities can benefit greatly from intelligent digital assistants. AI-based digital assistants can open new avenues for them to get the information they need for a task. For example, visually impaired people can benefit from the voice-based recommendations from these virtual assistants.
- Intelligent automation of repetitive tasks: Every organization has several repetitive tasks in their workflows. Many of them have already implemented rule-based automation solutions to automate quite a few of them. AI-based virtual assistants can take this automation to a higher level since they use much more than rule-based automation. ML algorithms can study the patterns of repetitive tasks and deduce the best way to perform those tasks. This enables organizations to automate repetitive tasks that earlier needed human intervention.
- Chatbots for customer support: Chatbots are a form of AI-powered digital assistants and they can transform your customer support function. Your customers want a speedy response, even if they contact you after business hours. If you sell your products or services globally, then you need to respond to customer queries from different geographies. Your customer support team needs to be available 24x7, however, you might not have enough people and infrastructure for that. Chatbots can answer customer queries 24x7. They can handle relatively simpler queries, and they respond fast. You can use your experienced customer support representatives for more complex queries.
The challenges posed by AI virtual assistants
AI-based digital assistants have their share of limitations and challenges too. These are as follows:
- The limitations of the technology: A lot of research and developments are still going on as far as AI is concerned. One can categorize the current crop of AI technologies used in these digital assistants as “Weak AI”. They incorporate a limited amount of intelligence. We are yet to see “Strong AI” that employs a higher degree of intelligence, and we will not see that anytime soon. As a result, AI digital assistants can only handle relatively simpler tasks.
- Privacy concerns: When you keep your device with an AI digital assistant on, it can potentially record a lot of your conversations. There have been reports that human employees of the technology giants listen to the recorded audio clips that contain users’ requests to their digital assistants. To make matters more complex, the technology giants can access your location data along with the recorded audio clips. All of these combines to create serious privacy concerns among many users of AI digital assistants. Many Internet users do not trust technology giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft to keep their data private, which compounds the problem.
- Security concerns: All your requests to Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana are stored on the cloud. There have been many reports of hackers successfully attacking cloud infrastructure and stealing sensitive data. As a result, many users of these digital assistants have security concerns around their data.
Conclusion
We reviewed how AI-powered digital assistants work and the kind of technologies they utilize. Subsequently, we reviewed their advantages and disadvantages. While AI-based virtual assistants promise a lot, their makers need to address the limitations. Only then can AI digital assistants make a lasting positive impact on society and businesses.
Shantesh Mani is a Data Scientist, Machine Learning Engineer & Artificial Intelligence Specialist. A jazz drummer, percussionist with experience from symphony orchestras, concert bands, heavy metal bands and even Indian music; classical and Bollywood.
Mission 👇
To Share, Serve, Empower & Grow.
My mission is to give value to as many people as I can. From business owners, developers right through to students/graduates trying to understand the recruitment process and the importance of have a digital footprint and building their brand. Please get in touch. I want to hear your story!
We can connect on LinkedIn, Quora, Twitter, Github, Facebook, or by visiting, shanteshmani.com.
We just launched a new Quora Space. Please check it out here.
Final Note:
If you have read this article to this point, I would personally like to thank you and sincerely express my gratitude and appreciation for taking the time to do so. I would love to hear your feedback and comments, regardless of the sentiment, it’s the only way I can learn, grow and provide even better value. The fantastic community humbles me on here, and I am feeling blessed to have a chance to connect with such beautiful people. — Shantesh Mani
