The time travel paradox of artificial intelligence.

Google and Facebook will build indispensable personal assistants. How will this disrupt the future?

Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five and J.K.Rowling’s series of Harry Potter novels describe the time travel paradox. Traveling through time changes the future from the point in time where the traveler arrived. The personal assistant that will arrive at some time in the future will change humans from that point in time forward, but in a more impactful way than GPS.

1.    Artificially intelligent personal assistants will be part of our lives

Google and Facebook have recruited the best artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning talent in the world to build personal assistants in small increments.

The personal assistant’s intimate knowledge of users’ likes and dislikes and awareness of situational context could be like Samantha depicted in the movie Her, but without an emotional relationship so users will not fall in love with their assistants. Compared to Samantha, Google and Facebook’s progress is modest, though Google Now and its recently announced sibling Google Home promise a future with a conversational personal assistant that knows the user. When exactly Samantha will arrive is not predictable because researchers have not yet completed all the work to create her.

Likewise, Facebook’s progress in interpreting images and text comments proves that machines can understand the context of a scene and conversations in the comments to a post or dialog with a Messenger Bot. Add camera subsystems, such as Google’s Project Tango, and a few other research projects, such as  Qualcomm’s 3D object detection, and machines will have human-like 3D perception.

Google and Facebook have the data about us to teach a personal assistant with machine learning to be contextually relevant to our daily lives. Neither company has a plan to hatch a Samantha-like personal assistant that is indispensable from their research yet, but it is their goal. The usefulness will increase little by little as AI and machine learning research is applied in increments to consumer products.

2.    The personal assistant will be a trade of personal information

It is not an altruistic endeavor. Both companies want to make their products more relevant by complementing their data troves with the intelligence of the personal assistant to motivate users to spend more time using their products and make ads more relevant, increasing click-throughs. Google demonstrated that it is aware of personal privacy concerns during the announcement of its Home personal assistant, stating that Home would have access to only personal information such as calendars with the user’s explicit permission. It is a fair trade to have Samantha.

3.    How will people use their surplus cognitive capacity

The personal assistance of GPS has become pervasive. Drivers once bought multi-fold maps to study their routes before heading out on a trip and to spot check their progress during the journey. Now drivers use GPS even in familiar circumstances when they already know how to reach their destination because it frees up cognitive capacity.

Artificially intelligent personal assistants will free up even more time. How will people use this cognitive capacity made available by personal assistants that (maybe the pronoun who is more appropriate here) take over the mundane tasks in our lives? We might have to wait 50 years to retrospectively measure the effects of the time travel paradox of AI. But it will change humans. Perhaps the question is better expressed by the narrator of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden:

“A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”

Why calling people sucks?

 I really don’t like calling, and think it’s a relic from a time we didn’t have any other options. Let’s start by looking at our behavior through the lens of the products we use. We all carry around these devices in our pockets with a very peculiar name — smartphones.

In the early 2000s, we used the word to describe a phone with extra ‘smart’ functionality. Today that same device is something we use for a lot of different things, that you can also use to call people.

Back in 2007, when the iPhone was introduced, SMS was still the main mobile text-based messaging service — and it had a lot of limitations. With a maximum of 160 characters, no support for images and a high cost per message, it wasn’t the most enticing option, especially when free texting over data came along, with the advent of services like WhatsApp.

It suddenly became practically free to send messages with pictures, location or other data attached — it would only use up your monthly data allowance.

So why do we still use phones for calling, if there are vastly easier ways to reach someone? Some people argue that calls are simpler, quicker or more personal. I don’t agree with any of these, and I’ll explain why.

Calling isn’t easier. Actually, it’s a hassle — you need to wait before you’re connected, while the person on the other end is being interrupted in what he or she was doing. Suddenly, your phone starts vibrating and making loud sounds just because someone else thinks he’s important enough to warrant that attention. You have to stop, step out of the moment and trust that the caller has something to say that’s worth the annoyance.

Calling is also definitely not quicker. When you pick up, you first need to go through the various steps of phone etiquette. These include saying things like ‘Hey!’ and ‘I’m great, how are you?’ for the first two minutes, and then slowly progressing to the actual point of the conversation. Please tell me how this isn’t ten times as fast:

               

It’s true that calling actually is a little bit more personal than texting. But that doesn’t mean it’s always the right choice.

Sure, there are situations when calling makes more sense. Something important happened that the other person has to know as soon as possible, you have urgent personal news to share or you’re in a long distance relationship and need to stay in touch with your partner. But the painful truth is that 95 percent of all calls could have been a message — they’re simply not important enough.

Messaging also isn’t perfect, of course. For starters, users are spread over many different platforms — Facebook Messenger, LINE, iMessage, WhatsApp, Google Allo and WeChat are just a few that come to mind. Before we started using Slack at TNW, I had to send my coworkers a message on at least three different services before I got a reply.

But it’s almost always better than calling. So next time when you think you should call someone, please think again. It’s probably best you don’t.

                             

CISCO TO ROLLOUT SMART CITY APPLICATIONS IN HYDERABAD.

Cisco will implement multiple projects including Digital Zone smart city project, Internet of things' innovation hub and a centre of excellence.

Internet technology company Cisco and Telangana government on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding(MoU) to initiate digital transformation of the new state.

Cisco will implement multiple projects including Digital Zone smart city project, Internet of things(IoT) innovation hub and a Living Lab, a centre of excellence among other things here.

Under the Digital Zone project, Cisco will deploy city digital platform in the 2.2 km area near Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad, including smart Wi-Fi, smart parking, smart lighting, traffic analytics at key junctions, remote expert for government services, smart environmental censors, smart waste management, and a smart control center to monitor and manage the city with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

The company will collaborate with local ecosystem solution providers to build a scalable model for the effective roll out of city services across the state of Telangana. The project will utilise Cisco's global expertise and intellectual property in the areas of IoT, mobile technology and applications, cloud computing, data analytics, social media among other things. It will also collaborate with the state for the upcoming smart cities in Telangana.

Talking about their partnership with the state government, Cisco India president Dinesh Malkani said digitisation will be key to how cities, communities and countries maintain global competitiveness, increase GDP growth, foster innovation and create new jobs. Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao said he hopes to utilise the expertise of Cisco to catapult the state to the forefront of digital revolution.