Personal Assistants set to become even more personal in 2013

As usual, everyone is making end-of-year tech predictions for 2013. I saw one list that included the bold forecasts “smartphones will get smaller” and “QR codes will be everywhere.” Roger that. Most of these follow the familiar path of ‘things will be like they are now, only more so.’

But I’ve got a prediction that I’m going to make that I haven’t seen elsewhere (I’m either way off-base or eerily prescient). So here goes.

It has to do with the category of personal assistants that have gotten very sophisticated in the last few years. Siri on the iPhone is the best known example; you can talk to it (okay, her) and she’ll respond with voice answers that will answer your questions or provide a rudimentary conversation with some clever pre-programmed responses. You know: “Will you marry me?” “Let’s keep this relationship professional.” If you have an iPhone, you’ve no doubt spent some time doing this until the novelty subsided.

There are other examples of this category emerging now. Google voice is an interesting feature of voice command technology. Car dashboards, with the goal of being as hands free as possible, will certainly incorporate voice commands more and more. And I recently wrote a blog about avatars at airports that project the image of a person (yes, always an attractive female) to provide directions and help; although not interactive now, I’m sure they soon will be.

But up till now, all these constructs have been almost entirely passive. They speak when spoken to. Well, I predict that this software is poised to become much more interactive. I can see having the ability to configure them to operate more independently and on their own initiative.

We could use these programs in interesting ways. To remind us about important dates or conditions; for example, when the stock market is exceeding certain parameters, or if bad weather is on the way, or we’ve forgotten items on our grocery list. Sure, we can set reminders and go looking for this kind of information now, but those are all actions we have to initiate. With more personalized and smartly programmed personal assistants (let’s call them PAs) the experience is better. They’ll reach out to us.

This will be more sophisticated than the kind of annoying pop-ups that permeate our computer experience now. I think if done correctly, they’ll gain acceptance and enough people will find it all fun and useful for it to become a successful evolution of the technology. The primary platform will be the one that’s always with us now, the smartphone, and these programs will be always on, ready to speak up when appropriate, and always according to the parameters we’ve chosen for it.

It’s within their capabilities to learn our needs and habits, likes and dislikes. They should be programmed to act the way we want – for instance, don’t speak up when I’m with other people, or if I’m at the office. They could be personalized for motivational tasks – for instance, program your PA to help you eat healthy at meal times with some friendly encouragement, or maybe to dish out some tough love when it senses you pulling into the McDonalds drive-through. For purely recreational purposes, they can respond with all kinds of conversation starters. They could be programmed to chat away about all your favorite topics: politics yes, vampire movies no (or vice versa). The programming for all this is not much beyond the capability of technology today.

I predict that PAs will become as mainstream as smartphones, voice activation and everything else is today. I can hear some of you already saying that ‘this sounds too creepy’ but so were a lot of things that we take for granted today. I remember the first time I saw and heard someone talking to the air: he was on a cellphone on 46^th street in Manhattan. That was creepy once too – then it wasn’t.

So I predict that Siri-like PAs will go to a whole new level in the year or two ahead. I think that we’ll all be talking to them soon. What do you think?