An amanuensis was originally a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts. All professional people used to have some sort of support from a secretary or at least a word processing pool. Now we all hot desk and work from home using admittedly vastly improved technology, but without this support, often to the detriment of our work because we have to focus on mundane tasks in order to do our real job.
By way of example we recently had somebody professionally clean our oven to fit in with the new kitchen we have sort of built around it. The man was very thorough, but he also had to run his appointment system, and deal with all manner of questions from other customers, at the same time. As a result, he was forever taking phone calls whilst trying to do the cleaning with one hand. He eventually did a good job, but I can’t believe he truly did justice to the different tasks he was trying to do at the same time - and at the very least each visit took him longer adding to his already busy agenda.
Maybe help is at hand though. We can use personal assistants on our phones like Siri which is Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant - see this article. Siri competes with Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant.
Siri and the other personal assistants can actually do quite a lot - read your last email, send a text, let you know what films are playing today, find a table for three in London, call your friend at work, set an alarm – or as with me yesterday give me the weather forecast when I was out working the dog.
However, when you ask people what they use this current range of digital helpers for more often than not it is just to set alarms to remind them when for example dinner will be cooked. I think we are just scratching the surface of the use to which we can put voice enabled assistants.
This article 7 Key Predictions For The Future Of Voice Assistants And AI captures where we may be going to with conversational user interfaces commenting that contextual understanding is important - the Google Assistant has already charged ahead of the game as the technology has understood the context of follow-up questions since early last year.
This articlefrom Business Insider refers to interviews with Harry Shum, EVP of AI and Microsoft president Brad Smith about their new book "The Future Computed"
and suggests Twenty years from now, Microsoft and its competitors will be offering personal digital assistants that will offer the services of a full-time employee usually reserved for the rich and famous.
There is also an amusing side to digital assistants – see this site for Siri sayings including “What is the meaning of life – all evidence to date suggests it is chocolate”. To be fair Siri seems to be learning – I asked the same question today and received the answer “I Kant answer that. Ha ha” and then a few minutes later “I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object”!
The American writer Anthony J. D'Angelo once said Always be nice to secretaries. They are the real gatekeepers in the world. Maybe voice guided AI helpers will be our future as professionals and we had better get used to working with them.
For as the Twentieth Century economist Leo Cherne said The Computer is incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.
By way of example we recently had somebody professionally clean our oven to fit in with the new kitchen we have sort of built around it. The man was very thorough, but he also had to run his appointment system, and deal with all manner of questions from other customers, at the same time. As a result, he was forever taking phone calls whilst trying to do the cleaning with one hand. He eventually did a good job, but I can’t believe he truly did justice to the different tasks he was trying to do at the same time - and at the very least each visit took him longer adding to his already busy agenda.
Maybe help is at hand though. We can use personal assistants on our phones like Siri which is Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant - see this article. Siri competes with Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant.
Siri and the other personal assistants can actually do quite a lot - read your last email, send a text, let you know what films are playing today, find a table for three in London, call your friend at work, set an alarm – or as with me yesterday give me the weather forecast when I was out working the dog.
However, when you ask people what they use this current range of digital helpers for more often than not it is just to set alarms to remind them when for example dinner will be cooked. I think we are just scratching the surface of the use to which we can put voice enabled assistants.
This article 7 Key Predictions For The Future Of Voice Assistants And AI captures where we may be going to with conversational user interfaces commenting that contextual understanding is important - the Google Assistant has already charged ahead of the game as the technology has understood the context of follow-up questions since early last year.
This articlefrom Business Insider refers to interviews with Harry Shum, EVP of AI and Microsoft president Brad Smith about their new book "The Future Computed"
and suggests Twenty years from now, Microsoft and its competitors will be offering personal digital assistants that will offer the services of a full-time employee usually reserved for the rich and famous.
There is also an amusing side to digital assistants – see this site for Siri sayings including “What is the meaning of life – all evidence to date suggests it is chocolate”. To be fair Siri seems to be learning – I asked the same question today and received the answer “I Kant answer that. Ha ha” and then a few minutes later “I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object”!
The American writer Anthony J. D'Angelo once said Always be nice to secretaries. They are the real gatekeepers in the world. Maybe voice guided AI helpers will be our future as professionals and we had better get used to working with them.
For as the Twentieth Century economist Leo Cherne said The Computer is incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Man is unbelievably slow, inaccurate and brilliant. The marriage of the two is a force beyond calculation.
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