SIRI
RISING
former CALO program director
James Arnold calls an “iTunes for
everything else in the world.” Siri,
the startup, took a commission
anytime someone made a purchase
via the app. Were Apple ever to do
the same, it could tap into an entirely new source of cash.
Arnold also sees virtual assistants as intellectual equalizers. A
superb memory might cease to be
an advantage as intelligent assistants are tasked with remembering names, dates and other details.
Everyone will have the ability to
see unusual but important connections between legal cases or
patients’ symptoms, thanks to assistants that can identify relevant
precedents or files.
“The future of virtual personal
assistants is to make it so we don’t
have to think so much and work so
hard to do things that are possible,” says Kittlaus. “It’s less about
survival and more about exploring
the world.”
Yet for all the efficiencies these
do engines may provide, they may
also carry a significant risk. Evan
Selinger, a fellow at the Institute
for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, argues that less friction in our
lives may “render us more vulnerable to being automatic,” and elimi-
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nate crucial opportunities for moral deliberation. “The digital servant
becomes the digital overlord, and
we don’t even recognize it.”
They might also make us an
easy target for an algorithm that
knows more about our bad habits
and indulgences than we do, and
isn’t above exploiting them. The
stream of suggestions from virtual assistants, especially if advertisers have a say, could make
us more susceptible to overeating and over-spending. A spouse
knows not to encourage you to
stop by the steakhouse given your
heart condition. But would Siri?
Or Google Now if Google got a
big ad buy from the steakhouse?
Would Siri nag you into becoming
your best self or would it coddle
and humor you into a state of
blissful complacency?
By freeing us of the irritants
and drudgeries of life that keep us
from pursuing our more serious
interests, the promise of virtual
assistants offers a release into an
inconceivably higher state of being. As the mathematician and
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead observed, “Progress is measured by what you no longer have
to think about.”
But progress toward what? That
may be one of the few questions
our assistants won’t be
able to answer.