⚠ Possible spoilers for the movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ⚠
Do we really need a SUPER artificial intelligence🤖 as a personal assistant?
I recently watched the new Miles Morales movie 🕸️ and there was one character in particular that really caught my attention: Lyla. She's Miguel O'Hara's personal assistant. She's an artificial intelligence that can appear as a hologram and is responsible for warning about potential risks in the multiverse. She's also the creator of the "watch" that helps them travel between the multiverse. She has an almost surreal ability to perform intensive computational calculations 🖥️. She reminds me a lot of JARVIS from Iron Man, only with superior technology.
Okay, this all sounds amazing. A virtual assistant that helps fight evil. But what good is that to us? What's the point of all this slightly geeky explanation?
With all the technology advancing so rapidly📈, many of us are starting to use our own virtual assistants🧑💻. And it seems they're not meeting our needs. Or perhaps they're not meeting our expectations?
Obviously, we don't need them to prevent a collapse within the multiverse; we're people with somewhat simpler needs ✔️ so I'm going to give a quick reminder of the AI assistants we have and their functionalities:
– Alexa [Amazon]: We have one of these at home, and it's been a huge help with some things. Everything is controlled by voice commands, which lets us multitask. We can enjoy personalized music, since Alexa learns our musical tastes. It also keeps us up-to-date with the news, lets us control devices in our home like smart lights and plugs (smart home system), shop on Amazon, and ask questions freely, since it has internet access, among other features.
– Siri [Apple]: Like Alexa, Siri works via voice commands🗣️, but only within Apple devices. You can make calls, send messages, play music🎵, set reminders and alarms⏰, get updates, control smart home devices, manage organizational and productivity tasks, perform translations, and access third-party apps.
– Cortana [Microsoft]: I haven't used this assistant much, but it seems comprehensive in terms of functionality. Using voice commands, you can get up-to-date information, set reminders and alarms, make calls and send messages, play music and control multimedia, get navigation directions, manage organizational and productivity tasks, control smart home devices, search the web, and access third-party apps and services.