Abstracts in this Pattern:

• SC-2015-12-02-032 on mirror
• SC-2015-12-02-010 on email
• SC-2015-12-02-060 on Clara
• SC-2015-12-02-002 on code

Amazon.com (Seattle, Washington), Apple (Cupertino, California), Facebook (Menlo Park, California), Google (Mountain View, California), and Microsoft (Redmond, Washington) each has its own proprietary digital assistant that locks users into its own ecosystem. Missing features and a lack of expandability increase the likelihood that users will have complex interactions with multiple disparate digital assistants. For instance, 11 European research groups (Semeoticons; www.semeoticons.eu) are working on the Wize Mirror—a smart mirror that can read a number of biometric factors and may be able to diagnose some diseases via a multispectral camera and chemical-detection technologies. Researchers hope the Wize Mirror will help users remember to take their medicine and monitor their health. The device may even act as an assistant to people in aging-in-place arrangements.

Proprietary digital assistants will likely stifle innovation to lock users into a walled garden of devices and services under the control of a single company. Open platforms for accessing, storing, and sharing data among digital-assistant services may enable far greater innovation and give start-ups the opportunity to thrive. Email has remained ubiquitous, open, adaptable, and democratic, and it holds data persistently; therefore, digital assistants could source their data from emails. For example, start-up Clara Labs (San Francisco, California) has developed Clara—a platform-agnostic scheduling system that allows users to schedule appointments by cc'ing Clara (the artificial intelligence) on their emails. Clara also peeks into users' calendars and sends emails to schedule meetings. Currently at the beta stage, Clara already can integrate with any email client and any online calendar system.

In the future, digital assistants might work much more closely with users than they do now, becoming very personal companions that individuals can program according to their specific needs. Researchers at University College London (London, England) are working to create a natural-language programming language that would enable people to use natural language rather than code to change an application's characteristics.

The Development of this Pattern

Data Points

• SC-2015-12-02-032
  Eleven European research groups are working on the Wize Mirror—a smart mirror that can read a number of biometric factors and may be able to diagnose some diseases via a multispectral camera and chemical-detection technologies.
• SC-2015-12-02-060
  Start-up Clara Labs has developed Clara—a platform-agnostic scheduling system that allows users to schedule appointments by cc'ing Clara (the artificial intelligence) on their emails.
• SC-2015-12-02-002
  Researchers at University College London are working to create a natural-language programming language that would enable people to use natural language rather than code to change an application's characteristics.

Implications

From Digital Assistants to Digital Companions

Digital assistants might travel among applications and devices to follow users regardless of where they are or what they are doing.

Previous Alerts

• SoC022 — Cognitive Computing (August 2003)
  The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has begun another potentially revolutionary project in the form of its cognitive-computing initiative. Tapping expertise from more than 20 research organizations, the research will develop computer systems that can learn and adapt to changing conditions.
• SoC028 — Cognitive Agent That Learns and Organizes (September 2003)
  SRI International's Open Agent Architecture will finally have the chance to prove its value, as major research institutions use the protocol to create an infrastructure to integrate and coordinate the efforts of computer agents that can learn, reason, plan, perceive, and communicate.
• SoC475 — Apps, Apps Everywhere (November 2010)
  Opening a smartphone or computer platform to content developed by outside providers has become a vital component of platforms' success and may soon be a requirement for other types of platforms as well.
• P0749 — Pervasive Assistant Appliances (March 2015)
  Consumer-electronics products and services are becoming pervasive personal assistants that continuously monitor and advise users.
• P0800 — Revisiting Cognitive Augmentation (July 2015)
  Technological progress is fast enabling cognitive augmentation—a concept that engineers first proposed in the 1960s.
• SoC832 — The World According to Digital Assistants (November 2015)
  Artificial-intelligence software from Apple and Google could have an increasing influence over all digital experiences.