This just came out in the news today, which I saw through the Mashable feed. Google’s AI Assistant is really learning how to interact using natural language in a big way. The future, if it’s not now, is coming very soon!
If this is truly working, and I’m guessing it’ll be available to the public soon enough, it’s going to be kicking the back end of Siri and Alexa and Cortana. I’ve used Siri for a while now, and it’s not perfect, but it’s okay–it’s gotten better over the years. Alexa has been a bit of a disappointment to me–Siri can usually do better. With mixed results from those two, I haven’t really ventured into trying Cortana, but I’m willing to bet that it’s still not as developed as the Google Assistant.
How does this affect technical communicators? Big time. From what I can tell, this is about the chatbots and machine language learning that’s been talked about recently. But at the same time, it affects how we communicate through rhetoric or voice. Sometimes we take actual speaking for granted, and it’s when we try to describe something that one sees clearly that it becomes difficult. Or, sometimes we can write it out well, but can’t explain well in voice. This means that plain and very clear language is going to be helpful going forward as we develop the content for these AI assistants that will be developing.
Soon enough, we’ll be talking to HAL or to our starship’s computer with ease.
What do you think about this development? It’s exciting to me–enough to make me want to purchase a Google Assistant! It definitely raises the bar for Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, for sure. Let some healthy competition begin! (And more tech comm jobs associated with it!) Include your thoughts below.
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