Читать книгу The Innovation Ultimatum - Steve Brown - Страница 32

Voice agents like Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Samsung Bixby, and Google Assistant improve significantly every year. Some add new capabilities almost every week. Google claims their voice assistant is now available on more than a billion devices. These “conversational computing” or “digital dialogue” platforms will reshape the way we work and become an increasingly important part of our lives. Paradoxically, voice agents may become both our managers, and our subordinates, guiding our actions and performing our errands.

Voice interfaces are an important component of hands-free computing and a natural complement to augmented reality. Hands-free technology offers the prospect of “computing for the rest of us” and voice interfaces are valuable for people with impaired vision, for use in sterile clinical environments where physical interfaces aren't appropriate, and for the 80% of people who either work with their hands or in highly mobile environments.

Artificial intelligence—in the form of speech-to-text, NLU, NLG, and speech synthesis—underpins the operation of voice platforms. Continued advances in AI will make conversational computing sound more human. Future voice agents will engage in complex back-and-forth conversations, speak realistically, use human idioms, and even add fake breathing sounds and natural hesitations and pauses to make them sound more human. Google's Duplex technology and Microsoft Cortana have already made great strides and we should expect major breakthroughs in this area in the coming years.

As voice agents become more sophisticated, they will become ever-present in our lives and help us navigate our days. We will use them to make reservations, manage our calendars, run errands, place orders, troubleshoot problems, give advice, and even provide emotional support. Ultimately, a transactional conversation with a digital voice agent will become indistinguishable from one held with a human. This prospect has profound implications for those that work in customer service.