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Assistants here, assistants there, assistants everywhere.
The tech world seems agog about building everyone’s new virtual best friend, ready to tirelessly serve our practical needs and whimsical desires anytime and anywhere. After decades of science fiction visions about a future when intelligent machines with pleasant, reassuring voices effortlessly answer their master’s most pressing questions and blithely fulfill any request, 21st Century technology has finally tipped over the point where futuristic fantasies could soon become reality. Some might argue that soon is right now.
Planners often talk about how our lives move between three primary environments: home, work (or school) and on-the-go. This makes sense for most of us and has been very useful for product ideation and marketing purposes. It helps creators imagine how their solutions will solve problems unique to each environment.
Automobiles are part of the “on-the-go” scenario for hundreds of millions of people around the globe. It is really quite remarkable how dramatically the automotive industry has been evolving over just the last five-to-ten years. Ten years ago, even the most advanced vehicles on the market lacked the intelligence we see hitting the market today. They were mechanical marvels of technology that could perform many impressive functions within and unto themselves, but artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, true driver personalization and external data exchange capabilities were still conceptual. In the time since, driver assistance systems, the internet and new human-machine-interfaces (HMI) have proliferated in vehicles at all levels in the market. The “connected car” period of the last few years is quickly morphing into the “smart car” era.
The key element to making cars “smart” will be a deep learning AI platform that thoughtfully integrates the car’s HMI with various third-party virtual assistants, vehicle sensors, off-board content, as well as user habits and preferences. Smart cars will possess an automotive assistant that can connect a variety of inputs and data sources. Its value will be judged by how elegantly it understands and communicates with its users using speech and natural language, while accessing and delivering a world of information from a wide range of “expert” sources to instantly and/or proactively deliver the right answer, content or action. In essence, the assistant is agnostic and truly built to assist the driver — and, because it’s…