![]() ![]() It's a girl!"), update you with changing events ("Steve wants to postpone your meeting until Friday") and notify you of any other relevant information. When the current app is finished, Zazu mornings will tell you the most important things happening with your friends and family ("Janet had her baby last night. When you press it, the app will tell you (in a pleasant voice) the time, date and weather, and show you top headlines and what your schedule looks like. ![]() The current beta app will wake you up like a conventional alarm clock and present you with a button. This week, a tiny startup called Zazu launched an iPhone and Android app called Zazu Mornings. And then it's all about the execution, timing, funding and so on.Įverywhere you look in technology today, you'll see these kinds of virtual assistants emerging. The truth is that the big new ideas are always "in the air" - many people are working on them because technology evolution brings the industry to the point where these ideas are inevitable. One myth about innovation is that it comes about as a "eureka" moment of spontaneous creation, producing an idea radically different from anything that came before. Like Apple's HAL, the Google version will learn from your responses, becoming more accurate and relevant the more you use it. Would you like me to reschedule the lunch?" You'll say, "sure, go ahead," and Google's HAL will take care of it for you, getting Steve's OK and then changing your restaurant reservation. The Google HAL will constantly monitor your e-mail, your calendar, your social activity, your searches, your whereabouts and other data, run it all through some massively sophisticated algorithm, and then beep your phone and tell you something like this: "It looks like your lunch with Steve conflicts with the parent-teacher conference your wife just invited you to. Google will give you results before you even know you want to conduct a search. Google intends to leverage all of that data to transform its search technology into a HAL 9000 style personal assistant that communicates with you through your cell phone.Īs I detailed in this space last week, Google will add proactive interruption as a way to make search even faster than instantaneous. If you're a heavy user of Google services, Google knows who you are, where you are, what you're interested in, who you know and much more. HAL also knew everything about the people he interacted with. He was able to monitor all computer and spaceship systems. The movie HAL performed its amazing feats in part because it had access to a lot of data. So we can expect HAL to be integrated into our phones one feature at a time.īut Apple isn't the only company with an advantage. The company is also disciplined about rolling out only the aspects of new technology that are ready for prime time. When you pick one, Siri will make the reservation for you.Īpple bought Siri and hired the world's leading expert in HAL-like artificial intelligence robots to lead its iPhone engineering team for only one reason: Apple knows phones will evolve into virtual personal assistants.Īpple's advantage is that it's good at integrating functionality and making it seamless and elegant. Siri will intelligently suggest a few based on your location and preferences. Say you want to make a restaurant reservation. If you've got an iPhone, you can download Siri's "virtual personal assistant" app free of charge. The only difference is that HAL will live in your iPhone. Apple "acquired" Cheyer when it bought the company he co-founded, Siri Inc.Īnd Cheyer is still building HAL. Guess what HAL's chief architect does now? Cheyer works at Apple as director of engineering for the iPhone. ![]()
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