We are entering a new world. The technologies of machine learning, speech recognition, and natural language understanding are reaching a nexus of capability. The end result is that we’ll soon have artificially intelligent assistants to help us in every aspect of our lives.

Most people on the planet have lived the majority of their lives without the benefit of GPS-enabled smartphones, global mapping systems, personal digital assistants, and the amazing wonders of turn-by-turn directions. We’ve adjusted without much complaining. The benefits of the technology are undeniable.

What’s coming next? In a recent article published for the New Zealand publication Business Day, Tom Pullar-Strecker postulates that soon we will all have our own intelligent “virtual personal assistant” (VPA). The VPA will have access to vast stores of knowledge about the world, goods and services, and our own wants and needs. Having access to such a powerful VPA could be like having turn-by-turn directions for everything we do. Pullar-Strecker also notes that the VPA will act as a “gatekeeper” to protect us from unwanted corporate advertisements.

Geraldine McBride, CEO of MyWave, presented some of these concepts at the recent Opus Research Intelligent Assistants Conference in NYC. A core idea behind the technology of her company is the creation of a “Personal Cloud” that enables a customer to own and control his or her data. The personal cloud means companies can no longer push ads at me. Instead, I have to give them permission to approach me. My VPA acts as a gatekeeper to screen out unwanted corporate solicitations.

While this concept seems like a no-brainer on the surface, I wonder if it may have unintended consequences. The reality is, there will always be a master controller who decides what marketing content I, the consumer, see. The master controller in the pre-digital world was the big chain bookstore that sold preferred book placement to the publisher who paid the most, or the retailer that sold the best spot on crowded shelves the highest paying vendor. I suppose that still happens.

Currently Google and Facebook are the real master controllers. They decide what ads I’ll see based on which companies are willing to pay to boost their posts or purchase Adwords. The boosted posts and the Adwords ads are shown to me based on information that Google and Facebook have been able to mine about my interests; mostly without my direct permission.

Is there something invasive and slimy about all this? No doubt.

VPA: Your New Best Friend
Now let’s imagine the world that is right around the corner. You have a VPA that knows a lot about you and learns more every day. In fact, the VPA knows far more about you than Google or Facebook could ever hope to know. Your VPA lives and sleeps with you. You talk to it all the time. You are closer to your VPA than you are to your dog (you talk to your VPA while walking your dog).

Now imagine your VPA is the gatekeeper to your attention. It’s not going to show you an ad unless… um, unless what? Unless it thinks you’ll be interested in the product? Ok, so imagine you’re about to make an Italian dinner and the VPA knows you’re in no mood to create spaghetti sauce from scratch. There are 25 makers of spaghetti sauce that all want you to know about their product. The VPA knows you like organic ingredients and there are 16 vendors that have all natural organic ingredients. 10 of them are highly rated by your friends. You’re in a hurry. There’s no way that you want to evaluate 10 spaghetti sauce products. You just want your VPA to get you one so you can get on with your business.

Which spaghetti sauce vendor do you think your VPA will buy? Yes, buy. Not just recommend. You’ve authorized your VPA to make your purchases. Why wouldn’t you? It knows everything about you, it knows more about what’s good than you do, and you trust it. My guess is that the VPA will buy the spaghetti sauce from one of the 10 preferred vendors who pays the real master controller the most money. As a vendor of spaghetti sauce I’m going to have to fork over a considerable percentage of my profit to this omnipotent master controller in order to get through your VPA. As a small vendor, I won’t stand a chance.

Thinking about it even further, what happens if the master controller gleans so much information about all buyers of spaghetti sauce, by aggregating data from all VPAs, that it identifies key trends? What if it learns that 72% of all people are susceptible to positively responding to an upselling opportunity for parmesan cheese and red wine within 3.25 minutes after making a spaghetti sauce purchase? And what if the master controller uses this information to not only manipulate you into buying more stuff, but to gain a huge monopoly over all sorts of industries, eventually driving the vast majority of small and medium-sized companies out of business?

This is a distinctly dystopian vision, not unlike the scenarios described by Jaron Lanier in his book Who Owns the Future?. Nobody wants it to become a reality. We are entering a new world, though, and these are the sorts of things that are worth thinking about. The real question is, when VPAs are finally here and we start using them to improve our lives, who or what will be the new master controller? Can we, should we, start thinking about ways to limit its power?

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Facebook, intelligent Assistants, VPA