What is the end goal of all these personal digital assistants? If we evolve the concept to a point that it is the best it can possibly be, what would that look like?
How would we simulate the perfect digital assistant experience?
I’d say imagine it with a person?
You hire an assistant and decide to give this assistant an incredible amount of access to your life. This person would have total access over your calendar, communication, finances. The amount of trust you have in this person would have to be close to absolute. For the convenience they will bestow on you comes the very real risk that they have the ability to destroy your life.
So we back it off a step or two.
Your new assistant no longer has unfettered control of your finances but perhaps you give them a limited expense account to work with. They know what you spend and can make payments with your explicit permission. Your assistant can take calls for you and, after learning your preferences send outbound communication. More sensitive communication is sent to you for a dictated text or tweet or email.
You can keep taking this back in stages until it fits your comfort level.
I want to be able to talk to someone, in a normal way as if they are just on a speaker while they are sitting in another room.
In a meeting, there should be an assistant for the room. Someone who takes notes, looks up and displays data that is asked for or is just able to judge the attentiveness in the room and recommend a break.
There are two examples I can think of off the top of my head in entertainment of how this would work (there are many). First is from the Gripping Hand by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In that novel, people were given the name of the house to interact with it but people also had what I believe they called artificial brains that would communicate for you when you were asleep or away. Another is the movie Her, where this was done by the persons phone.
We are still a ways away from the trusted assistant following you around with a clipboard. We can get there but we should have a goal of what it will look like and what tradeoffs we want to allow before we get there.