6 Ways Virtual Assistants Will Organise Your World In 2020

If you like sending text messages hands free while driving through Apple’s virtual assistant application, Siri, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet… In the next 10 years, personal assistant technology will skyrocket to near artificial intelligence proportions.

While some people claim it’s just a fancy fad, personal assistants on mobile phones like Apple’s Siri have seen greater uptake in recent years. A survey by Nuance suggests that over half of everyone who has a personal assistant on their mobile phone uses it daily.

Today, we don’t lack information, we lack filters. This is where a personal assistant application comes in. It’s goal is to make you worry less. Here’s how automated software will helping you manage your life in a decade’s time.

1. Notify You When To Leave Your Current Appointment
Want to go from appointment A to B by train but then changed your mind and want to ride your bike? Applications like Donna provide you notification of when you need to leave, taking into account traffic, weather and your preferred method of transport. Donna will automatically show you the best way to go and give you reminders of when you need to leave to ensure you arrive on time.

2. Turn on your air conditioning, from anywhere in the world
Jarvis, a beta product demoed at this year’s Disrupt NY Hackathon, allows a user to simply call him, ask him to turn the lights off or turn the air conditioning on and have the household’s network respond accordingly. Like having a personal butler waiting at home. Any chance he could get some water boiling on the stove?

3. Save you opening / closing applications
Have you ever spent a frustrating few seconds searching through all the open apps on your mobile phone or laptop, looking for the one you’re suppose to use to have a skype or facetime or google + hangout or IM chat or phone conference with? Remove the hassle – when you accept the appointment, a personal assistant will open the right app for you just at the time you need.

4. Remind You To Take Your Umbrella
If your personal assistant knows you’re headed to the Bay Area today and that it’s due to rain there at the exact time you want to head out for lunch, you’ll get a reminder to take your umbrella today. No need for thinking in advance, personal assistant software is doing it for you!

5. Call You When You’re Late
Finally a rescue from those meetings that just won’t seem to end! Personal assistants will notice that you haven’t left your destination when you need to and call you. Just so you have an excuse to say, “Oh sorry this is my assistant, I really have to go.” Little do they know it’s a voice recording…

6. Remind you to pick up a birthday present the next time you’re at a Department Store
Keep forgetting to get presents for upcoming birthdays or weddings? Your personal assistant will push a notification to your phone if you’re in a department store anytime two weeks before the important birthday. Or you could ask it to keep an eye out for deals on new red handbags that you know your wife has been craving.

As technology improves and access to the software widens, the use of personal assistants in organising our life and day to day activities will be common place.

Want your own personal assistant? Try Google Now, Jeannie or Vlingo if Siri’s not your thing.

See just how virtual assistants like Siri are being used today, check out Nuance’s infographic.