Prediction 8: Apart from the belief that the animated personality would be visual, this is a near-perfect description of Siri and similar assistants. The term “ubiquitous” is tricky, but if we interpret it to mean “to be found everywhere” (rather than “everyone has one”), then the prediction is somewhat true (knocked down from true because of the uncertainty about ubiquity).
I suggest that you are underestimating their ubiquity by focusing on Siri. Almost every large corporation has a phone tree where at least the initial stages are served by an AI using voice recognition, with “enter that umber on the keypad” as backup. Notice the reference to “routine business transactions”.
These don’t use any form of natural language recognition—they work by having very rigidly defined responses that they can interpret (ie “say ‘one’ for hard to recognize or easily obfuscated department”).
I suggest that you are underestimating their ubiquity by focusing on Siri. Almost every large corporation has a phone tree where at least the initial stages are served by an AI using voice recognition, with “enter that umber on the keypad” as backup. Notice the reference to “routine business transactions”.
These don’t use any form of natural language recognition—they work by having very rigidly defined responses that they can interpret (ie “say ‘one’ for hard to recognize or easily obfuscated department”).