The Technological Servants of the Future: Voice Assistants

Zaina Khawaja 

IT-104-005

The Technological Servants of the Future: Voice Assistants 

        Voice assistants are these advanced pieces of software that possess the ability to converse with the users by utilizing voice recognition, language processing algorithms, and voice synthesis (“What is a Voice Assistant”, 2019) in order to perform different tasks and obey a variety of commands. This astounding technology has managed to relieve the burden of everyday, miniscule tasks whilst also acting as an important development in the history of machine-human interaction. Voice assistants operate depending on their pre-existing tasks and their responsibilities: Siri is able to tell what the weather is in Florida and where the closest high-rated restaurant is located from a handheld mobile, Alexa can play jazz through the whole house, Google Assistant can adjust the lights and temperature to fit the user’s liking (Shih, 2020). Each of these amazing assistants have developed one after the other, being able to carry out more commands and cater to users more efficiently as time goes on. This advancement in Information Technology is significant in today’s society because it has taken up the burden of daily tasks which has led to an increase in productivity and time amongst humans. 

There are many different kinds of virtual assistants that exist today and that are used popularly by consumers (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana), and each of them share similar capabilities, whilst also having unique ones. Alexa and Google Assistant have the ability to define routines to perform a set of tasks with a single voice command. For example, when the user says, “Hey Google, good morning,” Google Assistant can execute a sequence of predefined tasks, such as adjusting lights and thermostats, giving weather reports, estimating commuting time, looking up and stating calendar events, providing reminders, playing news, radio, or music, etc. (Shih, 2020). Siri was the first voice assistant to make history and was a turning point in artificial intelligence back in 2011. Siri started out on an iPhone and was called upon by pressing down on the home button. Today, Siri can be summoned just by saying the command “Hey Siri” and is capable of many things: translate, show the weather forecast, look up sports statistics of recent games, find the nearest places to eat, give directions, etc. The possibilities for these virtual assistants continue to become endless. Voice assistants have even become popular among the blind or vision impaired because they are now able to command their software audibly to turn on the lights or read out bank statements or other commands without having to do it themselves, saving them a lot of trouble (Matthews, 2019).  This amazing technology is flexible, useful and its making people’s lives easier as well. 

            In order to obey the commands of the user, Voice assistants are recording what is said to them and this data is sent to massive servers in order to formulate a response; this data is processed and stored in the Cloud (Bolton 2021). During this process, it is possible that there may be a breach in privacy when it comes to voice assistants listening and recording the users. Many people are holding off investing in voice assistants because of the fear of losing their privacy. All people are concerned with the lack of assurance or security that is provided to keep users’ private and personal information intact. In 2018, the Guardian reported that an Alexa user from Portland, Oregon, asked Amazon to investigate when her device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband on the subject of hardwood floors and sent the audio to a contact in her address book without her command and knowledge. In 2019, the Daily Telegraph reported that Amazon employees were listening to Alexa users’ audio—including that which was recorded accidentally—at a rate of up to 1000 recordings per day (Bolton, 2021).

        With the number of questions directed toward voice assistants, they have most likely gained a sizeable amount of data from each user. What this software does with this data is where the ethics of voice assistants is questioned. On the global landscape of AI ethics guidelines, five emerging ethical principles are deemed important – Transparency, Justice and fairness, Non-maleficence, Responsibly and Privacy (Kaul, 2021). The makers of each brand of voice assistants should demonstrate transparency by being blatantly upfront about what commands can be made, where the consumer’s information is going and how it is being used in order to create a more trustworthy relationship between users and the technology (Kaul, 2021). Humans have the right to be informed about the usage of their personal information, and, through transparency of technology and user interaction, people feel more comfortable using the product. By being fair to consumers, it means voice assistants provide the same information to every user, no matter what prior information has been collected beforehand.

         Voice assistants have become an integral part of many people’s lives, it has advanced their homes whilst freeing people of some burdens. Voice assistants contain many unique and helpful features, yet they have a lot of room to improve. Almost ten percent of people who do not own a smart speaker plan to purchase one. If this holds true, the user base of smart speaker users will grow 50 percent, meaning a quarter of adults in the United States will own a smart speaker (Ramos, 2018). More and more humans are witnessing the benefits of voice assistants and how much easier they have made life for current users. This steady rate of popularity with influence voice assistants to become more advanced every day. There are many features and ideas that creators are already considering for the future of voice assistants. Smart speaker sales are expanding in other parts of the world, meaning voice assistants will be able to come in all kinds of dialects and languages. The experts predict that voice assistants will improve in many other ways.