A speculative essay on the future of AI assistants, envisioning a central assistant that integrates with third-party apps, creates personalized apps, and proactively manages workflows via continuous conversation and memory.
I've been thinking about what AI assistants look like in the future, and I think it ends up something like this: We'll each have one assistant. It connects to all our 3rd party apps and services, so it has real context about us and can act across them. The assistant will be text / voice based, and it will be able to create personal apps. These apps can range from tools like a workout or habit tracker that's built to your needs, to business things like a CRM or full business management system. These apps will be full interfaces the user can use, but the assistant will be able to use them too, and collaborate on them with the user. Apps will get increasingly more powerful. They'll have AI features built in and run automations on schedules. The assistant will be able to do anything in the app you can do, and more: reading and adding info, taking actions on your behalf. And it will show small UI pieces from the app directly in the chat when it uses them. This will allow every person to create a full suite of software that works for them and meets their needs. Instead of the traditional way, where users adapt to how the software already works. Memory will matter a lot here. It will obviously remember facts about the user, but also notice patterns, in the conversations and in how the user uses the apps, and suggest ways to improve workflows. And in general it will be proactive, messaging you when things need attention, like an invoice that hasn't gone out or a habit you've quietly dropped. Re chat management, I don't believe we'll have lots of threads and conversations the user needs to go through. It will be one continuous conversation, with an intuitive 'hub' where you can find any past message or convo you want to go back to (will be interesting to see what that area looks like). And I think there will be a similar platform for teams and businesses, where teammates can share apps with shared context, and different roles with different permissions. I don't believe such a product will kill lots of 3rd party apps and services. I just think there will be a few central platforms where people work and spend their time, customize the system to their liking, and those platforms will simply integrate with everything else. So people will spend less time across lots of different products, but they will still power the software they use... Curious to hear what others think, and any details I've missed.
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