There were predictions that we would soon have intelligent agents in our home. This is a comparison and I’d say they’re pretty much there.

They’ve got ordering things down, playing music, etc. But a few items are still missing involve doing slightly more complex tasks for you:

• Find then schedule best flights for you based on criteria you specify (price, stops, dates, etc)
• Tell it to make calls to your doctor’s office/auto shop/etc to make appointments and check on the status of repairs/etc and report back.
• Find and buy the best tickets for a show – scouring craigslist, ebay, ticketmaster, etc. for best prices/seats/etc.
• Find out about a topic and summarize it from a few sources (not just google) – giving you verbal decision trees (automobiles are broken down by commercial vs passenger, trucks vs cars vs motorcycles, etc – which would you like to learn more about?)
• Law – Is X legal in my state/local?
• Tell you when appliances are finished (laundry is done, etc)

Perhaps there’s an opportunity here for services to work with these companies – especially in the case of law/etc. You could opt to talk to a real person in which case it would call the local office and you could continue more detailed discussion for a fee.

And as I have stated before, here’s another example of how AI and machine learning are removing a whole class of white-collar jobs. I predict professional assistants will always be necissary for some situations, but a lot of them are about to be replaced in version 2.0 of these devices.