So you dream of making it to Silicon Valley? Who says you have to be tech savvy? If you’re a good creative writer, then Silicon Valley needs your services.
Let me explain. Poets, fiction writers, novelists and comedians are being hired to work on artificial intelligence. Tech heavyweights Amazon, Apple and Microsoft call on the artistic and humorous types to help engineer artificial intelligence personalities. They’re being asked to help virtual assistants perform every day tasks, like reading emails. As far as virtual assistants are concerned, Siri isn’t the only candy store in town. These storytellers will breath life and life stories for their bots. At a time when many in Silicon Valley struggle, virtual assistant start-ups raked in $35 millions worth of investments over the past year. We can partially thank new apps like Facebook Messenger and WeChat for this virtual assistant movement. And this kind of technology is becoming less of a recreation and more of a necessity. By 2019, 1/3 of the American workforce will have to such technologies in this capacity. By the mid 2020s, 12.7 million Americans will be building robots and automotive virtual assistants. Microsoft’s Cortana has six people working on her. They include a playwright and a former TV script writer.
That’s just one example. We’re coming to the point where VR is no longer about games or fantasy. Whether we like it or not, VR already is or will be a part of every day life. These are dignified and professional people, but they still need to be careful. The last thing we need are more Tay episodes, where VR personalities spit venomous and hurtful filth. I think we should be awfully careful not to make these virtual assistants too human. I’ve read some creepy stories of people wanting to marry robots. These stories remind us that if technology is abused, it can cause serious social discord and isolation, to the point where we don’t even want to deal with each other. On the flip side, can the virtual assistant boom help Silicon Valley out of it’s decline?