When I first started using Siri on my iPhone, it knew it was something different than the usual search we all were used to. Siri has a quasi human-like feel to it. Yes, Siri also had a female voice. There’s a reason for this. According to a study back in 2011 and shared in Wired Magazine, female voices tend to come across warmer, whereas, a man’s voice seems kinda creepy. Heck, it’s our mothers that tend to be the first voice we here as babies and it’s mothers who are kinder versus fathers.
Back to Siri, so here I am responding to the female voice of Siri and even asker “her” off the wall questions, just to see how “she” would respond. It was interesting on my part of how much I got caught up in this.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2bTymnb1uE]
Since then, Siri has advanced and so has other forms of AI chatbots. We are entering the age of the Chatbot and it’s already becoming more mainstream. Last year, Facebook pushed their messaging system to include chatbots. And many companies have responded. I’m currently working on my own for Facebook.
Silvia Hidalgo gives a deeper insight into the businesses involved and what they are currently doing as well as what the future looks like in her article A Chatbot Revolution- an “individual Google for each user.
What will all of this mean for you?
Answering that question will depend on whether you’re a creator, a user, both or really don’t care.
Here’s my short answer. You may not care and you will be using it in the future (unless you’re living in some remote area without technology). You may not be a creator, yet, you will be a user. Everywhere you go, chatbots will be there. Even calling customer service, you may be talking to a chatbot. I understand that right now, most people are not keen to that idea. They would rather talk to a “real” person and not some artificial version. I get that. Still, as AI advances, you may not be able to tell what is real or what is not real.
You may think it’s scary, right? So did those people back in the “horse and wagon days” when the first “horseless carriage” arrived. Change is always scary for most people. Yet, we adapt (or die). Look at the number of businesses and industries that are gone. Kodak died due to their inability to see that change from film to digital cameras. Departments stores have been dying. I remember when keypunch operators was a growing profession and one day, it died.
The AI Chatbot is here. You will either embrace it, use it and grow from it or… You will be relegated to the past. It’s ultimately up to each one of us in this new age…
Cheers,
Bob Choat, “Transformational Grandmaster” 
Mind Hacker
Growth Hacker
Life Hacker
America’s #1 Mind-Body Transformation Expert and author of Mind Your Own Fitness
Mind Hack Academy: http://mindhackacademy.tv/