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A comment on Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead. Parent comment

Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by colechristensen on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @01:27PM (#16117479)
If you have a real person as an assistant, and you ask them to buy flowers for somebody, you also don't get to pick exactly what they look like ... unless you ask them to facilitate that with pictures or descriptions.

Real AI would be fully capable of doing this just as well as a person, but it would take a lot more "intelligence" than currently exists.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by michaelt on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @03:56PM (#16119015)
The real difference is human assistants are paid well to act as their principal's agent. If a PA had a choice buying a nice bunch of flowers or a weedy bunch with a $5 kickback, they'd be dumb to take the kickback and risk their job.

But if I ask Facebook/Google/Amazon to order some flowers for me, why _wouldn't_ they monetise it? Gotta pay for those tens of thousands of engineers somehow.

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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by achamayou on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @04:48PM (#16119431)
Because you won't be doing it again if they mess it up?
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Re:Facebook’s Virtual Assistant M Is Dead by dwaltrip on Wednesday January 10, 2018 @07:35PM (#16120471)
Ideally. It's possible that the Google business machine might not do a superb job collecting and synthesizing the vast number of these very fine-tuned details and pieces of feedback, at least at this early stage.

This is something a good personal assistant can do easily.

Though eventually AI will gain those capabilities, one way or another.

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