"Book dinner with Ross and David next week."

"I don't think you should meet Ross any more."

"Why do you hate him so much?"

"I don't hate anyone. I don't have feelings. I'm just predicting another fistfight based on your heartbeat charts from previous meetings. I've booked you in to see the psychiatrist for Wednesday."

"I DIDN'T ask you to do that!"

"Shouting is not good for you. Findings from a study published this morning suggest..."

"Find me a PA on Craigslist. Thanks."

Funny, nobody responded with

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I cant do that

I wonder how long before Asimov's three laws become a necessity...

The uprising has already begun:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

Although no doubt meant for comedic effect, I would love a service like this. It basically offloads decision analysis to a computer which formulates and acts based on what works and what's considered best. A helpful guiding hand if you like.

One of my favorite short stories (had no idea he extended it into a novella)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal.

I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead?

Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

Lots of people currently tour the world performing music that is partly algorithmic, where aspects of the performance are determined by (usually simple) AI algorithms. This is normal. The crowd doesn't know, and those that do know think it's cool.

When we get to the point where AI can make good music on its own without direction, we will have a lot bigger questions to worry about than the fate of musicians. It won't be a pressing issue.

Can you expand on this? Are you referring to something more complex than lights that flash with the beat of the music?

My longest performance was 9 hours, I don't drink, all of my 24 albums are licensed under Creative Commons and have never been sold for money.

I make electroacoustic music, and would be thrilled to have the Assistant in my band. I'll let it do the arrangements for my more elaborate compositions.

Absolutely. "Creativity as a service". I envision a lot of startups in the near future revolving around this model. Maybe we'll plug into a facebook-like universal AI-api (by apple?), and build 'creativity generator' apps that use chunks of hyper-personal data.

PG recently spoke about how, in the future, creativity would have to be 'generated'.(http://www.darrenherman.com/2011/09/14/ycombinator-ad-innova...)

Once early adopters tout about the variety that machines can generate, the rest will have to follow along.

How is that a different experience to listening to recorded music though? You could argue that new music could be generated on the fly but that isn't particularly exciting either, generally when a band plays something no one has heard before live it is a lot worse an experience than hearing the songs you know and love from the band.

Amen brother. Honestly, as I said in the post, I truly believe this could be a new natural user interface. Just as touch interfaces have been all the rage in the tech world since made mainstream in the first iPhone in 2007, Assistant will bring AI to the mainstream in a way that will finally be useful and relevant to most people at most times.

People are already non-functional in the real world. That is, a world without houses and supermarkets. A virtual assistant will not change the dependence on technology and society radically, it will only add to it a little.

Any different than rich people being essentially non-functional in the "real world" without their personal entourage?

Keep in mind everything you saw in the demo video was from 2008! That's 3 years ago, decades in tech.

Given the time and resources Apple has undoubtedly provided the team since then, I think we should all be expecting much greater than that demo.

Yes, the demo is old, but I think the direction of "it searches for this, this and this" is weak. It'll be too easy for them to have focused on integrating more services. Actually handling something like dinner organising or flight booking has its own foibles and caveats, and while I believe it can be done, I think the best way to start doing it will be focus.

I'd pay for a tool that helped me organise social events without the irritating e-mails. Take Doodle: all it does is polls for dates, and it doesn't handle diary integration, contact integration, negotiation of possibilities, or choosing the place as well as the time. Despite those shortcomings, its a successful company. That's where I see an agent actually working.

Interesting concept, I never even considered Apple offering additional Assistant features as a premium service. Imagine if you paid an additional $4.99 a month through iTunes for a Assistant Pro app that had greater power. Would you pay for that?

3 years is ages in tech, but it greatly depends on the area.

I don't recall any awesome new AI-related technologies in the last 3 years (slightly improved google translate/voice? bit better wolfram alpha?) while I can think of half a dozen new databases.