> What's changed since then in terms of technology? Unless it's very significant, I suspect it will go the same way. Apart from an assistive technology viewpoint, my gut instinct is that it's not that satisfying or rewarding talking to a computer all day.

It's hugely significant - look at this graph of Google's speech model accuracy across 2013 to 2017:

https://sonix.ai/packs/media/images/corp/articles/history-of...

Or this that shows a similar pattern:

https://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/externa...