Virtualdigitalassistant is a web service and/or application for smartphones and personal computers, taking on the functions of a personal secretary to optimize daily activities. He is able to plan a schedule, remind about business and meetings, search for the information necessary for the owner: select places for recreation and entertainment, search for and book tickets online, order a taxi. It is also an electronic interlocutor that responds to a voice message. Heself-learning, adjusting to the individual characteristics of a particular person, gives out information, taking into account the context - the location of the user, the scope of his interests, habits.
This is the fundamental difference between virtual digital assistants and personal assistants of previous generations. The latter regularly perform the function of organizers, planning the day and reminding about meetings. But they won't cancel, say, a meeting in Hong Kong if the owner's flight is delayed and he's actually in Moscow. Virtual digital assistants take this into account because they are closely related to location services. In addition, they use all the layers of information about the user available to them.
Virtual Digital Assistant: History of Creation
The independent non-profit research institute SRI International (California, USA), known as a former division of Stanford University, has previously implemented technological innovations such as computer mouse and the Prototype of the Internet, in 2005 joined the efforts of researchers with an ambitious goal: to create a digital assistant capable of cognition, learning and systematization. The project was called CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) and was part of the PAL (Personalized Assistant that Learns, Trained Individual Assistant) program - creating artificial intelligence for the needs of the military.
Thus, initially it was a defense order. Researchers came up with ideas and presented prototypes of virtual assistants that meet the task - an unprecedented one. feedback between user and service. Finally, in 2009, the completion of the CALO project was officially announced. With a $150,000,000 investment, the US Army received a digital assistant capable of parsing mail, compiling email content reports, and scheduling meetings and meetings.
Siri: the exemplary virtual digital assistant
Siri, a personal scheduling service for smartphones, is aimed at the mass user. Siri will convert your voice or text message to search query. By given parameters he looks for places of recreation and entertainment, services located near the point where the user is located, and also performs many other functions of a personal secretary - and sometimes he does this with unobtrusive humor embedded in it by the developers. If you ask Siri to find an Italian restaurant with a romantic setting, it will do so based on the user's location and return a list of nearby restaurants that have "romantic setting" in their reviews.
In April 2010, the project was bought by Apple company. And starting from iPhone models 4S, the Siri application has become part of his standard software. Since then, the functionality and quality of speech recognition in this virtual digital assistant has improved markedly. Siri has learned to interact with huge amount applications and services for an even more individual approach to the user. However, obviously not all of them know about the abilities of a personal digital assistant. Two years after the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S, only 15.2% of Apple smartphone users have tried it at all.use this service .
GoogleNow, Cortana and other competing assistants
On the Apple platform, Siri knows no competition. However, in the big digital world, she is not the only one. Let's say there is a Rearden Personal Assistant - - a service from Rearden Commerce, launched in 2008 for corporate clients in the US and UK. It helps to organize a business trip and order all related services, combining disparate information from the websites of travel companies, airports, restaurants, car rentals - and thus helping to plan a schedule and expenses. As it should be for a virtual assistant, the service takes into account the location of the user and, if necessary, makes changes to his schedule, independently notifying partners about rescheduling meetings.
There are also start-up projects, in particular, the Russian ePythia, a geolocation service and a task scheduler for smartphones. The service sends a task reminder to the user when he is in a certain place. The project was launched in 2010 and is currently in open beta testing.
However " big three» virtual digital assistants have already been decided. This is, in addition to Siri, Cortana from Microsoft and Google Now from Google.
Cortana for Windows Phone was introduced in April 2014. In essence, it has the same functions as Siri: schedules, reminds, sends messages, recognizes music, searches for right places nearby. It also responds to voice and text messages. If she is allowed, she will read email, social media posts, contact list to be as useful as possible. All information is stored in a virtual assistant in a notebook, it can be edited, leaving information about important places and people. The fundamental difference between Cortana and Siri is that the service can not only respond to requests, but also make entries on the calendar itself, formulate reminders by analyzing the history of user actions, that is, in fact, predict his requests.
Google's virtual assistant has gone even further in this direction. Google Now. Predictive search is his thing. The company defines app strategy as follows: Google Now finds for you necessary information before you even asked the question. To do this, the service uses all available features: the history of requests, movements, virtual communication. This allows him, say, to offer the user a cozy cafe, as soon as the thought of drinking coffee came to him. Among the advantages of Google Now - user-friendly interface from a set of cards that is easy to customize to your needs.
Virtual Digital Assistants, Predictive Search, and the Future of SEO
In the competitive struggle of virtual digital assistants, the winners are those that allow you to save more time - the main and most valuable resource of our time. In this way, predictive oriented helpers , look more promising. Their chances of popularity are much higher, because with predictive search, the user does not have to spend a single second formulating a query.
The concern associated with the interference of such a virtual assistant in the privacy of a person is justified and understandable. However, the savings in time and effort are increasingly pushing people to delegate day-to-day decision-making to new services, voluntarily exposing their personal information to the public. Predictive search tools are taking advantage of this opportunity by constantly increasing the number of applications and sources of information used. It is in the emphasis on the potential for the development of virtual digital assistants is seen today.
For players The industry cannot ignore this trend. The situation when it is actually not the person himself, but his virtual assistants will send requests and make a choice in favor of a particular product or service, offering the user a ready-made solution - a matter of the not too distant future. Therefore, it is important to understand the criteria by which these assistants select options. So far, these criteria are not entirely clear, but it is worth thinking about them and trying to find them right now.
Imagine the situation: you live in a country in which you do not have the opportunity to work. Children grow up, I want to be realized professionally, but there are no ideas for my own business, and there is only an hour or two free time a day. Familiar?
I don't think I'm alone in this situation. I have been living in Cyprus for a long time, but there is no work permit, and it is quite difficult to find a job in our village. So I started thinking about remote work via the Internet - I ran my own blog, administrated several groups on Facebook to support the local community, wrote articles, took pictures, but did not understand how to turn this hobby into a paid activity.
Yes, I read advertising articles of schools that teach various professions online, but it was not clear to me how to find a job later, how to work with clients, how to hook a client when there are a lot of newbies like me in the market ...
And so, when some time ago I read an article about the profession "Virtual Assistant", it clicked in me - that's it! The job I was looking for.
Who is a virtual assistant? This is a universal specialist who helps an entrepreneur to do business on the Internet - fills the pages in in social networks, makes up landing pages and presentations, organizes webinars and establishes mailing list. Depending on previous experience, an assistant may specialize in one direction or another. But in general, this is a person who is well versed on the Internet, can find desired service, write a request, control contractors and be that multi-armed multi-machine operator who will remove routine duties from the entrepreneur. And it does not matter in which country the entrepreneur lives and what citizenship the Virtual Assistant has - they meet and cooperate on the Internet.
- By 2020, 20% of jobs in Russia will be virtual, according to a study by J'son & Partners Consulting commissioned by the Bitrix24 service. According to research in 2016, this figure in Europe is 17%, and in Japan and the USA it reaches 40% of all employees.
I googled and realized that in the English-speaking environment this profession is very common, there are even associations of business assistants. There is less information in the Russian-speaking space, but there are several schools for training virtual assistants. And all of them - which is very valuable - promise help with internships and employment. You can see the results of the study of schools that train business assistants on my Facebook page. I settled on Olga Shevchenko's International School for Training Business Assistants and Internet Marketers “Helppy” and have not regretted it for a minute. Both the organization of training and the usefulness of the information are on top!
The training lasts five weeks, and the immersion in learning is complete. In 35 days you delve into the principles of organizing an Internet business, make up a presentation in Power Point, draw up a content plan and a schedule of posts within the framework of your own developed promotion strategy in social networks, make up a landing page - a one-page site, and also - TA-DAM! - Build a portfolio for yourself. It is clear that these are not all topics, but only those for which it was required to pass homework, and over which we all pored over at night. You get detailed answers to all your homework, and very rarely you managed to pass them on the first try, they asked very strictly - either the typography is lame, or the design failed.
In addition to lectures and training material, the closed section contains a database useful articles, life is in full swing in the secret group - curators and fellow students discuss assignments, and on Fridays Olga Shevchenko talks with each student separately and answers all the exciting questions.
Creating a portfolio is a huge pendal to your own self-esteem. After you collect everything you can, apply the rules of strong text, attach customer reviews there (we did homework commissioned by Internet entrepreneurs, and they wrote us reviews), select fonts, and then layout it into a landing page with beautiful pictures… From this, self-esteem climbs up, and you are ready for exploits and new achievements. Would you like to see my portfolio? . I show it to you not to brag, but to show what you can get at the end.
It’s good that I started studying in advance, so I even managed to sleep and lead clients, whom I found right there, next to me. The fact is that, starting to study and delve into the topic, your eyesight sharpens and you see that in this project, for example, you can be useful, but here you can turn the page and get completely different results. You offer your services, show what you can do, how you can help, and people respond. This is how I and many of my classmates got their jobs.
I do not promise an easy life - you will have to study and work a lot, information on the Internet changes quickly, Facebook, for example, has innovations every week, more and more people enter the labor market every day. You will need to build your own work schedule and think about time management. For example, I typed a draft of this article on my phone in Google-kip while the pedicure master was working on my feet. And I had to refuse one, very promising offer, because I understood - either work or family, there is no third, with everything in this moment I can't do it.
In another attempt to implement ideas from science fiction films, one by one, tech giants began to work on virtual assistants. At the Google I/O 2016 conference, the company introduced Google Assistant, as well as an analogue of Amazon Echo - home voice google assistant home.
The last major company to enter the virtual assistant race. Let's see what competitors it has (including among startups).
First, let's remember what Google Now is.
Google/Google Now voice search
Peculiarities: Quick. Extremely accurate when creating routes. It frightens with its awareness of your flights, bookings and other details. with some third party applications: Manage notes, messages and music playback.
Flaws: Sometimes it bothers you with excessive initiative (for example, it shows the results of the games of teams that you are not interested in, or routes home from famous places). Useless to manage smart home". Work on integration with third-party applications seems to have stalled.
Humanity level: Null. Not conducive to communication. It doesn't even have a name other than Google.
Summary: Vast reserves of personal data and access to a search engine should, in theory, make Google an industry leader, but the company hasn't even been able to figure out how to use its advantages and create an assistant that can understand the user. Today Google Now and voice search they compete on equal terms with Siri, but have not yet reached a new level of development.
And now - about competitors.
Apple Siri
What: A voice assistant that can talk to the user and give proactive recommendations. Activated by long pressing the Home button on and iPad. Assistant support has recently appeared on Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Peculiarities: Easy to use on iOS devices. Understands natural speech. Well informed about news, weather, sports, movies, routes and local businesses. Can tell you what to watch on TV. Able to interact with some elements of the "smart home".
Flaws: Cannot interact with most other applications and services. Works slower than some competitors.
Humanity level: Not able to maintain a full conversation, but in certain moments demonstrates his own wisdom. The female voice sounds relatively human.
Flaws: Feels great on Windows - the platform that developers, and perhaps users, are least interested in. Using the assistant on Android and iOS is more difficult, and there are fewer functions.
Humanity level: He loves jokes, especially banal ones. Has a long list of witty answers to common questions at the ready. Can read excerpts from Shakespeare.
Summary: After years of being in the shadow of Siri and Google, Cortana has become a much more interesting chatbot. Microsoft wants to make their own voice assistant basic intelligence for all other bots that can manage your travels, appointments, to-do lists and other things, as well as increase the degree of integration with other Microsoft products, such as Office. The company is aiming to create a new shell for post-PC computing, but it's too early to tell if it will succeed or not.
Facebook M
What: Partly driven, partly human, and still in development. M will be assistant with text control in the Facebook Messenger environment.
Peculiarities: Will try to do whatever you ask.
Flaws: It is not yet a finished product, and will not be for a long time. Available only to a small number of users in San Francisco.
Humanity level: Extremely high, since people will participate in the formation of answers to questions. According to Wired, the company hopes that over time, M will learn from these operators and be able to work more independently.
Summary: At the moment, M is just a little more than just an idea. But given Facebook's interest in chatbots in general, it wouldn't be surprising if M ended up becoming super-intelligent.
X.ai
What: One of the few virtual assistants with only one function. Works only through e-mail, where he can make appointments at your request.
Peculiarities: Knows your schedule and preferences, negotiates with other participants for you.
Peculiarities: Viv promises that their product will be able to understand complex questions, such as: “Will the temperature near the Golden Gate Bridge exceed 20 degrees the day after tomorrow after 5 pm?”. Work is underway to ensure compatibility with third-party applications.
Flaws: So far, apart from prepared presentations, there is no evidence that everything works exactly as stated.
Humanity level: Values visual aids and concrete answers more than detailed description. Wit is questionable.
Flaws: Possibilities for integration with third-party applications are limited, and it is impossible to open the service directly on iOS or Android. Requests that the assistant cannot recognize are redirected to Ask.com.
Humanity level: Not conducive to long conversations, but knows how to answer additional questions.
Summary: It seems that mobile applications Hound actually exists only to show the capabilities of the Houndify service, which SoundHound plans to sell to other companies. If everything works out, we will not even know that we are using it.
Ozlo
What: AI, main function which at the moment - the search for cafes, bars and restaurants. Available for limited quantity users.
Peculiarities: Finds and combines data from several sources, including Yelp and Foursquare, and then presents everything in the form of convenient cards. Tries to communicate by asking and answering follow-up questions, such as "what places are open right now?" or “what’s on their menu?”
Flaws: Limited features, unless the creators of Ozlo add new features. When learning, AI is highly dependent on users.
Humanity level: Avoids unnecessary courtesies, only briefly greetings by name.
Summary: Ozlo would be no different from a lot of other chatbots if it didn't have the prospect of building something bigger. The ability to combine data from multiple sources in a single output is unique, but it is not yet clear whether the developers will be able to realize the full potential they claim. As long as Ozlo's business plan is limited to just the app, it can be a challenge to collect the data needed for training.
SpeakToIt Assistant.ai
What: One of the many copies of Siri. In the app store, searching for Siri brings up many similar programs, such as Voice Commands, Voice Secretary, and Assistant.
Peculiarities: Not unlike Siri, but can learn user commands to activate a list of features.
Flaws: Not as useful as the built-in assistant in your smartphone, and not as convenient.
Humanity level: Sounds rather unnatural, but portrays himself as a human assistant whose gender and appearance can be changed.
Summary: Some of these Siri clones look like a relic of the past, when not all iPhone models could work with Apple's proprietary assistant and needed to be replaced. In any case, it seems that their creators are aware that such an approach will not allow them to succeed. For example, SpeakToIt moved on to creating a set of tools that other developers could use to build their own chatbots.
A virtual assistant can do all his work at home. The assistant will earn money using a computer and a phone. A virtual assistant is quite a sought-after profession, because there are enough big number companies that need to do this or that job and arrange someone officially is simply unprofitable. Among the tasks of such employees will be: helping clients to set up something, answering emails, other employers offer virtual assistants to perform some accountant functions. Remote assistants do all of the above work at home, by the way, a very competent move by managers, because they do not need to arrange such performers for work, therefore, an extra headache about the workplace in the office, social services. package and other things will not.
Why Companies Use Virtual Assistants
As mentioned above, formal hiring brings the employer a lot of problems: providing a workplace, this includes the purchase of equipment (computer or telephone). Also, you do not have to spend money and time on training a new employee. As modern practice shows, there are a huge number of tasks and responsibilities that a remote worker can perform. Creation and work with databases, organization of trips, publishing work, tasks related to medical topics. The functions that a remote assistant can perform may also vary depending on the skills of the performer."Being a virtual assistant" - what is it?
Such work is paid immediately upon its completion, if the task of a remote assistant is any project, then the payment will be hourly. A virtual assistant must have a telephone, a computer with Internet access, and sometimes a fax line. There are several ways in which a representative of this profession receives his tasks, one of them is a postal order. Usually, post services paid by the company. A certain time is allotted for the implementation of a particular task, the same applies to payment, about when and how it will be carried out, you can discuss in advance. Wage may be regular, as if you were an employee of the company.Finding a job like this is easy. To do this, you need to use the services of the World Wide Web. Any search site - Google, Rambler, Yahoo - in the search bar you need to enter "VA" this abbreviation is a fairly common expression or "virtual assistant". Then you will receive a list of offers and the necessary information.
P.S. If you want to open a full-fledged business in Prague - click on the link and they will help you. professional approach, acceptable prices and high quality are waiting for you on the proposed site.
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