What Did We Miss?

I think that the next big is the Babbelator! It is an A.I. like Siri, Cortana or Alexa except instead of being in your phone or in a weird pillar thing. It is in a drone that follows you around, always at a little bit above head level, and instead of having any physical interface it is entirely controlled by your voice. This has the potential to be a far more convenient design than any of the current A.I. assistants because it is always there and it has some physical form instead of being forced to rely entirely on speaking, so for example if you couldn’t find your car in a parking lot it could lead you there instead of giving directions that it can only hope you understand.

I think the Babbelator would come out of current research in the areas of drones, A.I. assistants, and voice recognition. Currently drones are getting smaller and smaller and are capable to doing more and more, so at some point it seems like this is almost guaranteed to happen, as all it needs to begin work is a smart phone strapped onto a drone with a camera. I think the Babbelator will also be quite popular with customers who in the modern day are looking more and more for convenience and the ability to save time. There is nothing more convenient than a device, which is always with you, can lead you anywhere that you need to go, and has the answers to most every question that you could ever ask it.

Overall I think this would be good for society. It has a lot of advantages: it saves time on things that people don’t want to do and gives them more time for things they do want to do; it’s helpful for education with instant access to online learning resources; and it makes sure that things, which you connect to it can’t ever be lost again. It also negates some of the disadvantages of other technologies: It doesn’t really have the problem that phones have where people are constantly looking at their screens, because it doesn’t have a screen; it doesn’t damages communication skills, because your only option is to talk too it. One major problem is that if they become very popular is that there will be a lot of them filling up the sky.

I think that probably the most interesting problem that would have to be solved with the Babbelator is how it deals with deaf people. The chances that it has a camera are pretty high so “listening” to someone who is using sign language is definitely possible The only problem would be responding without a screen, but at that point the easiest solution is probably just to put in a small screen, which can sign back at a deaf person.  That would defeat part of the point of making it without a screen however.