"Big tech announcements" nowadays are mostly useless

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Google chief executive, Sundar Pichai, addressed his company’s annual developers’ conference. Among his other tasks, he was there to rhapsodise about developments in artificial intelligence, and the ever-evolving application known as Google Assistant (created, he said, to “help you get things done”), and a new innovation called Duplex. “It turns out that a big part of getting things done is making a phone call,” he said. He then mentioned getting an appointment for a haircut: “You know, we’re working hard to get users through those moments.”

Now, when was the last time you came to book a haircut or restaurant table and concluded that the task was so onerous that you would ideally delegate it to a machine?

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The same applies to the concept of the “smart fridge”, which has been kicking around for almost 20 years (and, indeed, other devices, from window blinds to cookers, that will supposedly be incorporated into the over-hyped internet of things). I have Apple’s Siri “assistant” on my phone, but I barely use it and neither do lots of other people: between 2016 and 2017, its use in the US is thought to have dropped by 15%.

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