Phones and AI Agents
Mobile phones are at a crossroads - they are little more than vessels for accessing apps. Sure, phones are consumer accessories much like a watch or any other accessory. However, it is the software (the OS and the apps) that power the user experience. A phone’s chipset is also a strategic piece of technology as the chipset powers the software and underpins advanced AI capability. So, where are phones headed?
Ai Agents
When Google rolled out Google Assistant back in 2016 that was a game changer. I buy into the idea that this next set of AI assistants will be a key driver of phone user experiences - particularly if you are someone who is willing to share your PII data with your phone (most young people) as AI agents must become more than familiar with you if you expect it to automate key elements of your day-to-day life.
The AI agent game will be won by Google and OpenAI/Microsoft in my view. Add Amazon to the list. Amazon is almost certainly going to offer an AI agent as part of the Amazon user experience.
AI agent-related productivity enhancements will be significant as various day-to-day tasks become fully automated by the agent. These AI agent tasks will include automatically booking appointments, online bill pay, trade execution, online shopping, online food orders and delivery, processing medical records and more. Speed and accuracy of the task at hand will define which AI agents are best.
The issue of course is privacy. To automate a function by using an AI assistant, all data relevant to that function must be known to the AI agent: credit cards, contact lists, bank account info, medical history, etc. (Google, Facebook and Apple already have too much of our PII data).
There will be a subset of phones such as the Unplugged Phone which focuses on personal data privacy. There are a whole host of apps that limit user data tracking via an OS which may be overlayed with iOS.
For me, using the mobile phone (or watch) as a launch pad for sophisticated AI agent apps is where it’s at.