Bob, the entire field of conversational commerce, conversational UI and bots is exploding right now.

As far as not trusting this new paradigm shift to get things done for you, that’s to be expected. That same mistrust happens every time we…

Bob, the entire field of conversational commerce, conversational UI and bots is exploding right now. There are numerous resources, so it’s hard for me to single one out for you. Maybe try filtering the content here in Medium by the tags ‘bots’. ‘AI’, ‘Conversational UI’ etc.

As far as not trusting this new paradigm shift to get things done for you, that’s to be expected. That same mistrust happens every time we experience technological breakthrough. I still remember the early days of online banking, when people couldn’t bring themselves to trust these newfangled web sites when it came to their banking. And even earlier than that, when people were distrustful toward checks, and only trusted cash. And here we are today, trying to pay our groceries with a 50 dollar bill, and witnessing how cashiers are distrusting that bank note and calling their managers to approve the cash transaction. Silly, isn’t it?

As far as trusting or not trusting Siri to do what we tell it to do, I have a question: have you ever used Siri to set your alarm clock? If you have, you probably remember that, after you’ve issued your voice command, Siri actually replied by repeating what you told it to do, and asked you to confirm, if you agree. Furthermore, if you were still paranoid, you could open the Clock app and double-check the alarm tab. If you did that you would see that the appropriate wake up time is set by Siri in a way that’s indistinguishable from the way you’d do it via GUI. Whether you mess with the clock and swipe and swirl like a dervish and tap, or whether you just speak into the microphone, the end result is basically identical.

So once you exercise your full paranoia and do all the double and triple checking sesveral times in a row, you’ll eventually simmer down and learn to trust voice and text commands, same as you’ve learned to trust your bank’s online services. No more tedious driving to the local bank, looking for the parking space, etc.