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Comment by simoncion | Hacker News Reader

> Presumably they'll build software to handle common requests quickly.

I'm not the OP, but...

I guess, but again, where's the software? You can entirely reasonably solve that problem with a well-indexed medium-sized binder and a Rolodex.

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That's a bit naive, as with Facebook M this is tapping into the huge market of AI-like personal assistants.

We may not yet have the technology to create a Jarvis, but we can make a person a lot more efficient at their job with some clever tools.

For example, in the website there's a request that mentions getting a private helicopter booked to LAX in 3 hours. A personal assistant would have to look up private aviation companies that fly out of a base nearby the GPS location of the user, guesstimate the closest one and most likely call to book as the online bookings might not be automatically processed and it's a short notice.

With today's technology, you can parse that request so that the software automatically picks up "Helicopter booking", from: GPS to: LAX. If it's right, the operator accepts it and it creates a checklist: 1) Call "Bob's helicopter co." 2) Enter exact time of booking: [ ] 3) Click to book car for booking_time - travel_time at [current_location|office|home] 4) send nice reply to customer.

Once you've done this a couple times, you write new software that automates the call step by filling in a form online, or sending an email to the receptionist, or both.

More importantly, since you log every action the operators take, you take decisions on what to automate based on data. Are our employees spending 24% of their time on google maps? let's add a database of businesses so they can simply choose from a list.

There are a lot of simple questions that are hard to find answers for if you don't know where to look, and those answers are often unique or only marginally repeatable. Take travel assistance, for example. If all you need to do are basic pre-travel concierge tasks, that's one thing, but what happens when your client tells you something like "I'm going to be driving from Denver to Salina, Kansas today with two young children in the car. I need several energy-releasing entertainment options along the route, as well as a family friendly hotel room in KC that's near the stadium and offers onsite guest laundry (machines, not full service)." None of this is hard, but it requires multiple web searches, probably a few phone calls, and hopefully some local expertise. Once an adequate database is compiled, software can help quickly retrieve viable options and minimize human intervention. Human curation will still be absolutely mandatory and expected in a service with this cost.

Note: I just drove from San Jose to Raleigh with two young kids, including a day from Salina, KS to St Louis. We found the most amazing place to stop, and I highly recommend it to anyone driving E-W or W-E on I70. The Moon Marble Company (https://www.moonmarble.com/) is not just a handmade marble shop. It has the best collection of retro toys I've seen anywhere in my life. We spent 3 hours browsing!

It might not be necessary but it does help scale cheaply. You could have people pick up the phone and order food for you when requested, but if they can route that through an API 99% of the time it costs a whole lot less time & money.

I'm not sure a binder and rolodex scales very well. I'm willing to be convinced.

Have you ever worked with a really great Grand Budapest Hotel style concierge? They really can do pretty interesting things, if you tip well and are willing to pay. But, you gotta go to that hotel and talk to that one guy. The software scales that person.

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