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Comment by Geee | Hacker News Reader

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal.

I'd rather be playing music.

Amen brother. Honestly, as I said in the post, I truly believe this could be a new natural user interface. Just as touch interfaces have been all the rage in the tech world since made mainstream in the first iPhone in 2007, Assistant will bring AI to the mainstream in a way that will finally be useful and relevant to most people at most times.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead?

Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

My longest performance was 9 hours, I don't drink, all of my 24 albums are licensed under Creative Commons and have never been sold for money.

I make electroacoustic music, and would be thrilled to have the Assistant in my band. I'll let it do the arrangements for my more elaborate compositions.

Lots of people currently tour the world performing music that is partly algorithmic, where aspects of the performance are determined by (usually simple) AI algorithms. This is normal. The crowd doesn't know, and those that do know think it's cool.

When we get to the point where AI can make good music on its own without direction, we will have a lot bigger questions to worry about than the fate of musicians. It won't be a pressing issue.

Can you expand on this? Are you referring to something more complex than lights that flash with the beat of the music?

How is that a different experience to listening to recorded music though? You could argue that new music could be generated on the fly but that isn't particularly exciting either, generally when a band plays something no one has heard before live it is a lot worse an experience than hearing the songs you know and love from the band.

Absolutely. "Creativity as a service". I envision a lot of startups in the near future revolving around this model. Maybe we'll plug into a facebook-like universal AI-api (by apple?), and build 'creativity generator' apps that use chunks of hyper-personal data.

PG recently spoke about how, in the future, creativity would have to be 'generated'.(http://www.darrenherman.com/2011/09/14/ycombinator-ad-innova...)

Once early adopters tout about the variety that machines can generate, the rest will have to follow along.

People are already non-functional in the real world. That is, a world without houses and supermarkets. A virtual assistant will not change the dependence on technology and society radically, it will only add to it a little.

Any different than rich people being essentially non-functional in the "real world" without their personal entourage?

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