This whole venue of technology is an exercise in ivory tower construction completely disconnected from ordinary people.
They never asked for one becase they never imagined being able to afford one.
The amount of administration organizing a normal household takes I suspect most would be glad to leave to someon/something they trust and that can be held accountable.
Today that someone needs to be a person (imo). But who knows, a startup may be plotting accountable digital assistans as we speak.
That quote has an unexpressed precondition to the effect of "In order for an organisation to be objectively well run..." or "In order for an organisation to equitably benefit all stakeholders at all levels..." etc
But that's absolutely not what he's describing. He wants not to think about it, that's exactly the opposite of a disorder.
Anyway, an LLM assistant is also exactly the worst technology to use there, on every dimension.
I have zero use for AI. What's it going to do? Read the 3 emails about bills I get?
Certainly someone out there has a use for this functionality, but when you say "household admin tasks" the last thing I think about are /digital/ admin tasks.
They don't even seem to get the basics right, why would I want another layer on top?
- don't travel frequently,
- don't have so many complex inquiries that require someone to research,
- don't have super complicated taxes to file,
- don't go eating out in fancy restaurants that require special skills to get reservations in,
- don't have so many meetings to attend,
- don't receive hundreds of emails per day,
- don't work on multiple projects at the same time,
- don't organise festivities and social gatherings all the time.
Yeah, there probably are some things that could be simplified by delegating to someone, but they don't justify a human PA at all; and out of the remaining tasks, most are not really digital in nature: Going for groceries, doing chores, child and elderly care, interacting with other people, and so on. Digital assistants can't help you with any of these.The one thing that would be useful - a kind of "chief of staff" that monitors your entire digital life and prioritises your every next step - is the antithesis to Siri and the like, which are merely reactive to your requests, not proactive in figuring out what needs your attention next. Let alone that that would be a total privacy nightmare, and a prime candidate for mass manipulation at scale.
Like you said, the non-digital things are where people need assistance most. Fold my laundry, clean my house, clean my car, make me dinner. At an affordable cost. I don't need you to book my trip to an all inclusive resort that I go on once a year at most.
We're at this place where AI/LLMs is truly incredible technology, but the futuristic vision of robot assistants doing things for you at an attainable cost isn't there yet - so a lot of companies/startups are trying to force feed purely digital consumer AI products (assistants/agents) that no one wants.
eg: if my booking is wrong, they will cover the cost and compensate me. It would sort of just come down to buying premium travel insurance for everyone that uses it. And insurance for anything else they do. It has to be one of two things - they either believe the risks are worth it (so then there should be a financial model that can absorb the cost of insurance to do it), or in fact, the risks are too great. At some point, if they keep offering the tech on a "use at your own risk" basis, they are implicitly communicating that they themselves think the risks are too great - so YOU shouldn't trust it either.
That would be nice, but it's the wrong angle. The reason people like real secretaries is not because somebody is compensated when things go wrong. It's because things don't go wrong. I don't use this thing if I need to fear things go wrong, even if I'd be compensated.
Maybe it would provide the right incentives for the companies though.
Though a compensation that high sounds like it would invite fraud, where the customer would be glad to have something go "wrong" and get a fat check. Not sure if that's a solvable problem.
When we talk about “the market”, the customer base, remember it’s a market that typically doesn’t know how to or care to even install an adblocker.
Because the problem now took a whole afternoon to solved and sapped your creative energy instead.