fbpx
Schedule Your Appointment - Fill Out the Form Below
Skip to content
The Law Office of Antoinette Bone, PLLC
  • Home
  • Practice Areas
    • Estate Planning
      • Estate Planning FAQs
      • Asset Protection
      • Ethical Wills
      • Special Needs Trusts
      • Special Needs Resources
    • Probate
    • Guardianship
  • Our Firm
    • Attorney
    • Speaking Opportunities
    • Firm Overview
  • Getting Started
  • Videos
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • Gallery
  • Contact
  • Careers
817-462-5454

Smart Personal Assistants: Alexa, Bixby, and Siri Oh My!

Posted on July 23, 2019 | by Lori Pulvermacher

The smart personal assistant revolution is moving forward at a breakneck pace. It took approximately 30 years for the cellular telephone to begin outnumbering people on the planet, but smart personal assistants are projected to outnumber humans in half of that amount of time by 2021. The technology-research firm Canalys expects 100 million smart speakers (smart personal assistants) will be installed worldwide by the beginning of 2020 and also estimates the number of smart assistant compatible devices will reach 1.6 billion in the US that same year.

The numbers are staggering.

It is because of these numbers that manufacturers of smart personal assistants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are pushing sales of their devices. Not only does a smart personal assistant allow for corporate monetization post-purchase from user data collection it is on the forefront of taking over your everyday space whether that be your home, car, or office. The corporation that garners the biggest market share with their smart assistant technology will lock in application developers, appliance manufacturers, and consumers into their company’s proprietary platform also called the ecosystem which ensures frictionless interoperability. Home automation and lighting is forecast to make up 49% of the market segment, followed by home security and surveillance (18%), audio and video entertainment (13%) and “other” appliance segment (20%).

The smart assistant with its voice technology is a significant boon to US seniors as more baby boomers are opting to age in place and smart voice technology simplifies remaining at home. There are the obvious uses for a smart assistant like calendaring events, medication reminders, home environmental controls, age-appropriate learning activities, and much more. Some of the newer applications of voice technology are pushing smart personal assistants into newer realms like a digital therapist, companion, and caregiver. For the senior who is living at home and alone, these are wonderful new developments.

Research in the field of prosody, the patterns of stress and intonation in a language, are making smart assistants capable of detecting depression, loneliness, anxiety, joy, and anger to name a few. Initial research of emotion enabled artificial intelligence focused on emotion detection through facial expressions but quickly turned to the spoken word. Vocal signatures carry an incredible array of information from how you string the words in a sentence together, to tone, depth, rhythm, pitch, resonance, pronunciation, tempo, and more. These vocal features are then analyzed to suggest a person’s mood and subsequent best action practice for the senior.

The practical applications of this technology are numerous. A medical doctor with a smart personal assistant in their office can more readily pick up on identifiers that suggest patient depression. A smart car speaker in a semi-autonomous car can make informed judgments about the safety of handing over the controls to the driver based on vocal characteristics indicating stress or confusion. A smart personal assistant might pick up on loneliness in a stay at home senior and offer suggestions of music or other activities to engage the senior and lift their spirits. The smart personal assistant is also “someone” an elderly person can tell their troubles to without shame, recrimination or judgment. The smart assistant is programmed so that it never gets tired, never becomes distracted or bored with the content of “its person.” It is a bit like a therapist allowing the senior to get out all of their frustrations about growing old and losing their physical and cognitive abilities; even expressing fears for their future.

While smart personal assistant technology is currently not able to provide all of the benefits of a professionally trained human caregiver, therapist, or companion it is readily available, overall inexpensive, and can help alleviate the problems of too many seniors with too few attainable human caregivers to meet their needs. The technology may also outpace its human counterpart in the not too distant future if current research and development is any indication of success.

The market forces for profit will continue to drive the expansion of the smart personal assistant and its associated products allowing for newer market segments and more importantly the ability for stay at home seniors to live their best quality of life.

If you are curious about how smart personal assistants can help you in your long-term care planning, give us a call at (817) 462-5454, or click the button below to request a consultation.

Choose your topic and meeting time and we’ll get it on th books.

To comply with the U.S. Treasury regulations, we must inform you that (i) any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this newsletter was not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by any person for the purpose of avoiding U.S. federal tax penalties that may be imposed on such person and (ii) each taxpayer should seek advice from their tax advisor based on the taxpayer’s particular circumstances.

Nothing in this message is intended to provide legal advice.  This message is for educational purposes only.

Posted in Directive to Physicians, Elder Law

Post navigation

Driving and Dementia Do Not Mix
How to Protect Your Child’s Inheritance

Categories

Archives

  Thank you for Signing Up

Join Our Newsletter

Please complete this form to create an account, receive email updates and much more.
  Please correct the marked field(s) below.
Contact Email  *
1,true,6,Contact Email,2
First Name 
1,false,1,First Name,2
Last Name 
1,false,1,Last Name,2
*Required Fields

Get In Touch

We believe that your call should be returned within 24 hours.


800 N. Industrial Blvd., Suite 106
Euless, TX 76039

Phone: 682.428.3046
Email: info@abonelaw.com
Driving Directions:

While my address is Industrial Blvd, we are actually on Clinic Drive. Look for the tall red Super Value Pharmacy sign. Whether coming from the North or the South, you will turn off of Industrial Blvd. onto Clinic Dr. Our building is located up the hill just past the Super Value Pharmacy at the far end of the building.

Office Hours

Mon-Thurs8:30am-5:00pm
FriBy Appointment Only
Sat/SunClosed
Leave A Review
© 2023 The Law Office of Antoinette Bone, PLLC | A Website Design by Ahrens Technologies

DISCLAIMER: Material presented on The Law Offices of Antoinette Bone, PLLC website is intended for information purposes only. It is not intended as professsional advice and should not be construed as such. If you communicate with us through this site or otherwise in connection with a matter for which we do not already represent you, your communication may not be treated as privileged or confidential and does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and the firm. If you communicate with us by e-mail in connection with a matter for which we already represent you, please remember that Internet e-mail is not secure and you should avoid sending sensitive or confidential Internet e-mail messages unless they are adequately encrypted.