The cofounder of Google's AI division DeepMind says everybody will have their own AI-powered 'chief of staff' over the next five years

it very well might. You can get impressive models running locally on a laptop with 16 gigs of ram and an out of date graphics card. That leaked memo from google saying that they have no moat (and neither do any other ai conpanies) seems to be correct.

Right. It's not our AI. It's Google's AI. It doesn't work for us anymore than Facebook does.

There to spy and sell you shit. It's not your friend but a high tech used car dealer.

The big thing that’s holding Apple back regarding Siri is that they aim to have all their AI-driven functions processed on the user’s hardware, for security/privacy. So they not only need the software component, they want to have the hardware capable of running it inside the individual phones.

For "impressive" general reasoning and conversation these LLM currently require pretty beefy hardware. You're either lugging a GPU around or calling to an API.

I know Apple’s developing their own LLM which will hopefully be used in Siri. There’s no guarantee, but I can’t think it would be too hard to add Bard into Google Assistant. Cortana on the other hand was canceled by Microsoft and is being replaced by Bing chat. I believe Amazon is also stopping the Alexa development

They're working on it, but it takes time. Especially making it reliable.

The current crop of llm's will happily answer or do nonsense or even dangerous things.

So google can sell ads targeted at you.

Aside from Google selling you ads,...

a private personal ai could function to help you maintain your goals. It could keep you on time, schedule appointments and orders, monitor your sleep and diet and exercise, monitor your stress and health, ensure folks remember to take their medications, coach you on focus, help build and maintain project plans, etc.

The "second brain" concept isn't new, and is somewhat related. AI could help leverage your personal content into triggered actions to improve your day.

If a truly private ai assistant existed, and you could train it on the operational parameters that matter to you, it could help a lot of people. Especially those who are too too busy in life, or have memory or executive function issues.

If course you could do this now, with manually written events and alarms/reminders, but by establishing an "actor" to ride along with you and help create and report stuff you care about, you can help people with things they'd otherwise miss.

I personally believe private, open sourced solutions are realistic in the nearish future, but most will sign up for some sort of Google suppositor-ai

To keep your spirits up after you get displaced by a different AI.

So what will everyone having their own AI look like in a way that doesn’t just sound like a chatGPT joke? What would make it a desirable future?

I guess that depends on how much authority you'd want to delegate.

For me, it would be nice if I could have it do things like shopping tasks without being more of a pain than doing the task myself. For example, I needed to buy a hot-water carpet cleaner today. It would be great if I could tell it

Hey Staffie, buy a carpet shampoo machine for home delivery within the next two weeks. Pick a highly rated machine from a widely recognized brand, and focus on carpet cleaning and water extraction performance, I don't need any upholstery cleaning features. Don't spend over $400. If the best option is under $200 don't ask, just buy it. If it's over $200, show me the top two options before buying.

And end up with something pretty close to what I'd have picked if I did the shopping myself.

It would also be great if I could have it reliably perform arbitrary tasks that it isn't specifically programmed to do. Like

Hey Staffie, check if I've got enough PTO to take next Thursday and Friday off, and if so, reserve a campsite for me at Foo State Park for three nights, preferably one close to the water, then send Mr. Boss an email letting him know I'll be out those days.

If it were particularly smart it would infer from previous conversations that I might want a 1lb propane cylinder, marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey bars added to my grocery list and would add them automatically (because it already knows my preferences about small automatic expenditures like that and is aware of the spending limits I've given it).

Then it might come back a few minutes later and say

'Hey boss, all the campsites within 250 of the water are already reserved, but site 1701D, which is near the only restroom and a tailhead, is available. Reviewers report that the park WiFi access point is installed at the restroom, so that site has good free internet service. Shall I reserve it?

So yeah, in general, the ability to take arbitrary directions and execute them in reasonably intelligent ways (for example If I ask for a site Foo State Park, and there are two such parks in my country, it should be able to guess which park I'm talking about based on the context (like, if I'm reserving 3 nights and one of the parks is an hour down the road and the other is a two day drive, just assume the closer one)) and not require pre-programmed interfaces to every single thing. It should be able to search the web, find the interfaces humans use, and use those to do the kinds of things humans can do. It should also have some capabilities to use my accounts and passwords under a delegated authority to get shit done as my authorized assistant.

Ideally it should also do things like observe my choices and infer my preferences so it can constrain choices it offers me:

Hey Staffie, order lunch from Subway for pickup at 3.

Sure boss, do you want your usual 6 inch turkey sub?

Yep

Nacho cheese chips or salt-n-vinegar?

Nacho.

Done, I'll let you know when it's ready.

Stuff like that.

Being able to talk to it like a human, and have it complete tasks autonomously. That's the million dollar implementation. Everyone will have their own personal assistant.

Phind.com is my coding buddy.

People in 1999: "Why would I need a phone on the go? People can reach me at home, and I already have an answering machine."

Not that I don't think you are right. But if it's going to be anything like smartphones, the vast majority will use it regardless of the many drawbacks.