{"id":1258,"date":"2018-10-26T19:21:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T23:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog2wrkdev.wpenginepowered.com\/smart-assistants-future-work\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T06:46:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:46:18","slug":"smart-assistants-future-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog2workato.wpengine.com\/smart-assistants-future-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Smart Assistants Really the Future of Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"\nForget AI and chatbots! Over the last year or two, a new business tech trend has emerged: voice. From Alexa to Siri, people everywhere are embracing smart assistants. In fact, 47.3 million adults in the US now have access to a smart speaker. That\u2019s 20% of the country\u2019s adult population!\n\nWorldwide, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.go-gulf.com\/blog\/virtual-digital-assistants\/\">1.8 billion people<\/a> are projected to use a smart assistant by 2021. As adoption continues to grow, there\u2019s been a lot of speculation about how these digital helpers will change the way we work. EVP of AI and Research at Microsoft Harry Shum, for example, believes that in 20 years digital assistants will be so tightly intertwined with our lives, they\u2019ll be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/ai-assistants-will-run-our-lives-20-years-from-now-2018-1\">like our alter egos<\/a>.\n\nIn the future of work, will smart assistants ever do more than help us manage our calendars and order things from Amazon? What\u2019s their potential for use within the enterprise? And are there any potential downsides?\n\n<em>Related: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/automation-trends-in-2022\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">What the future of automation looks like<\/a><\/em>\n<h3>Accuracy (and Options) Are Getting Better\u2026<\/h3>\nA big question for most prospective users is: can smart assistants accurately provide the information you need? The answer is \u201csort of.\u201d In 2018, for example, Siri is only able to answer about 40% of general knowledge queries. Of those questions answered, it gets roughly 80% correct.\n\nCompared to last year\u2014when Siri could only answer 31% of questions it was asked\u2014its available knowledge base has grown remarkably. But accuracy has actually decreased; in 2017, even though Siri could answer fewer questions, it got a higher percentage (86%) correct.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-8186\" src=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/the-connector\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/waesfg.jpg\" alt=\"Where do smart assistants fit in the Future of Work ?\" width=\"675\" height=\"481\" \/>\n\nSiri was the first smart assistant to go mainstream, and it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/chart\/14505\/market-share-of-voice-assistants-in-the-us\/\">still dominates the market<\/a>. But today, almost every major tech brand offers a smart assistant. The biggest players are Amazon\u2019s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft\u2019s Cortana.\n\nUsers have much more choice today than they did three years ago\u2014which means that you can choose a smart assistant that best fits your needs. Accuracy is much higher for Google Assistant, for example, which is natively integrated with their world-class search engine.\n<h3>&#8230;But AI Still Needs to Improve\u2026<\/h3>\nEver wonder why sometimes, your smart assistant seems to be less-than-perfect? Maybe you asked Siri for a vegetarian place to eat lunch with your team\u2014and it suggested a steakhouse. Or perhaps you had to repeat yourself five times before it understood what you were asking for.\n\nThat\u2019s because the technology behind these digital helpers is complex\u2014and far from perfect.\n\nSmart assistants rely heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) to create personalized, useful experiences. AI is the force behind Natural Language Processing (NLP), which allows your assistant to understand human language the way it\u2019s actually spoken. It\u2019s also what allows your assistant to learn from its experiences with you and get smarter over time.\n<blockquote>By 2021, 1.8 billion people will use a smart assistant.<\/blockquote>\nDespite all the hype surrounding it, AI still has a long way to go in terms of being a substitute for human interaction. It\u2019s not great at soft skills, can be difficult to train, and often has trouble with complex statements and reading between the lines\u2014in short, all the skills that are so highly prized in human assistants. (Case in point: veteran journalist John H. Richardson recently wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/xai-meeting-ai-chatbot\/\">how frustrating<\/a> an AI-powered scheduling tool was to use.)\n\nThat\u2019s something that the companies who build smart assistants hope to change\u2014and soon.\n\n\u201cWe see this space as more than just building a personal assistant feature,\u201d writes Marcus Ash, a Group Program Manager who works on Microsoft\u2019s Cortana. \u201cThis is a long-term opportunity to build the first contextual operating service: a system that knows you so well that it can predict your patterns to help you get things done.\u201d\n<h3>&#8230;and Automation Is a Necessity, Not a Luxury<\/h3>\nFrom a business perspective, however, smart assistants still have a way to go before they can have real value. Beyond checking your calendar or sending quick email replies, most smart assistants can perform only a limited range of business tasks. They\u2019re just not super useful (yet) when it comes to business-critical processes, like searching for leads in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/integrations\/salesforce?utm_source=blog\">Salesforce<\/a> or creating invoices in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.workato.com\/integrations\/netsuite?utm_source=blog\">NetSuite<\/a>.\n\nIn order to become widely used in a business context, these tools need to not only integrate with enterprise apps\u2014they also need to be capable of executing workflows that span those apps.\n\nSome smart assistants, like Amazon\u2019s Alexa, offer <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.amazon.com\/alexa-skills-kit\">developer kits<\/a> that allow you to build your own integrations and \u201cskills\u201d for your assistant. But that\u2019s a technical challenge that few non-developers feel comfortable tackling, which means it\u2019s not a viable option for many businesses who have limited dev resources.\n\nA few middleware platforms\u2014such as IFTTT\u2014also offer pre-built connectors for smart assistants, but these often only work with a limited range of apps and may not feature enterprise-grade necessities like adequate security.\n\nBut there\u2019s reason to believe that tech companies see enterprise integrations and automations as the next frontier in smart assistant development.\n\n\u201cAn interesting front-runner in closing this gap is Microsoft,\u201d says James Haight, an analyst at Blue Hill Research.\n\n\u201cMicrosoft has made huge strides in its AI efforts with its Project Adam\u2014and it is continually tying it together with its Cortana technology as a front end. We can already do simple things like talk to an Xbox, but the dominance of Microsoft\u2019s office tools like Word, SharePoint, and Outlook point to a much larger impact.\u201d\n<h3>The Future of Work Takes Time<\/h3>\nSmart assistants are just like any other tech development: they\u2019re cool and have the potential to be really useful, but they\u2019re also nascent. Currently, they\u2019re improving at performing low-level everyday tasks. Though they still can\u2019t pick up your drycleaning, they can help you save time, track your calendar, and find something good to eat for lunch.\n\nOver time, their business potential will likely improve as well. As adoption continues to grow and they become an indispensable part of our lives, businesses will have more to gain from implementing them. That may spur on the expansion of their integration and automation capabilities\u2014which, from the looks of it, is already in motion.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forget AI and chatbots! Over the last year or two, a new business tech trend has emerged: voice. From Alexa to Siri, people everywhere are embracing smart assistants. In fact, 47.3 million adults in the US now have access to a smart speaker. That\u2019s 20% of the country\u2019s adult population! Worldwide, 1.8 billion people are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":11926,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-automation-integration","category-thought-leadership"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Smart Assistants: Are They Really the Future of Work?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the future of work, will smart assistants ever do more than help us manage our calendars and order things from Amazon?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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