Three years ago Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria, founder and CEO of Sherpa, the ‘Spanish Siri’, and the creator of Apple’s Siri, had a talk to discuss the future of this type of solution. They came to a conclusion, which meant that Xabi made a strategic decision for his company: Smart assistants, as they are conceived, generate frustration in users and are no longer used. And between 80 and 90 percent of the queries made to this type of system are framed in actions such as setting the alarm or music, asking him to tell you a joke or asking him about the weather.
A reality that the consulting firm Deloitte confirms, which in a recent research on the use of applications with artificial intelligence capabilities that integrate smartphones indicates that the most used by customers is predictive text, with 35 percent. The next most used is road route suggestions, with 24 percent. Speech recognition AI applications are only used by 12 percent of users.
And this is the main reason why Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria decided three years ago to incorporate the best experts in artificial intelligence and doctors in mathematics and computer science into the ranks of his company, to redefine not only its free Sherpa application but also the smart assistants concept.
“When I think of a personal assistant I think of Martín, who is the person who works as my personal assistant. And I ask Martin to tell me a joke or to tell me the weather or to set the alarm for me? Of course not. I want more complicated things from him. Learn from me. Let him know what I like, what I don’t like, and try to anticipate my needs and tell me: Xabi, you have this meeting in such a place, I have looked at the traffic and I think you have to go to the meeting now. Or check my emails, give me a summary and tell me which ones are important and which ones are not and which ones require action and which ones don’t. Or that he tells me, as he knows my tastes, to look at the news because something relevant has happened in such a place that will interest me, ”says Uribe-Etxebarria.
Sherpa began as the first intelligent assistant in Spanish, in 2012, even before Siri and Cortana spoke the Cervantes language. And this year it will become, if what the CEO and founder of Sherpa says comes true, the most advanced virtual butler on the market thanks to the AI capabilities that it will integrate thanks to machine learning techniques and natural processing of the language, in Spanish. “It will have two parts,” says Uribe-Etxebarria, “One that learns from you, and the other that is capable of anticipating your needs. And that’s why we call it a predictive assistant ”.
It will be launched, if the plans are fulfilled, in the middle of this year, surely by the hand of one of the leading manufacturers in the market worldwide. Years ago the first version of Sherpa was launched with Samsung, precisely coinciding with the launch of the Korean firm’s Galaxy S6. And, as its creator says, “it will be complementary, and not competition, from Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, Bixby, and so on.”
But Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria is not satisfied with bringing his new ‘predictive assistant’ to smartphones. He also wants to introduce it into the home, this year, because he believes that the Amazon Echo, Apple’s Home Pod or Google Home commit the same sin as the smart assistants of mobile devices: they are used only to turn the lights off or on, or to ask them very basic questions.
And it intends to do the same in the automotive field, in which technology is increasingly present. Sherpa is working with a global premium car brand, whose name it does not want to reveal, to bring the new predictive assistant that will be launched this year in that sector. As in other devices, in the car the assistant does not have to be limited to simple voice commands to turn on or turn off the vehicle’s lights, but it has to be something much more intelligent so that the driver feels that he really has a real co-pilot by his side.
“And I have no doubt that in the future, when the autonomous car is a reality, the machine will drive much better than a person. And that there will be much more safety and fewer accidents thanks to artificial intelligence and assistants that really help in driving, ”says the founder and CEO of Sherpa.
