人工智能給你當助理

Whether you leave business school to become a corporate manager, a professional high performer or an entrepreneur, you will spend much of your time on tasks unrelated to your expertise. Only the most senior executives now have dedicated personal assistants and so the more mundane work of email, scheduling meetings and booking travel eats up your time.

不管你從商學院畢業(yè)后是要成為一位公司經理、杰出的專業(yè)人士還是一位創(chuàng)業(yè)者，你都會在與你的專業(yè)無關的工作上花費大量時間?，F在只有最高級別的高管才配有專門的私人助理，因此，處理電郵、安排會議以及差旅預定這種比較無聊的工作會吞噬你的時間。

A new generation of employees is looking for ways to reclaim that time so they can spend it finding solutions to serious problems: the work that will get them credit and help them advance. This work also develops their expertise and helps them remain valuable when artificial intelligence finally becomes clever enough to do all the most predictable tasks.

新一代員工正設法找回這些時間，這樣他們就可以把時間用在找到重要問題的解決方案上：這些重要工作會讓他們得到認可并幫助他們晉升。這些工作還會提高他們的專業(yè)技能，并幫助他們在人工智能最終聰明到足以完成所有最可預測的工作時仍然有價值。

Instead of just “bring your own device” — the tech fad of the past decade that allowed people to use their personal computers, smartphones, or other devices for work purposes — these employees are bringing their own assistant. They are paying for services to be completed by either a remote assistant who is a real person in a faraway office, or an AI-based assistant, or a hybrid version of the two.

這些員工不會只“帶上自己的設備”(“帶上自己的設備”是過去10年的科技風潮，允許人們把個人電腦、智能手機或其他設備用于工作)，還會帶上自己的助理。他們正為要么由遠程助理(身在遙遠辦公室的真人)、要么由人工智能助理或者兩者混合完成的服務付費。

I like the idea of a person taking care of my to-do list, running through the tasks I hate about my job: scheduling meetings in packed days at conferences, keeping my contacts lists up to date and doing my expenses. There are the tasks I hate in my personal life, too: from calling companies to complain to remembering to send birthday cards early enough to reach family abroad.

我喜歡讓人處理我的待辦事項，完成工作中我不喜歡的部分：在會議密集的時候安排會議、更新我的通訊錄以及報銷。還有一些我私人生活中不愿做的事情：從打電話到各種公司投訴，到提前給身在國外的家人寄生日卡以便及時寄到。

But just as bring your own device caused a problem for corporate IT departments, which worried that they could not monitor smartphones they did not own for hackers, I am concerned that companies do not know that their employees are opening up their emails and calendars to remote workers in other organisations or inscrutable AI assistants.

但正如帶上自己的設備給公司IT部門帶來了問題(因為他們擔心，他們無法監(jiān)測他們并不擁有的智能手機以防黑客入侵)，我擔心，公司也會不清楚他們的員工正向其他公司的遠程員工或神秘的人工智能助理開放自己的電郵和日歷。

The most basic form of AI assistant is the scheduler. Instead of sending several emails back and forth to find a time to meet, a user can copy in a pretend person, an artificial intelligence that reads your calendar and suggests times for the recipient. These include Julie Desk, Clara Labs and x.ai.

人工智能助理的最基本形式是日程安排助理。用戶不用反復來回發(fā)送多封電郵以找到開會時間，而只用抄送給一個模擬人，這個人工智能會讀取你的日歷，并為收件人建議時間。提供這種服務的包括Julie Desk、Clara Labs和x.ai等公司。

When I contacted x.ai to arrange a call with its chief executive, “Andrew”, the AI, stepped in to set a time. At first, as a recipient, it felt a little rude: did they think their time was worth more than mine? But people get used to rudeness with technology: see the social acceptability of smartphones on the dinner table and children ordering around Alexa, Amazon’s AI personal assistant.

當我聯(lián)系x.ai安排給其首席執(zhí)行官打電話的時間時，人工智能“安德魯”(Andrew)介入了，幫我確定了時間。起初，作為收件人，我感覺這有點不禮貌：他們是否認為他們的時間比我的更寶貴?但人們習慣了技術的不禮貌：看看餐桌上智能手機的社會認可度和孩子們使用亞馬遜(Amazon)的個人助理Alexa訂購產品的情形吧。

Andrew suggested two times, right next to each other, not perhaps having the human sense to see I would rather have a choice of slots more spread out, in case I was not free for the whole afternoon. After I declined, he replied with the next slot in the chief executive’s calendar, also that afternoon, even though I had made several other suggestions.

安德魯建議了兩個時間，是緊挨著的，可能他沒有人類的理性來看出我希望時間段的選擇更分散，以防我整個下午都沒時間。在我拒絕后，他在回復中提出了這位首席執(zhí)行官日歷上的下一個時間，還是那天下午，盡管我提出過其他幾個建議。

Eventually, we made it work. Dennis Mortensen, x.ai’s chief executive, said he focused the company on “vertical AI”, doing one thing well, because it was better to automate something “so simple, but so annoying”, than try, and fail, to fulfil the full tasks of a personal assistant. He sees x.ai as a “rebel product” that will spread through companies, like Dropbox and Slack before it, because employees see the need before their IT director does.

最后，我們終于敲定了時間。x.ai首席執(zhí)行官丹尼斯•莫滕森(Dennis Mortensen)表示，他的公司關注“垂直人工智能”，把一件事做好，因為與嘗試完成私人助理的全部職責最后失敗相比，將“很簡單但很煩人”的事情自動化更可取。他把x.ai視為一個“反叛性產品”，認為它將在各家公司間傳播，就像之前的Dropbox和Slack，因為員工們會在IT主管之前發(fā)現對它的需求。

Employees at companies from Salesforce to LinkedIn, Walmart to The New York Times have adopted the product, which costs $17 a month for an individual. It costs $59 a month per user if an enterprise wants to buy it with extra security protections and analytics, which can be used “to drive productivity”. He says these are “individuals in pain” and he wants to provide other vertical services, such as booking travel or claiming expenses.

從Salesforce到領英(LinkedIn)，從沃爾瑪(Walmart)到《紐約時報》(The New York Times)，很多公司的員工都使用了x.ai的產品，收費標準是每人每月17美元。如果一家企業(yè)希望購買帶有額外安全保護和分析功能的版本(可以用來“推動生產率”)，花費是每位用戶每月59美元。他表示，這些員工是“痛苦中的個人”，他希望提供其他垂直服務，例如差旅預定或報銷。

However, some people who want a broader range of tasks taken off their hands are turning to remote assistants who are actual people whose time they can book in increments.

然而，希望把更多任務分離出來的一些人正求助遠程助理，這些助理是真人，他們的時間可以定量預定。

Fancy Hands is one such service, providing US-based assistants who can do everything from manage travel itineraries to calling customer service. They can even take on higher-level tasks such as generating leads for sales or sifting applications for entry-level posts. Plans range from five requests a month at $30 to 50 requests a month at $199.99. Other companies include Get Friday, where you can also buy gift vouchers for stressed friends, and Moneypenny in the UK.

Fancy Hands就是這種服務，提供美國助理，他們可以做任何事，從管理旅行日程到呼叫客戶服務。他們甚至可以承擔更高級別的任務。例如，為銷售尋找潛在買家或篩選初級職位的應聘申請。收費從每月5項要求30美元到每月50項要求199.99美元。其他公司包括Get Friday，在這里你還可以為壓力大的朋友購買禮品券。還有英國的Moneypenny。

Joshua Boltuch, chief executive of Fancy Hands, says many tasks need a human’s ability to think critically. But he says even Fancy Hands’ assistants are better at tasks where there is a black-and-white answer not, for example, buying you a dress for an event, which a personal assistant may be able to do if they know your taste in clothes.

Fancy Hands首席執(zhí)行官約書亞•博爾圖什(Joshua Boltuch)表示，很多任務需要人類批判性思考的能力。但他表示，甚至連Fancy Hands的助理都更擅長答案明確的任務，而不是為你參加活動購買連衣裙，如果私人助理了解你對服裝的品味，他或許能為你做這些。

Another service, Fin, tries to make the best of both worlds by combining human and machine intelligence. Sam Lessin, founder of Fin Exploration, writes in his blog how he uses Fin to set up regular catch-ups, follow up with people he meets at conferences, prepare for meetings with new people, submit expenses, or to arrange events. Fin charges a dollar “per effective minute worked”, based on its own calculations of how long tasks take, with a monthly minimum of two hours, or $120.

還有一項服務Fin試圖將人類和機器智能結合在一起，達到兩全其美。Fin Exploration創(chuàng)始人薩姆•萊辛(Sam Lessin)在博客中寫道，他如何利用Fin制作常規(guī)跟進清單、與他在會議上碰到的人進行后續(xù)聯(lián)系、為與陌生人的會議做準備、遞交報銷單據或者安排活動。Fin的收費方式是“每有效分鐘”1美元，依據是該公司自己計算的任務耗時，每月最少兩小時，120美元。

All these services appear tempting for those pressed for time. But I still worry that by adopting these services on your own, you could potentially expose corporate secrets, in return for saving you and your employer time and money.

所有這些服務似乎都對那些時間緊張的人很有吸引力。但我仍擔心，私自使用這些服務，可能會以暴露公司秘密為代價，為你和你的雇主節(jié)省時間和金錢。

Instead, I believe buying subscriptions to these services could be a better perk than benefits such as free snacks or on-premises dry cleaning. It could be especially useful for people juggling work with caring responsibilities.

我認為，企業(yè)購買這些服務可能優(yōu)于免費零食或預約干洗等福利。它對于那些工作忙碌同時肩負照管責任的人特別有用。

Employers can then monitor the services to ensure they are secure and understand which tasks are being outsourced. Employees can get help in the short term, but spend their time on the important work that is essential for their careers in the long run.

然后企業(yè)可以監(jiān)督這些服務，以確保它們是安全的，并了解哪些工作被外包。員工可以短期內獲得幫助，而把時間花在對于他們長期職業(yè)發(fā)展至關重要的工作上。

Start-up founders take to the concept of remote assistants 創(chuàng)業(yè)者對于利用虛擬助理服務特別感興趣，因為他們的企業(yè)是間歇發(fā)展的，很難知道何時該聘用新員工。重要的是，初創(chuàng)企業(yè)創(chuàng)始人還要為他們的企業(yè)制定自己的規(guī)則，因此可以決定他們樂意把哪些信息暴露給人工智能服務或遠程助理。

Entrepreneurs are particularly attracted to using virtual assistant services, as their businesses grow in fits and starts, making it hard to know when to take on new staff. Importantly, start-up founders also get to make their own rules about their businesses and so can decide what information they are happy to expose to an AI service or remote assistant.

運動員代理機構VaynerSports聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人AJ•韋納丘克(AJ Vaynerchuk)在他開始使用Fin時“放棄了聘用全職助理的奢侈想法”。這位優(yōu)步(Uber)、Snapchat和Venmo的投資者表示，他越使用這個平臺，他的收獲就越多。

AJ Vaynerchuk, co-founder of VaynerSports, an agency that represents athletes, “gave up the luxury of having a full-time assistant” when he started using Fin. The investor at Uber, Snapchat and Venmo says the more he uses the platform, the more he gets out of it.

社交網站Reddit和旅行應用Hipmunk的創(chuàng)始人阿歷克斯•瓦尼安(Alexis Ohanian)極其信賴遠程助理服務Fancy Hands。他在該公司網站上的一篇評論中表示：“(它)讓我能擺脫日程安排、打電話和查資料這些事情，這樣我就能把注意力放在最重要的事情上。”

Alexis Ohanian, founder of social site Reddit and travel app Hipmunk, swears by Fancy Hands, the remote assistant service. “[It] allows me to hand off tasks like scheduling, calling and research so I can focus on what’s most important,” he said in a review on the company’s site.

在Twitter上，眾多企業(yè)創(chuàng)始人大贊x.ai的日程助理艾米(Amy)。Impression VC創(chuàng)始人克里斯蒂安•拉松德(Christian Lassonde)表示，它“很神奇”。他表示：“艾米最終將一次會議被拒與一封說我們必須重新安排的郵件聯(lián)系在一起。科技發(fā)揮了作用，我喜歡。”

On Twitter, founders rave about Amy, the x.ai scheduler. Christian Lassonde, founder of Impression VC, said it was “magic”. “Amy finally connected a meeting decline to an email saying we had to reschedule. I love it when technology works,” he says.

咨詢公司Caliber Insights所有者、常務董事希瑟•格羅佛(Heather Grove)表示，人們經常把她的人工智能助理誤當作真人。

Heather Grove, owner and managing director of consulting company Caliber Insights, said that people often mistake her AI assistant for a real person.

本文作者是英國《金融時報》舊金山記者

Hannah Kuchler is the FT’s San Francisco correspondent 譯者/梁艷裳