Xi Jingpin, the premier of China, visited The Netherlands for the first time last Monday. He met with the Dutch royal family and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. This gave Dutch website Nu.nl (2018) a reason to take a closer look, specifically into the interesting ways how modern China creates enthusiasm for its current government (Nu.nl, 2018).

Applications, games and music are the hot new way to go when it comes to propaganda. The Chinese government released an application at the end of 2017, in which the goal is to clap as many times as you can for a speech of Jingpin. A clap would be counted, every time the screen was tapped. The game was played over a billion times before the start of 2018. The government also introduced a game show, in which players have to answer questions about the life of Xi Jingpin. The winner goes home only with the honor of winning. And finally, the government made a surprisingly catchy song about their 5-year plan for China (Nos.nl, 2017). The song has a corresponding videoclip and was made in English. I would recommend watching it, as it is quite bizarre but interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=67&v=EywgiSjkfkw

With the digitalizing trends, politicians will have to find more modern ways to influence their audience, in particular if they want to reach a younger audience. Than apparently even go as far as a way of propaganda. I was amazed at how far this goes and how creative governments can be. I am both disturbed and intrigued by the idea that this trend will further develop in the future.

https://www.nu.nl/250667/video/apps-games-en-muziek-zo-voert-china-propaganda.html
https://nos.nl/artikel/2199436-raps-apps-en-spelletjes-chinese-propaganda-wordt-steeds-slimmer.html

Last Friday, Google announced that Google Assistant is ready to read you the news in Dutch (Nu.nl, 2018). It is all part of Google’s plan to make all Google Assistant’s feature worldwide.

But how impressive is it all?

If by some miracle you have never heard of a personal AI assistant, Rouse (2017) defines it as an application program that understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user. By integration into a smartphone, anybody will be able to use the feature.

How far are we now?

In May 2018 Eric Enge and his team researched which Digitial Personal Assisant was the best on the market. They tested 4942 queries on five different devices: Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana Invoke, Google Assistant on Google Home, Google Assistant on a smartphone and Apple’s Siri. Out of the results, Google Assistant on a smartphone was the most superior, with around 93% of the queries fully and correctly answered (Enge, 2018).

How far can it go?

This January Microsoft’s EVP of AI and Research Harry Shum predicted that in 20 years digital personal assistants will be so integrated into our lives that they will be like ‘alter egos’ (Feloni, 2018). He believes that the ultimate form of AI is in the form of a digital assistant. To outline his dream, him and Microsoft president Brad Smith wrote a book on how tech companies will need to work with both governments and academia to reach a consensus on the ethical use of AI in our daily lives (Feloni, 2018).

But is it credible?

I would be incredibly excited to have a personal AI assistant. But I do not think we will be able to use it effectively in our generation of business students. Right now, it is more a feature which can do some cool tricks and some small tasks and I do not expect, even in 20 years, that it can outperform a human assistant.