Life Assistance in the Year 2030

In 2030, we shall not yet have a universal life assistant for all aspects of human life but instead an individually compiled hodgepodge of technical assistants to cover needs ranging from home security to therapy and round-the-clock entertainment. This chapter picks out and examines individual areas of life to a degree that makes it possible to identify the broad outlines of fundamental trends, starting with the status quo and extending up to the year 2030. The few areas of life selected and the associated digital services available reveal the extent to which machine intelligence has already changed our lives, and the fact that connecting the findings currently available will accelerate that change. The examples cited show that digital services bring together as many sources as possible to form gigantic data collections that can be used to derive ever more patterns and rules. As a consequence, the services will become smarter and more active, and take over ever more tasks from humans.