Introduction to scullions
I recently finished reading Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman, a sci-fi satire about climate change and species extinction. It's a great book and you should read it, but that's not the point of this post. Rather, I wanted to talk about an element in the story that is mentioned in passing, the scullion, which seems to be a kind of futuristic digital assistant that lives in the cloud, unique to every person.
When anyone else was listening his scullion was neutral and genderless, but in private it had the posh, breathy voice of a twenty-four-year-old girl with an expensive education.
It was close to 4 a.m. His scullion was configured to wake him only when it had extremely important news.
"Some major events, relevant to your interests, have taken place in the past hour." The scullion waking him [...]
It occurred to me that this is a fascinating concept that would be useful for my own life (and of course, for others). I have a pretty busy schedule, managing university, work and personal commitments, and I often find myself struggling to keep track of new happenings. A scullion could help me stay on top of things. Furthermore, with the current state of AI, such a system seems feasible to implement.
Of course, this isn't a unique idea. In fact, there are many companies who have been established with the purpose of creating an autonomous digital assistant (but I think "scullion" sounds better, don't you?). In this post, I'll go through some currently available solutions, and also implement my own.
Scullion, from the late 15th century, means a servant assigned the most menial kitchen tasks. Hopefully ours will be more useful!