How hard would it be to get a good answer to “Siri: What should I do?”

Alexa, Siri, the Google Assistant, and similar, are capable of handling simple tasks, but these are usually tasks that are also simple to accomplish with a mouse and keyboard or a touch on a phone.

I’m wondering how hard it would be to get Siri to give a good answer to “Siri: What should I do?” In other words, could Siri function as a life coach, enabling the owner of the device to be more productive (maybe even sufficiently more productive to pay for a new iPhone every year!) as well as to live a more accomplished, social, and satisfying life?

What if Siri could be smart enough to know when was a great time to work on that important, but not urgent, project? If Siri knew everything that is in the book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (a time-management classic by Lakein) plus all of the information about the phone owner necessary to implement the Lakein method?

Within this overall challenge there are a lot of concrete sub-challenges:

1. understanding the customer’s schedule (start with the obvious, e.g., the electronic calendar)
2. understanding the customer’s short-term and long-term goals, both personal and professional (maybe interface with existing todo list managers as a crude starting point, but also can infer from activity on phone/web)
3. understanding the customer’s social network (the real network, not just the Facebook friends) and professional network
4. understanding the schedules of others within social and professional networks (otherwise tough to arrange meetings and phone calls)
5. understanding everything that is happening within a geographic locale, e.g., social and professional events

Siri can see all of a phone owner’s emails, right? And calendar events. And also the actual phone calls (Siri would conclude from this that I am desperate to lower my credit card interest rates and also somewhat interested in rooftop solar).

Even if Siri can’t coach me to finish the Great American Novel, what about something humble such as arranging a gathering with friends. If you want to get six people together for dinner+movie:

a) call/text/email 15 friends in order to find 5 who are free on the same evening

b) search for a reasonably central movie theater that has 6 seats available that evening

c) search for a restaurant that is close to the movie theater that has a table for 6 that evening

d) buy tickets to movie from a movie ticket web site

e) actually reserve the table at the restaurant on Open Table or similar

f) maybe collect money from some of the people

g) call Uber or Lyft at the right times with the right To/From addresses

That’s at least one hour of effort, right? Why can’t Siri do all of the above, especially if all of the participants are iPhone users (and why would you want to be friends with anyone who isn’t?).

What’s the motivation for an Amazon, Apple, or Google to build this? Consider the lock-in effect. Would you ever abandon iPhone for Android if Siri were your personal coach and already knew your life goals? Also, sometimes the correct answer to “What should I do now?” is “shop for X” or “buy plane tickets and book hotel rooms”. There are transaction fees and commissions to be had when cash is flowing.

Readers: Which company is closest to doing this now? How hard would it be to make something that would give users a real benefit?