Do you enjoy sending invoices, paying bills, arranging insurance, shopping, booking flights and hotels and hire cars, and so on? I don’t. In a perfect world, I would do only the tasks at work that I love, and enjoy my non-working time with family and friends. I’m excited by the thought that my personal assistant, for example Cortana, will be able to take care of all of these chores for me.

It will happen. Already I rely on Outlook’s AI to learn which emails I need to prioritize and which I can ignore. I look forward to seeing this functionality expand to help me decide, for instance, what I’d enjoy watching on TV. Sooner or later, I will be able to say “Cortana, buy me a new shirt” or “Cortana, find me a hotel in Frankfurt”. I will trust Cortana to know my preferences and make the same decisions I would have done if I’d put the time into researching them.