Modern life comes with an unending, auto-populating to-do list.

It never ceases to amaze me how I can be doing nothing at all , minding my own business, and suddenly something needs to be taken care of. You're telling me a tree branch fell in the backyard and now I have to figure out what to do with it? The tree just assigned me homework? Oh, our trash collection company canceled our account out of nowhere and now I have to send email about it? Repeatedly? Totally unfair.

These are the things that we've been told for years that AI will help us with. We'll all have a smart virtual assistant to triage and handle the tedious tasks we'd rather …