Google search seems benign enough but it actually uses some fairly good AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms taking in the searcher's past search history, well visited websites, his posts on blogs and forums, online purchase history and so on in order to present options that the AI thinks this particular user will enjoy. Heck it even sniffs out websites for content that is relevant to the search you did based on context instead of strictly using exact keywords.
We already have Siri or Google Assistant on our smartphones, Cortana on our Windows PC and Alexa in the living room connected to a bunch of other devices.
Ok not everybody has all those things or uses all of these, but these are all well known and well distributed artificially intelligent pieces of software packaged in sensor-laden hardware that we are surrounded by.
Heck, stand aside AlphaGo, AI is tackling much more complicated games than Go: One AI recently was able to consistently beat the best DOTA 2 players in the world 1 on 1 after only 2 weeks of learning. Not only that, but AI has also been created with the ability to make games like Mario Brothers after only a few minutes of seeing how the game is played. This last AI just creates the game code from observation.
Development in AI is just beginning with no sign of stopping right now.
In fact investment in AI has increased significantly to such an extent that tech giants such as Google and Baidu have spent between $20bn - $30bn in AI in 2016 alone, and it is expected that investments in general by most technology companies will more than triple by the end of 2017. 90% of these investments are in R&D while only 10% are spent in startup acquisitions.
This movement indicates that we'll be further and further immersed with increasingly large amounts of form factors of AI software integrated into all sorts of connected devices in the next few years.
Technology companies are betting on AI and in order to make things easy for individuals, they are focusing on the basics to start: international communications.
Pretty much every large company is placing their bed on facilitating international communications by investing heavily in speech recognition, hands free voice translators on the go and digital assistants. Here are some of the new devices and news on the subject to update yourself upon:
- Google Translate goes mobile in earbuds allowing the instant translation of a conversation into and from 40 different languages.
- Fujitsu even enters that very same space with its own wearable translator device.
- Alexa and Cortana join forces and perks to better compete with Google Assistant as virtual assistants with Cortana's voice recognition being measured being just as good at recognizing and deciphering speech as a human.
All in all, with improvements and devices like this, we're much more likely to use AI to assist in our everyday life and then waiting eagerly for the next software update or better yet, if available, being able to directly and obviously participate in the learning process of these AI as they become better at what they do.
Exciting times. I detail in the video below what this all means for us at home and in the workplace as well:
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