At this year’s Google I/O Conference, the company announced Now On Tap, the next-gen version of its Google Now digital assistant, which can contextually improve how you experience apps using an updated machine learning algorithm and something they call “deep linking.” The idea behind this is, if you get a text saying to meet at a certain place, Now On Tap is smart enough to put it on your calendar, give you a map of the place you are going to and, if it is a restaurant, it could even serve up the menu for you to review. It might even show the best parking areas nearby as well as stores that might be of interest to you based on your Google profile preferences.
Last week, Apple announced a new version of Spotlight and Siri at WWDC in which you can type or ask questions of Siri and it is supposed to give you an answer based on a better contextual search engine. And, in May, Microsoft used their developer conference to launch an updated version of Cortana that, at its root, is also an AI-based personal assistant that will take a question and put it into context in order to give the user more precise answers to their questions.
I believe the consumerization of AI is set to be the next major battleground to drive differentiation, especially into the mobile space since hands-free communication is often critical to accessing information in real time and making our mobile devices even more useful. This is why Google Now, Siri and Cortana personal voice assistants are important front ends to their contextual AI offerings.
In an excellent piece in Fast Company titled “Apple finally learns that AI is the new UI”, author John Brownlee asks the question of whether UI or AI will win the war in this new battleground. In it he says:
“The thing is, Google knew something we didn’t. It knew that Apple’s taste was a temporary advantage. It knew that designing a host of functional, universally integrated services was harder than designing pixels. And in the protracted thermonuclear war between Apple and Google, which first started when the search giant launched Android in 2008, Google knew that ultimately, it would be AI, not UI, that would win the war.”
While I agree AI is the new battleground, I would argue UI still is critical to the success of a mobile OS and user experience. After talking to Apple officials at WWDC, I am convinced they have a deeper level of research going on in AI than Mr. Brownlee gives them credit for. I also believe Microsoft has put serious investment in this level of machine learning and AI and it is being applied to Cortana and Windows 10.
On a personal level, this can’t come fast enough. Like many readers, my days have become packed with meetings, research, and writing and I admit I often miss the little things that are an important part of my daily lifestyle. For example, I often head to an offsite meeting thinking I know where I am going only to get half way there and realize I did not have the proper directions or even the right location. Too many times, I have had to pull over, check my email, go to Google Maps and find the exact way to go. Or I may leave the office and head to Office Depot only to get there and forget why I went in the first place.
Now, you may just think I am unorganized and, while that may be true in some cases, the reality is I have information overload that deeply impacts my overall efficiency. And I have to admit my memory banks are overloaded too. An AI-based personal assistant that anticipates things that impact my lifestyle is something I would pay for and, I suspect, many people are in similar shoes. In fact for many of this, it would be our killer app.
Although smartphone vendors can still differentiate around OS, design and UI, I agree with Mr. Brownlee that contextual AI-based services will be where the next major investment needs to be by these big players. Within the next two years, I believe users are going to demand more proactive contextual services that add greater value to our mobile and overall PC experiences and help us better manage our digital lifestyles. If done right, it would be a game changer for all of us who use this technology and, in my case, make my life much easier too. This is one of the promises of technology people have been wanting for some time and AI for mobile is getting better each year. I just hope Apple, Google and Microsoft double up on this research and make it a reality soon.
Maybe we’re getting closer to an inflection point where AI actually starts to add value. I’m told by my most Google-ized friends that Now *does* proactively tell you when to leave for meetings, and Map you to there.
That’s 10% of people around me though. There’s a good 50% that’s still struggling with why the left curvy arrow means “reply”. And with where it’s at. And no, the bottom left arrow is not “Reply”, it’s “Back”, you want the left arrow in the mail message, not the other one. Now let’s add double left curvy arrow for “reply all”, and the straight right arrow for “forward”. Didn’t we invent writing because hieroglyphs sucked ?
You bring an interesting point about hieroglyphs. I may just throw something in here.
From a workshop I attended two years ago in Seattle I understand that the natural language processing, English language in particular, is still in its infancy and it is very hard to derive a meaning from it for the machines. Should not AI efforts concentrate on coming up with a language which will both be understandable by machines and humans instead of trying to fit algorithms in a not very well formed content?
I’m conflicted about that one:
On the one hand, I didn’t evolve hole punchers when computers wanted perforated cards, I never quite could manage to yodel like a modem… the tools should evolve to suit me, not the other way around.
On the other hand, I’m deeply bothered by the rise of the new Scribe class, made up this time not of the ones who can read and write books, but of the ones who can understand and control computers. Maybe an intermediate language, between idiosyncratic English and undecipherable C++, could bridge the human-computer language barrier the same way “low” languages broke the human-book barrier ?
PS: Sorry, couldn’t find Otis’s “Scribe” monologue in English nor even subtitled, so no linkie ^^
“An AI-based personal assistant that anticipates things that impact my lifestyle is something I would pay for and, I suspect, many people are in similar shoes. In fact for many of this, it would be our killer app.”
I would rather forget things than cede every aspect of my private life to “self-regulating” third parties and corporations. If that kind of invasive data mining can’t be easily disentangled from my device’s operating system, then I will forever be using old devices and outdated software.
Great piece. No question that as devices get smaller and more personal, AI is the main UI. If dictation wasn’t as accurate and fast as it is (IT IS) on my Apple Watch, it wouldn’t be capable of replacing my iPhone as my primary device for texting, which it has. Siri puts the Apple Watch over the top. Without it, it would be far less compelling and overall, far less useful.
Hope you write more about AI as a battle ground. I think it will make or break devices made for IoT.
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