opinion
aren’t we? But typically on the day that the
Tesco Labs announce their new Google
Glass app Google announce, to some
confusion, that Glass has graduated and
is moving on. Intel weighs in with their
announcement of a new chipset for Glass
v2 – so there’s more fun to come, right?
For the consumer this is all too confusing.
Who would invest more in a headset than
they would in a short family holiday when
the risk of desertion by the inventors is so
high? Some people do invest in fad-tech
and always will. It’s those explorers that
drive innovation forward.
Gesture as the New Normal
Slowly in 2015, but with a quickening
pace and maddening din, future tech
heaves into view. Few would argue that
technology is now at the hearts of our
lives. We interface with technology in a
myriad of ways and this will only become
more intense and interesting. Whether
we choose to use the Microsoft Kinect,
Intel RealSense or Pointswitch to enable
gesture in our interactions this takes
a leap of faith on the part of the user
in training, familiarisation and finally
acceptance. Google and the like suggest
that technologies that are currently at the
bleeding edge, by virtue of their perceived
usefulness, will become commonplace.
Where yesterdays ‘geeks and freaks’
wore Google Glass, tomorrow this will
become the new normal as people like
Microsoft bring you the much awaited
and heavily cloaked HoloLens. The people
of tomorrow are ready for an analogue
world augmented with a rich interactive
layer of contextually reactive graphics
and they will adapt to it with remarkable
ease. But does it seem scary to think of
artificial intelligence dictating, correcting,
interpreting, transmogrifying and
representing the real world to you – in
real time? Please Cortana, can you stop
correcting my grammar?
Artificially Unintelligent
Stephen Hawkins went on record
recently stating that beyond the current
level of primitive forms of artificial
intelligence lay a development path
of full artificial intelligence, which he
believes spells doom for mankind. He
is not alone in thinking this either. Elon
Musk – Space X – sees AI as the biggest
existential threat facing mankind in the
next five years. OK, but surely we are a
long way from this right? I mean we just
use a little low-fi AI to enable us to find
and buy online. Where’s is the harm in
that? Well, remember that Google search
engine is arguably the most intelligent
algorithm that, we the consumer, are
likely to directly interface with. Every time
we search and select we teach it a little
more about how our minds work and
which of the choices put forward present
the closest match. It sounds simple, but
we’re training this to get better and we
are doing this 40,000 times per second!
It is the greatest co-created AI project in
the history of human kind. Google of the
future will be known for AI, deep learning
and robotics. The search bar that you
currently interface with will be a small
part of who they will become. But relax
this is not the biggest concern to those
technophobes among us. The biggest
issue rests with a Deep Learning AI
program that can re-write its own source
code to become efficient in its own
right – no humans required. All we have
to do is keep it entrapped in a box and
never let it out. Just as long as this does
not end up in the hands of defence we
should be able to avoid a future Skynet.
Oh, but wait…
A Common Purpose
Technology is really a tool to enable us
to achieve greater things and offer more
valuable insight that ought to enrich
any experience. Please, let’s make sure
we don’t scare ourselves to death and
miss out on the opportunity to use it to
our advantage. We can’t drift aimlessly
waiting for opportunity and change to
present itself. Sometimes we need to
seize the moment and utilise what it has
to offer in a common purpose. We owe it
to the kids.
www.beyondtouch.co.uk
KIOSK solutions 45