Artificial Intelligence and 4 trends at CES 2016
The trip back home to Silicon Valley from Las Vegas, where CES 2016 (International Consumer Electronics Show) took place, takes about 9 hours of driving. On the way, our Cubic Team summed up CES 2016, and we want to share our thoughts on CES trends related to the Artificial Intelligence field, as we believe these trends are the most significant and interesting:
1. Affordable Smart Home. Smart home has been a fixture at CES for years, but it has now become really affordable and easy to install and use. As we write this today, you can already start using Smart Home with various smart devices, such as Hue light bulbs or the Nest thermostat. You can easily build a real Smart Home step by step by adding new devices and integrating them. Many companies, from startups to giants such as Apple and Google, are working to develop standards and ecosystems to combine various devices into a full-fledged Smart Home. For example, Samsung is planning to incorporate hubs that control Smart Home into televisions. This will provide the foundation for millions of people to start building their smart home from the scratch.
Kevin Taylor (Executive Vice President, Head of Technology at GfK) addressed perspectives of the Smart Home industry and said that one of the three key conditions for the development of the industry should be the development of Artificial Intelligence that will make devices really smart. The new generation of assistants not only allows the user to manage multiple devices with voice commands, but also facilitates the script programming for collaboration of different systems. Very soon we will be able to ask our electronic assistant: “When the alarm clock turns on, turn on the light in the bathroom, tell me about the weather and play the new Coldplay album on all the speakers.”
2. Self-driving cars. In 2020, there will be 1 million cars with full autopilot sold in the world. It was with this fantastic statement that Shawn DuBravac (Chief Economist of the Consumer Electronics Association) opened his CES presentation. The auto industry is set to change forever. Soon our cars will be charged directly at parking lots (this technology was presented by Qualcomm), and when we need it, we can simply request the car to arrive directly us. And of course, we can simply tell the intelligent assistant our desired destination and just relax in our seat. If we still want to steer, using just our voice and the built-in intelligent assistant, we can manage music, climate, and navigation in the car while staying focused on the road.
3. Virtual reality is now a part of our reality. At CES, Oculus Rift announced the start of pre-orders, and HTC and Valve showed their breakthrough system Vive, capable of combining virtual and real worlds by using camera systems. In spring 2016, these amazing systems will be in the hands of users around the world. In virtual reality, it is clear that the usual interfaces like keyboards and gamepads “kill” an immersive experience, whereas the voice interface would only complement the experience. With intelligent voice assistants, VR is not only much more fun, but also is a very powerful tool for work and education: “Cubic, create a three-dimensional globe in front of me, add the moon, now let the moon revolve around the earth.”
4. Seamless experience. At CES, the trend that is not as visible or as vibrant as Smart Home, or VR, but not less important, became more clear. Smart devices and services around us have begun to communicate and learn from each other. A Whirlpool smart washing machine can order detergent from Amazon by itself. A Ford car will notify the Nest thermostat that you are coming home, and adjust the temperature in the house just how you like it. The boundaries of ecosystems and brands will cease to exist, and devices and applications will interact with each other to create a smart and friendly environment. The next step on this path is a unity of devices, services and applications in one intelligent assistant — your personal assistant and butler, and it will work seamlessly across platforms, brands and devices. If such an assistant were to exist now, we’d ordered a pizza to my home straight from the car, on the way from Vegas to San Francisco. Then we would let the delivery guy in, asking an intelligent assistant to open the door for him, turn on the light in the hallway. Then, ask the security system to make sure everything is fine and when the delivery guy is gone, lock the door and turn off the light.
You may say we are dreamers…But we invite you to dream with us and come to CES 2017.