Artificial IntelIigence: The Technology to Watch

January 5, 2017

January 5, 2017 —

By Ernest Worthman

Executive Editor, Applied Wireless Technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be much more visible in the coming year. In fact, some say AI is the technology to watch in 2017, and not just in high-visibility apps. The emergence of platforms like Microsoft’s Cognitive Service, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Speech API, allow product developers to focus on user experience rather than low-level speech processing. This will enable a plethora of products such as virtual assistants, which use voice-controlled artificial intelligence interfaces to fit into users’ lives more seamlessly.

One such project is call Vi. It is an Ai-based “bio-sensing” wireless earphone which finds your ideal path to fitness and coaches you in real time. Another one, Bonjour, is an alarm clock that wakes you up with a personalized daily briefing based upon learned preferences. And Dashbot, a talking car accessory that rings of Kit, the wonder car in the TV show Knight Rider.

Deep learning will move out of the hype zone and into reality this year. On the high-end of AI for 2017 are things like IBM’s Watson, which will see leaps in technological advancements. And look for AI to start appearing, more and more, in manual repetitive tasks once performed by humans. AI is going to be something to watch in 2017.