A few thoughts worth picking up from this one.
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/12/computational-power-and-cognitive-augmentation.html
Here’s a look at a few of the ways that humans — still the ultimate data processors — mesh with the rest of our data systems: how computational power can best produce true cognitive augmentation.
Over the past decade, we fitted roughly a quarter of our species with sensors. We instrumented our businesses, from the smallest market to the biggest factory. We began to consume that data, slowly at first. Then, as we were able to connect data sets to one another, the applications snowballed. Now that both the front office and the back office are plugged into everything, business cares. A lot.
Now the common man, you and me, might pause here and question such a sweeping statement.
We have talked in the past about how we really are not people, but money. Business. Our digital lives are ‘worth more than our physical’ ones. (Going a bit far, but you get the point).
That’s a given.
But, who cares?
How will we, the common man be impacted by this?
Tomorrow’s interfaces won’t be about mobility, or haptics, or augmented reality (AR), or HUDs, or voice activation. I mean, they will be, but that’s just the icing. They’ll be about interruption.
In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson said: “We are drowning in information…the world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” Only it won’t be people doing that synthesis; it’ll be a hybrid of humans and machines. Because after all, the right information at the right time changes your life.
That interruption will take many forms — a voice on a phone, a buzz on a bike handlebar, a heads-up display over actual heads. But behind it is a tremendous amount of context that helps us to decide better.
Right now, there are three companies on the planet that could do this. Microsoft’s Cortana, Google’s Now, and Apple’s Siri are all starting down the path to prosthetic brains. A few others — Samsung, Facebook, and Amazon — might try to make it happen, too. When it finally does happen, it’ll be the fundamental shift of the 21st century.
Most of us reading this blog are already using AI.
Siri and Google Now.
I think we often dismiss this whole AI / IoT thing and think it has not really touched us, or that we don’t yet have easy access to this whole artificial intelligence thing…. But I hope that by now, you have followed along and can see that we are indeed already deeply entrenched in it.
Most of the readers of this blog have at some point talked to their phones (a computer) and received the information you were looking for.
The computing power in your phone is more than it took to put man on the moon.
Via your phone, you have easy access to a very solid AI.
Pretty mind blowing when you stop and think about it.
