Look no further than the latest news to see how cognitive computing is the future of computing. Chatbots and smart machines will increasingly help us search for things we want, communicate with others and generally make our lives easier. Many of the things you might use a personal assistant for today – or a specialized website or service will be provided by such bots.
Google Now, Siri and Alexa are every-day examples of this technology in action.
Speaking of which, Amazon is a company we shouldn’t underestimate. Jeff Bezos has vision and sees the future. He did with ecommerce as well as cloud computing. He now says The Amazon Echo speaker with Alexa could be their fourth pillar – Amazon Prime is the other.
HP and Rackspace had to drop out of the public cloud space because Amazon beat them to it. The entire computer server market has been upended by Amazon – likewise for routers and numerous other pieces of equipment. Google and Microsoft are chasing Amazon but it’s tough to play catch-up.
From cloud we go to cognitive computing or smart machines. Amazon has 1,000 people working on his technology today.
In a world filled with consumer electronics, they launched a surprise hit speaker in what we all thought was a saturated market.
Make no mistake – this innovation represents the future of technology. IBM Watson is another solid example of AI in action.
We can expect more and more companies to leverage each other’s smart machine tech via APIs and present even more new and innovative solutions.
A great example is the Google Image API – as Google explains it: (the bolding was done by them)…
Insight From Your Images
Image Sentiment Analysis
You may also recall a recent post where I talked about an app from Josh Newman which uses IBM Watson to listen to a conference call and alert you when you are needed. It basically lets you tune out until you are called – it even chimes in on the conversation, stalling, so you can have time to read the speech-to-text of what just happened.
Of course I am not advocating we use AI for such purposes but the example shows the enormous potential of smart machines to shape our future.
Medical companies will either disrupt or be disrupted by medtech – likewise for financial companies and others. There will be few exceptions if any.
This is our density (see video) – apps and services leveraging AI from specialized providers like Google, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft. Other companies will add value or provide specialized AI services in specific areas. In some cases these services may leverage the “big guys” or possibly be built from the ground up.
If you’re looking for the next big thing in tech – in life – in commerce, in our future… Its smart machines. If you plan to play or participate in this space, now is the time to start brushing up.
There is one event on the planet where you can learn about APIs and also learn about the world of AI and smart machines. Come see All About The API and Smart Machines Conference featuring a variety of intensive hack-a-thons, in-depth company-focused workshops and awesome keynotes. Every business has to pay attention to the new opportunities presented by APIs and AI. We hope to see you July 18-21 2016 in Las Vegas!