Google I/O 2018

Hi Everyone,

Just had a look at Google's keynote for I/O 18 (see links at the end of this post) and all I can say is: Wow, Innovation at full power.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widespreading and Google is integrating it in quite any of its products from G-mail, to Android, passing through Lens, for different purposes.

Time management

First, I liked the idea of making people aware of the time they spend connected, and help them disconnect a bit. When you can't seem to find time do do sports, or reading books, or discussing with your family and friends, and realize you spend 2 or 3 hours everyday on social networks, well I think this may lead people to better manage their time and free some space for what really matters.

Also, I found the possibility of having more automation around Google Assistant really interesting. I can foresee a future where our phones will start to really integrate with the world around,  using APIs where APIs exist, and interacting with humans in the other case, and on the other side spare us from some tedious and time consuming tasks.

Some may argue that this is a new step toward dehumanization of social interactions, and I agree with that point in a certain sense. But I also imagine cases where this could help save you a lot of time, as well as sparing your health. Sometimes making calls here and there to get an appointment, or to get a table, or whatsoever, can be really frustrating and time consuming. Therefore if the Google Assistant can do it, this seems better to me.
Of course, if the system was to be perfected, I would say that such system should take into account the affinity you have with your environment to favour human interactions: if you have a favourite hair dressing salon, perhaps that calling yourself for an appointment is a better option, but if all that counts for you is getting an haircut at the best price within two days, then I guess nothing will beat such system.

Image processing

I also found impressive the photo processing functions allowing to recolor an ancient image or help highlighting a character within a photo. Such process was taking hours or days up to now. On the other side, I am less fond of the automatic recognition feature, again for privacy reasons. Is the feature database local to the phone? If not, what other uses will be made of such data...

Augmented reality

I also liked the rework of Google Maps and Google Lens; this is in my opinion where Google Glass should have led.
We can foresee what will be the future challenges of advertsing: being present in Google Map and having good ratings, and having the features of each of your products in your catalogue identified. The future seems clear for big data ^^.

And more

Last but not least, I find interesting that Google starts to highlight some benefits of AI such has prediction of some events such as readmissions. So many issues and incidents could be avoided by using such approaches which are now mature...

Links:
- https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs - full keynote
- https://youtu.be/BRUvbiWLwFI - a 14 minutes "best-of"

Cheers,
 Stéphane