Tuesday 24 June 2008

AI 3: Google’s Android is its ‘secret’ platform for Web 4.0 and Web 5.0 AI

For Google to name its mobile platform ‘Android’ provides an interesting insight to their future road-map for implementing Web 4.0 and 5.0 AI (refer to blog AI 1).

Android is technically positioned as both a software platform and operating system for mobile that is open for all to develop applications. But, it’s Google’s associated business strategy and value creation that is far more interesting.

The name Android is closely associated with robots that resemble humans. Android is the means for a digital conversation between a human and AI.

Why is this important?

Let’s us start the answer with Google and its sponsorship of an Economist report called ‘The Future of Marketing: from monologue to dialogue’. It is a must read for everyone in the digital ad space.

The question is whether Larry Page, co-founder of Google, believes in digital conversations between AI and humans. Let’s examine some hard facts.

Larry was brought up thinking AI as his father, the late Dr. Carl Victor Page, was a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University. Larry got his degree in computer science from the same university.

In early 2007, at the Annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, Google co-founder Larry Page let slip “We have some people at Google [who] are really trying to build artificial intelligence (AI) and to do it on a large scale…It’s not as far off as people think.” Even more telling is that Larry stated that artificial intelligence will be solved by brute force and that Google, (which happens to be the biggest owner of computers in the world) is working on it.

And Larry, as a futurist, would know some of the other well known futurists that helped influence the film Minority Report. This film contained virtual androids conversing with humans to sell product and is now regarded as the mantra for the future of marketing. This links back to the Economist report that says this is the new way to engage with customers.

The technology is well established for voice XML and Google’s Android is already designed for voice interaction.

So Google’s Android is really about human to AI (H2AI) interaction and will be used not just for smart phones but also consumer robots or indeed any smart device. Android is already being orchestrated as a Google Cloud service with inbuilt Unified Communications.

It is clear that H2AI will become the new landscape for digital advertising and more importantly the link between interaction and transaction.

No wonder Microsoft have redirected 25% of its US$7.5bn R&D to AI (refer to blog reference AI.2).

Is Microsoft spending enough to compete with Google’s Android vision?

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