Anyone interested in the future should know that it is already here. At the crossroads of simple gadgets, artificial intelligence and augmented reality are apparently quite banal sunglasses that herald the next big technological revolution.
Nobody expected it, but 2023 belongs to Microsoft for now. If the Redmond giant hadn’t developed this annoying habit of peeling bananas yourself since its inception in 1975, we’d bet the incredible success would continue through the end of the decade. There is nothing less certain.
But for a glimpse of the future that could sign both Apple or Google and Microsoft, take a look at what the latter has accomplished over the past few weeks.
More precisely, one should above all listen to him.
bang bang
In mid-February, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirmed what rumors had been prophesying for a few days: The automated language understanding tool developed by the Californian OpenAI laboratory, which is intended to bring ChatGPT to life, is to be integrated into the Bing search engine. About ten days later, Microsoft announced that the Bing application would again welcome this new breed of artificial intelligence. Better: Bing on mobile combines its own version of ChatGPT with a speech synthesizer.
Result: We no longer need to chat with ChatGPT. We can actually talk to him. And the version of ChatGPT that we find in the Bing application gives us the answer to all our questions with its soft, confident and sure voice.
“What is happening in Ukraine? ‘ we can ask him. “The situation in Ukraine is very serious,” Bing answers bluntly into his earpiece. “There is a war that has been going on for a year and has left thousands dead and wounded. The UN demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, but Moscow did not comply […]. »
You don’t need to address hot topics to chat with Bing. Weather or sports enthusiasts can not only ask this new voice and digital assistant about the current state of affairs, but also take turns answering and having a minute-long conversation. The AI will not lose the thread until the discussion is over.
In short, Bing and ChatGPT in the language version are just as suitable for a quarter of an hour of small talk in the air as for summarizing in 30 seconds a geopolitical topic in full development such as the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Flea in the ear
Of course, fear and horror stories will be swirling around the internet in the coming weeks, illustrating how unpredictable, even dangerous – the New York Times has dubbed it practically psychopathic – the AI used by Microsoft.
We often hear car safety experts laugh and say that the biggest accident factor in a car is about 50 cm behind the wheel. The same applies to current applications of artificial intelligence: the human factor is the greatest risk.
A voice interface, however interactive, is just that: an interface. OpenAI and Microsoft give us access to information originally created and put online by humans. An important detail to always keep in mind when interacting with these systems.
At least Bing with ChatGPT in Voice is nothing compared to the nasty automated phone systems that almost every big company insists on using to make their customer service worse than possible.
And this is where the next big IT transformation could take place. In 25 years, the Internet has evolved from a network accessible at the university and in certain coffee shops to one that can be accessed from the home. Then it went mobile: you have it in your pocket. The next step is simple: we will hear it.
Expanded reality
It’s not far-fetched to imagine that the voice interface will be the gateway through which augmented reality becomes mainstream technology. The technological giants all intend to have glasses for sale by 2025 in which we will see content from around the web.
At Meta (ex-Facebook) we think we can order such glasses by manual gestures recognizing cameras housed in the frame. We doubt it. The experience seems more promising on the side of a voice interface, capable of engaging in a dialogue and then presenting related content visually.
These augmented reality glasses do not exist yet. Meanwhile, this year we’ll see a range of new glasses that connect to a phone to play music and make calls. One example is the “smart glasses” brand Solos. She sells sunglasses that perform several fun little related tasks.
Solos glasses have the advantage of not costing a very large fortune: the entry-level model costs $275. First of all, the Solos glasses have microphones and speakers of sufficient quality to have a proper conversation with an interlocutor or, in this case, with the Bing application.
In other words, curious people who dream of knowing what the future will be and have $300 or less in their pocket can discover it quickly and easily by bringing Bing, ChatGPT, and connected glasses together like Solos .
While waiting for connected glasses, and very likely overpriced, Apple signed…