I’m old enough now to
have experienced several distinct waves of transformation brought by digital
technology. As a kid, the personal computing revolution captured my imagination
and energy with gaming and programming and new ways to create and do work. As a
young adult, personal computers were everywhere and the internet and the World
Wide Web connected them, and more importantly, the people using them, in ways
that allowed communication and information to flow freely, and for work,
commerce, creativity and leisure to be done in radically different ways. In my
30s, the smartphone and an incredible ecosystem of apps and services extended
the internet to our pockets, making our connections to information and each
other more ubiquitous, helping us navigate our way through the physical world,
allowing us to buy almost any good or service we can think of, entertaining us
in wonderful new ways, and making collaboration to get our work done more
powerful than ever.
Even though that’s
already a lot of transformation in a short period of time, and technology has
never been more present in our lives, I feel like we’re just getting started.
The next wave – one that’s already happening – comes when cheap connected
devices with powerful sensors become truly ubiquitous in all of our physicalenvironments, and when those devices become powerful enough to use the
techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with their surroundings and
the people in them. We call this combination of connected devices with powerful
sensors and AI the Intelligent Edge. A year ago, I shared my belief
that the Intelligent Edge would unfold as a platform over the next several
years in ways that would surprise us by its breadth and diversity. And it
already has.
The Intelligent Edge
is proving to be the last mile in the convergence of the digital and physical
worlds. –whether it’s a mixed-reality device like HoloLens providing a
technician with a digital overlay of analytics, diagnostics and documentation
for a piece of equipment they are servicing, or smart devices making the places
where we live, work and shop more responsive and interactive, safer and more
efficient. Intelligent Edge technologies are already making our homes smarter,
improving the yields of our farms, monitoring the environment, helping us
navigate our work more effectively, and improving our health and safety.
We’re in the middle of
a revolution that is more than just smart speakers, security cameras and clever
thermostats. Right now, we have in excess of 12 billion devices connected to
the internet. It’s forecast that by the end of this calendar year, that number
will rise to 20 billion. We anticipate that billions more of
these devices are going to connect to the internet in the next few years. It’s
a staggering thought. This Internet of Things (IoT) is already many times
larger than the universe of personal computers and smartphones combined, and
devices on it are becoming more powerful and more intelligent every day. With
the advent of 5G, with its higher throughput, lower latency to the cloud, and
higher device densities at the edge, we are likely to see the growth of the
Intelligent Edge accelerate even further.
It probably comes as
no surprise that I’ve been super stoked by each of the big technology platform
waves that I’ve personally experienced, from PCs, to the internet, to
smartphones. The Intelligent Edge is no different. I can’t keep from tinkering
with these technologies, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’m using bits
of the Intelligent Edge platform to build, of all things, an AI-powered siphon
vacuum coffee machine. Instead of screens and buttons, my machine has a camera,
a microphone, a speaker, a small digital brain and a connection to the cloud.
When you focus your attention on it, it notices, and will ask “Would you like a
cup of coffee?” When you respond “Yes,” it guides you through the brewing
process with a short dialogue. And if you like, it will remember you and your
preferences so that you can get your next cup of coffee more quickly.
My coffee machine
probably won’t be commercially viable, and no one should mistake my weekend
tinkering for a product that might one day show up in the Microsoft store. But
one thing that’s become very clear to me as I build this machine is this: The
Intelligent Edge parts of the device are neither especially hard nor expensive.
I’m having a tougher time designing a safe steam boiler than I am with the AI!
The hardware I’m using to run some of the local AI is cheap and readily
available, and the software techniques I’m using to split the AI computations
between the edge and the cloud are relatively straightforward. The Intelligent
Edge and Intelligent Cloud platform that’s already out there for everyone to
use is already quite capable. And even though to some, my coffee machine sounds
like a crazy sci-fi project, making it a reality doesn’t feel as challenging as
writing my first PC program, internet service or mobile app felt in the early
days of those platforms.
What I’m most excited
about with the Intelligent Edge is not what we’ve already done, nor even what I
can imagine might be done with this new platform, but rather, what others will
imagine and create as tens of millions of developers, entrepreneurs and
innovative thinkers start building new products and businesses with thistechnology. Given the magnitude of growth ahead of us, and the fact that the
platform is becoming more powerful every day, the opportunities for creators, entrepreneurs
and businesses are huge. As with any successful platform, the true measure of
the Intelligent Edge’s success will be in the breadth and diversity of the
things built on top of it. There, I have infinite faith in the vision and
ambition of others.
The IoT
Signals Report
IoT devices that are
part of the Intelligent Edge provide businesses with invaluable insights on how
to transform processes for operational efficiencies, such as improving the
maintenance of vital of equipment before a costly shutdown and accelerating
innovation while simultaneously improving safety, for example. As the IoT landscape
continues to expand, we can bank on critical breakthroughs in areas that
benefit humanity, such as healthcare, conservation, sustainability,
accessibility and disaster recovery.
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