Google I/O and Microsoft Build: The Developer Conferences Giving AI and IoT the Edge
Annual developer conferences Microsoft Build and Google I/O collided in the same week of May this year. Aimed at updating software developers on the latest products, innovations and news, these two annual milestones are a health check on the direction of technology and the pain points and roadblocks to the future.
A great opportunity for software engineers to update their knowledge and make contacts, these developer conferences are also worth following for system administrators and other IT staff.
There was plenty to whet the appetite of all types of tech professional. Both conference keynote speeches – delivered by their respective Indian-born CEOs, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Google’s Sundar Pichai – focused on AI, personal assistants and mobility, while the events featured noteworthy announcements about the cloud and the Internet of Things.
Bring Your Own Device
Microsoft’s pronouncements are eagerly awaited by enterprises as the company provides tools fueling the growth of corporate AI and the cloud. By contrast Google, which focuses on the consumer market, brought announcements about Android and its chatbot Google Assistant. However, as consumerization of technology develops apace, with Bring Your Own Device strategies spreading across the business world, Google is increasingly reaching into the business environment.
At Microsoft Build in Seattle, the company announced Your Phone, a new app that enables Android and Apple phones to sync with the Windows 10 operating system. The app ends the need for users to check their phones while working on a computer, enabling them to conduct mobile tasks such as texting, checking photos and mobile notifications from the computer screen. The company also demonstrated a tie-up between its Cortana personal assistant and Amazon’s Alexa assistant, allowing users to access both at the same time.
Microsoft also extended its ‘intelligent edge’ offering with new technology for developers. Edge computing is seen as a great potential enabler for the Internet of Things, allowing networks of connected devices to analyze data close to the source rather than requiring it to be sent to a data centre – speeding up the process, reducing latency and improving security.
At Build 2017, Microsoft announced the launch of the Azure IoT Edge platform for intelligent edge, allowing devices to run cloud services at the edge, and at this year’s conference, the company announced it would open-source its Azure IoT Edge runtime, allowing developers to modify, debug and control applications. By bringing developers on board, this contribution to intelligent edge will help to expand the potential of the IoT.
Passing the Turing Test
Over at Mountain View, Google I/O focused on developments in AI. Pichai demonstrated a feature called Duplex in which Google Assistant can make phone calls to businesses on behalf of the account-holder to make appointments such as restaurant reservations or hairdresser bookings.
The chatbot also speaks in such natural tones that the listener cannot tell it is a robot, using upspeak – the speech tic that makes statements sound like questions – and interjecting hesitation and filler words into the conversation. The AI conversation seems to pass the Turing Test as being indistinguishable from that of a human, but has aroused a storm in the media, where experts have described its performance as “creepy” and “horrifying”.
Gmail has been enabled to autocomplete entire e-mails with a new product called SmartCompose. Meanwhile, Google is using DeepMind AI technology to improve battery performance on phones by using neural networks to predict which apps are likely to be used and focusing battery power on them, and to adapt screen brightness to the way people change it in different situations. Google has also announced a beta trial of the Android P operating system, with a range of features such as ‘actions’ that offer shortcuts for common activities such as posting photos to Instagram.
New OS for Internet of Things
An announcement made just as Google I/O was getting underway is the imminent launch of Android Things 1.0, an operating system for Internet of Things devices in a rebranding of the previous system known as Brillo. The system will enable developers with Android knowledge to build internet connectivity and monitoring into devices from locks and printers to thermostats and household appliances.
Google won the battle of the conferences by getting more wow from its personal assistant ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’, and sounding like a real human, but Microsoft may have done more to win the hearts – and wallets – of app developers. It announced that app makers (except for Xbox) will keep 95% of revenue from apps sold on the Microsoft Windows Store, up from 70% previously and an improvement on the 70% to 85% offered by Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
But together the conferences shone a light on further progress in AI and IoT as the tech giants attempt to make these services as common and unremarkable as running water or switching on an electric light.
