We have seen the levels of computing power in mobile phones rise hugely over the last decade. However there are many areas where artificial intelligence coupled with high speed internet connectivity and newly emerging wearable technologies could be utilised by smartphone apps.
The rate of evolution of computers from the giant cumbersome machines of the last century to today’s precision electronics would suggest that not far in to the future our current smartphones will soon look very limited.
Possible AI uses include computer vision, image processing and analysis, natural language processing and real time translation, pattern recognition, knowledge representation and social intelligence.
This has numerous practical applications. A navigation app could use computer vision capabilities to offer a much more reliable method of navigating around an unfamiliar environment, and similarly could be used for an app in a self driving car, detecting traffic and other hazards at the same time. Travelling to destinations where the language isn’t understood would be simplified by a real time language translation app which would take audio and video input from a camera or microphone and output it on a HUD or to earphones with translation in the desired language. And for areas like pattern recognition, upon sensing entering a supermarket, a location aware app could make product suggestions in real time based upon previous purchases, value items and also physical location in the store and proximity to the products.
It seems that the next most obvious area in mobile technology with huge potential for rapid advances is artificial intelligence.