By Kevin Cha
AI is going to unleash a whole new level of productivity and augment our lives in many ways. We can count on technological innovation to continue at an even more rapid pace than what we’ve seen with previous generations. AI will become like electricity – invisible and augmenting almost every part of our lives. Thirty years from now we’ll wonder how we ever got along without our digital assistants, just as we can’t imagine life today without checking our smartphones a dozen times every hour.
Technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace and it’s often hard for the consumer to keep up, but more importantly, it affords businesses the possibility to drive growth that is innovative, sustainable and responsible. For the first time in the history of humankind, artificial intelligence is driving advancement.
This is incredible progress where the pace of technology change is moving even faster. The entire planet of people and things is becoming connected. Five billion people have access to a mobile device, and more than 3 billion of the world’s citizens can instantly connect with almost anyone around the world via the internet. In the next few years, 50 billion things – everything from light bulbs and refrigerators to roads and clothing – will be connected to the internet, according to updates from the World Economic Report.
According to the company, more than half the population in Africa are using mobile services, yet only a quarter are accessing the internet via mobile. It cited research from the GSM Association (GSMA) showing that over 500 million people in Africa are within signal range of mobile data towers, but are held back from internet access due to the high cost of smartphones.
“We are excited to work with PayJoy to extend our value-added service to include smartphone payment plans,” said Jacqueline ColeCourtney, Allied Mobile Group CEO.
“Allied Mobile has operations across the fast-growing Sub-Sahara telecommunications market and is ideally positioned to capture growing needs of consumers. Making smartphones more affordable through manageable payment plans is one such need,” she said.
Doug Ricket, Chief Executive Officer of PayJoy, said, “We look forward to bringing PayJoy’s next-generation solution to Africa, and more importantly connecting the next billion. We feel Allied Mobile is a fantastic partner considering their expertise as a value-adding independent specialist distributor in mobile devices”.
The mobile AI revolution is beginning to open up new and exciting possibilities for applications. This revolution promises to reshape things in the next few years. It will also be a revolution very different from what we have known so far, because it is no longer just a question of increasing the processing power of smartphones, but of a real concept change that involves giving our phones the ability to learn and decide for themselves the best way to function.
AI has been present in mobile phones for a while now. In the previous generation of phones, AI was cloud-based and required an internet connection to be accessed. So now what is different about AI on mobile devices is that the new generation of smartphones will combine the cloud-based AI to built-in AI engines on the hardware.
This year’s main smartphone launches promote artificial intelligence as a life-changing feature and LG has long recognised the potential of AI and has been working on harnessing its endless possibilities. With LG’s strategy placing AI at the core of our innovation has resulted in AI enabled products that will offer incredible user experiences designed to enhance lifestyles.
From what experts have promised, it seems like the difference of having a smartphone to an ‘artificially intelligent’ phone is like the difference of having a pet to a guide dog. While a pet will obey your commands, a guide dog will not only respond to your orders but lead the way and make decisions to what it believes is best for you. In a device like a smartphone, AI promises a better integration of the system with hardware such as cameras, microphones and batteries. This leads the way for a number of unique features and improvements.
In the last 20 years, the mobile ecosystem has rapidly evolved, and we are now in a world in which consumer behaviour shifts and tech infrastructure grows even more capable in a period of mere months. Businesses may find it tempting to be driven by the changes in the world, but we believe it’s more important to keep an eye on the big future picture, without getting caught up and swept away by gimmicks and trends. After all, reactionary approach is neither sustainable nor innovative.
Kevin Cha is President, LG Electronics MEA