Monthly Archives: April 2017

With the exception of helping create Expedia,Microsoft has struggled to figure out travel. But it is hoping that artificial intelligence (AI) will be its route finally to leapfrog ahead of Google and Oracle, playing a larger role as middleman.

The example illustrates the companys current approach to the travel sector. The technology giant appears to be more interested in building middleware services that sit between customers and travel companies.

The company has a mixed past record of engaging with consumers on its own. For example, in 2008, it bought an airfare prediction website called Farecast for $115 million and integrated it with its flight search results on its Bing search engine. But that project, along with the MSN Travel mobile app, didnt gain traction with consumers.

The companys focus now is on the new AI and cognitive computing layers that it predicts are going to disrupt travel. By 2018 half of all consumers will interact with cognitive computing, thanks in part to the spread of AI-powered platforms like Amazons Alexa, Apples Siri, and of course Microsofts Cortana.

Microsoft says 145 million people use Cortana at least once a month. But that definition of use is fairly light, and the voice assistant is not yet ingrained in the habits of consumers enough to be a go-to when it comes to, say, travel search.

Stuart Greif, senior executive, Travel/Hospitality, QSR, and Transportation Industry Solutions at Microsoft, has been out on the industry circuit, sharing the companys predictions about where travel technology is headed. Most recently Greif spoke last week at a conference in San Francisco run by venture capital firm Thayer Ventures, where Skift saw his presentation first-hand.

Greif says, Were not looking to build the next great travel platform. Our message to the travel industry is that we want to partner on delivering solutions.

It has targeted several sectors of the industry, but its chances seem better in some than in others.

Mobile apps may be replaced by voice-activated internet, Greif says. We think the app world is going to go away. People can debate that, but why do you need to go in and out of a dozen different travel apps by touch if you run nearly everything on your device by voice command?

Greif argues bots are really the new apps. Lets say you often book hotels for business travel You dont want to have to re-enter your information at every new hotel site or travel agency you use.

Our view is, Im going to have a bot on a system like Skype or Cortana or Alexa or Siri, and Marriott is going to have its own bot, and Marriott is going basically ask me, would you like to check in? And my bots going say, Hey is it okay to provide these details? My bot is going to say, Yes Cortana, please give the information.

Greif says the rise of voice-activated search may upend the direct booking wars between suppliers and third-parties.

When you search for travel queries on a voice-powered platform, who owns that search? asks Greif. Is it Google? Is it Siri, Alexa? Is it Cortana? If artificial intelligence can look across the entire spectrum of everything thats available and choose what to bring it back as relevant, whose is it bringing back? Is it bringing back brand.com? Is it bringing back the OTAs?

Greif conceded he didnt have answers to the tantalizing questions he raised. And while the companys Cortana is often seen as superior technologically to voice assistants from Google, Apple, and Amazon, there is a marketing and commercialization effort that needs to go along with the technological work to enable Microsoft to become a vital part of travel distribution.

As of today, Cortana doesnt known many travel-specific commands.

Whats more, if it chooses to compete in the battle to funnel travelers to booking options, it needs to catch up to rivals by rapidly developing more third-party speakers that support Cortana. Its prevalence via the Windows platform has not, so far, seemed like enough. Otherwise, Google, Apple, and Amazon may outpace it in having physical platforms distributed worldwide, making the questions Greif poses about who owns search moot.

A year ago Microsoft invited travel companies to build bots on its Skype messaging service, to enable the brands to automate many parts of their customer interactions. But brands like Kayak, Expedia, Hipmunk, and Cheap Flights, have ignored it, focusing instead on Facebook Messengers platform.

Its not hard to wonder if a similar fate awaits Cortana unless Microsoft adjusts its ground game in travel.

Microsoft translator can translate speech across nine languages in real time in sixty languages, via text input. But it is still some years off from real-time translation happens via speech.

Speech recognition could, in theory, someday replace airline gate agents and hotel front desk clerks, by capturing and processing requests, reducing error rates. As of today, the speech recognition is possible, but not the ability to send commands into travel company systems, Greif says.

Visual recognition could, in theory, replace airline agents who need to match faces with photo identification for, say, allowing a bag to be checked in for a flight. Already Microsoft says its computers are better at matching faces than humans are, on average.

How long does Greif think it takes for AI to be able to actually have the business logic down thats required for people to do things like search and book an itinerary that might be complicated?

I think the search part is the easy part, he says. Its all the back-end integrations and business decision-making thats gonna take awhile.

As an example, an unnamed large hotel chain recently gave Microsoft links to five different frequently asked questions as part of a project to create a demonstration of how an automated, chat-based customer service interface might work.

It only took Microsofts developers and machines 10 minutes to read the content and come up with an interface that could provide those answers to a wide away of question phrasings.

But Greif says bookings are more complicated. He believes the industry will start putting these solutions into production within about five years time.

Despite Microsofts ambitions with Cortana, it has less experience in the quirks of travel marketing and distribution of its competitor Google.

It seems more likely to gain market share by providing truly business-to-business enterprise services to hotels for operations. Last year Microsoft began demonstrating its concept of the connected hotel that used next-generation guest experience management system iRiS and next-generation hotel operating system that acts as middleware for interpreting data in operations and finance.

Greif says the key issue for hotels is aligning all the systems in a guest room and the back office so that they are all participating in real-time. Right now the systems arent connected to know when water pressure is not working or the TV is not working and so the company cant get ahead of customer complaints with predictive maintenance.

But the companys active demonstrations with travel suppliers suggest that it poses a significant competitive threat to todays largest hospitality tech providers, such as Oracle, and airline providers, such as Amadeus in partnership with Accenture.

Whether Microsoft is a victor or not in the AI race, Greif seems persuasive on his larger point that the arrival of high-powered computing in the cloud, more sophisticated computer algorithms, and the popularization of mobile, internet-connected devices is finally ushering in the AI era.

Platforms that can support AI are truly being popularized now, which means that hotels, airports, and airlines are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. So there is some merit to the buzz.

The platforms are getting better at recognizing spoken queries and at helping to categorize various types of knowledge so as to deliver relevant and intelligent responses within particular areas of focus for a specific task or sets of tasks.

For example, in speech recognition, Microsoft had a historic achievement last year. It achieved parity in speech recognition accuracy with humans. That doesnt mean its computers hear perfectly, but it hears just as well as humans do.

That said, the hype machine is on overdrive, Greif concedes. He notes that a few years ago every startup pitch described itself as a data analytics company, and today every startup claims to be in AI.

In the meantime, Microsoft is claiming it has a new company culture that will enable it to adapt to the new, fast-changing circumstances. Greif says, Its a whole new Microsoft. Its a much more open company now. I get to keep my iPhone, and thats always nice.

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Photo Credit: Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant lets users search the web for answers via voice. A new Harman Karman device is expected to bring Cortana into more homes soon. Microsoft

Link:

Microsoft Bets on Artificial Intelligence to Help It Succeed Again in Travel - Skift

Forbes

The Chinese Tech Firms Pushing Boundaries Of Artificial Intelligence Forbes China is pouring resources into artificial intelligence to nurture world-class companies that can compete with the likes of Google and IBM in building intelligence ... and more »

Original post:

The Chinese Tech Firms Pushing Boundaries Of Artificial Intelligence - Forbes

New technologies are rapidly changing how many of us live our lives. Advances in connectivity are allowing us to access and transmit information faster than ever before. From financial services to healthcare to education, the application of new technologies is simplifying long-existing processes and changing how consumers interact with businesses and service providers.

Although new technologies are undoubtedly changing our commercial interactions, the application and proliferation of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) are having a much broader and positive impact on society. However, much of the focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on how its commercialization will impact the global labor force. Without question, the development and design of systems, machines, and processes that will effectively carry out tasks previously reserved to humans, ranging from decision making to the manufacture of products, will have far reaching implications on our societies and deserves much discussion. Yet, what is equally as impactful and worthy of discussion is the role AI can play in improving the quality of life of everyday individuals.

As many would agree, self-driving cars or automated vehicles are one of the most exciting AI innovations of the 21st century. Powered by advanced AI technology that senses, processes, reacts and adapts to external factors in much the same way a human driver would, self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize human transportation. In terms of safety alone, AI not only predicts and anticipates responses, but can also prevent and mitigate the consequences of bad weather or collisions. Consequently, the future proliferation of automated vehicles is expected to reduce accidents, cut greenhouse emissions, and even increase human productivity.

Now imagine adapting the very same highly advanced AI technology that powers automated vehicles to applications that will improve the lives of the visually impaired. By applying technology that accurately senses its external environment and makes accurate, split second decisions to aid visually impaired individuals you could have a transformational impact on peoples lives.

Recognizing the life-changing implications AI could have for the visually impaired, Israel based OrCam has made it its mission to use AI technology and software to improve the lives of the worlds 285 million blind and visually impaired persons. As the brainchild of Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram, cofounders of pioneering collision avoidance technology company Mobileye, OrCams flagship product, MyEye, uses advanced AI technology to help the visually impaired recognize faces, read words and text, identify currency by its denomination, and even distinguish between products and brands.

I had the opportunity to interview, Gene Gurevich, the Director of Policy and Government Affairs of MobileEye Vision Technologies, Ltd. about OrCams business, artificial intelligence, and why Israel is a global innovation leader. Hope you enjoy!

CG: Tell me about OrCam. What does the company do and how was the idea for the company conceived?

GG: OrCams mission is to improve the lives of those who are blind, visually impaired, or have a reading disability through innovative artificial vision technology. OrCam was founded in 2010 by CTO Professor Amnon Shashua and CEO Ziv Aviram, who are also the cofounders of Mobileye, a global leader in collision avoidance and autonomous vehicle technology.

CG: Millions of people around the world suffer from blindness or are visually impaired. OrCams MyEye technology has the potential to impact many peoples lives. How does it work?

GG: OrCam MyEye is a small wearable device that has the ability to read printed text from any surface, including books, newspapers, restaurant menus, food labels, and street signs, as well digital text on smartphones, computers or television screens. The device also recognizes faces of individuals as well as identifies products and the denominations of currency notes.

The facial recognition functionality identifies faces of individuals who were previously entered in the devices memory. The name of the individual is announced to the OrCam user when that person is in OrCam MyEye's field of vision.

The device consists of two parts: a small camera and audio piece that can be attached to practically any pair of eyeglass frames, and a base unit the size of a smartphone which serves as the processing brain of the device. The user "reads" text by either clicking on OrCam's trigger button or by pointing to the text with his or her finger the only assistive technology device in existence which can be activated by a simple pointing gesture. The information is received through the camera, processed by the base unit and relayed discreetly to the user through personal audio.

CG: What are some examples of the types of activities with which OrCam MyEye can assist blind or visually impaired people?

GG: With OrCam, individuals who have difficulty reading may now read their own mail, any books of their choosing or their morning newspaper whenever and wherever they want. The facial recognition feature allows blind and visually impaired individuals to be more active and comfortable in social settings, enabling them to know when a family member, friend or colleague is nearby, as the device identifies them once they are in sight. For many users of OrCam, the device delivers a level of independence they either lost or never had. Based on user feedback, OrCam's functionality is incredibly empowering.

CG: How has OrCam MyEye been received by users?

GG: The reception has been tremendous. We receive a lot of positive feedback from users on how the device changed their lives. To work for a company that improves peoples lives and to hear their personal stories has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me. Each story is unique, as are the individuals along with their needs and goals. Whether its a mother who is now able to read a book to her young children, a veteran enabled to study or function more productively in a workplace, or an elderly person who wants to read their mail without relying on others these are all powerful and inspiring personal stories.

There are currently thousands of satisfied OrCam users in the U.S. and around the world. The device is available in multiple languages, including English, Hebrew, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

We regularly hear from OrCam users and their stories serve as motivation for our team to work even harder to constantly improve the technology and reach more people whose lives could be improved by the device.

CG: OrCam MyEye is a great example of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help provide solutions to some of the worlds most difficult issues. How do you believe AI will continue to impact our lives?

GG: We are seeing AI advance at a rapid pace and being applied to address some of the worlds biggest challenges. The transportation sector comes to mind as a key area where we are seeing significant and very rapid advancements. The implications of these innovations are likely to be vast.

For instance, in 2015 over 35,000 people died and over 2 million people were injured on U.S. roads as a result of vehicle collisions. Over 90 percent of those vehicle collisions were caused by human error. Collision avoidance technologies, such as those developed by Mobileye, are already saving lives and the shift toward autonomous vehicles has the potential to prevent the majority of vehicle collision deaths and injuries.

In addition to saving lives, there could be other benefits to autonomous vehicles, such as greater mobility to underserved communities, including the handicapped and elderly who have a difficult time getting around, as well as lowering the cost of transportation. Currently, transportation is the second biggest expense for Americans, after housing costs.

The level of AI and other technological innovation being developed in different fields is exciting and is likely to lead to great societal benefits. We at OrCam are proud to be one of the leaders in this wave of technological advancement and are focused on achieving further success in developing solutions that will help people live fuller and more productive lives.

CG: Israel is one of the most innovative countries in the world. As an Israeli company, to what do you attribute the countrys great success in advancing new technologies and building world-class startups and businesses?

GG: Israels history, size, relatively limited natural resources (or at least until very recently), and its security environment, has created a culture of innovators and entrepreneurs. To quote a well-known proverb, necessity is the mother of invention. It definitely appears to be the case with regard to Israel.

As an American, spending time in Israel and speaking with some of the folks behind the innovation boom, it is clear that there is a level of grit and determination that many Israelis have that is not commonly seen elsewhere.

Moreover, Israels universities and particularly the countrys military has provided the necessary education and training for many of the countrys innovators. As military service is mandatory and the defense sector has become increasingly technologically advanced, many young Israelis, upon finishing their military service, have had hands-on technical experience that allows them to thrive in the private sector.

GG: It is rewarding to work for a company that is a leader in innovation with technology that makes a significant difference in peoples lives. We have a very talented and hardworking team at OrCam and we look forward to continuing to develop innovative technologies that will help people live more actively and independently.

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How Artificial Intelligence is Helping the Visually Impaired - Huffington Post