A Galaxy of AI opportunities
Looking back at the 1980s, one of the hot items that everyone seemed to want was the Filofax. This glorified leather diary was regarded as the must-have accessory for busy people, or those who wanted to look like they were busy people.
Thanks to the miniaturisation of electronics, it wasn’t long before the tech sector figured out a way to sell these people a digital version. The tech-savvy busy people soon moved from a paper-based organiser to the Palm Pilot and Psion Organiser.
By the early 2000s, when mobile phones started becoming smarter. Nokia had the Communicator, a clam-shell phone with a qwerty keyboard; Ericsson offered a similar device, the R380, but it was Blackberry taht captured people’s imagnation. Along with electronic organiser features, given the somewhat basic level of mobile internet connectivity available at the time (2G and GPRS), Blackberry was considered a major breakthrough, enabling people to send and receive email securely from anywhere.
Of course, the introduction of the iPhone launched the smartphone era for the masses, and until now, these devices have simply been improved iteratively. One could argue that the introduction of a built-in camera effectively gave people a camera in their pocket and while people were happy to use Apple FaceTime, video calls only really took off as a result of Covid-19, and the need for everyone to stay in touch when they were not allowed to meet physically.
Yet in spite of its impact, historians may well look back at the smartphone camera as a smaller step compared to what is about to take place: on-device artificial intelligence (AI) on an internet connected handheld device that you carry everywhere.
AI in your hands
The latest Samsung Galaxy device, the S25, has a neural processor that supports multimodal generative AI, which means it can process data in different formats and draw inference from all this information. “We are redefining the user experience by integrating cutting-edge on-device AI and connectivity features that will shape the future of mobile technology,” said O H Kwon, senior vice president and president, Qualcomm APAC (Asia Pacific).
Samsung’s objective is to encourage app developers to support its Galaxy AI functionality. And it is not alone. Despite setbacks Apple is clearly ramping up AI integration. If they succeed, the smartphone may well evolve into a true personal digital assistant. Powered by AI and having unfettered access to all your personal data is both empowering and quite scary.
There are enumerable use cases for an AI digital assistant that you keep on your person. But to go beyond the not-so-intelligent digital assistants of the 1990s and early 2000s, we will need to be comfortable providing it with access to all our personal and on-device business data.