People of a certain age fondly recall cartoons from the 1950s and 1960s that featured the home of tomorrow and all of the technologies that would simplify life, from robots serving our every need to hovering automobiles. Many of the predictions were laughingly far off the mark. But perhaps that future vision (sans the hover car) is finally within reach.
Dennis Curry, Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta hosted a webinar titled The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Workplace on May 16. Presented by Dennis Curry, executive director and chief technology officer of Konica Minolta, the hour-long program detailed the challenges entailed in implementing AI, the quest to enable efficiencies and collaboration in a more personalized approach, as well as present and future AI-based offerings Konica Minolta is bringing to market as part of its Workplace of the Future vision.
“In the previous decade, IT and services/technology in the workplace were more generalized, being driven by cost efficiency,” Curry said at the onset. “That’s changing quickly. Now, personalization is more important. It’s geared toward collaboration and how we work with others.”
Curry pointed out the two levels of AI in the workplace: one delivered by large IT providers that uses large data centers for a statistically-enabled type of AI, the other being more personalized. R&D teams for Konica Minolta and other development teams are concentrating on a middle ground, where information and data can be connected in meaningful ways.
Overcoming the complexity of implementing AI in a digital environment is a tall task, Curry noted, with a new approach needed to overcome the complexities. “We have infrastructures and platforms that exist already, that are borne of previous problems that we have created to solve the things we needed to solve in the past. And they’re limited by the way they’re structurally built. In the future, we want AI to be much more multifunctional, where it can mean one thing to one person and something different to someone else. We need a different type of infrastructure and architecture to do that. Generally, the AI industry is working toward that.”
The relationship between infrastructure and the cloud will continue to change and transform itself as Internet of Things (IoT) sensory devices in the workplace and home become more prevalent, bolstered by telecommunications companies establishing lines to new sensors and devices—ultimately providing the workplace with additional value.
“What was [once] the drive to put everything centrally on the cloud, companies and people will want to leverage the fact that it’s now a distributive environment,” Curry observed. “We’re going to see the high scowled, simpler logic presented by the cloud become more edge-like and enable more and more distributed computing. AI will also move to the middle ground—big data, big systems, mobile devices—and then the evolved environment will provide a middle ground where people can collaborate and work together.”
Some of the medium to long term observations made by Curry and his research team:
- AI will move from cloud platforms to the distributed cortex.
- AI will move to the middle ground, enabling combined intellect and team working.
- Augmented intelligence will become the main driver.
- AI/IoT decision making and collaboration will drive interoperability.
- We will move to adaptable and inference-based information.
Equally as exciting is the prospect of AI supporting the workplace need to do things more intelligently. While Curry doesn’t envision AI being used to outpace humans or represent different types of intelligence, he sees AI being used to automate and augment the user’s intelligence.
On the subject of data reuse and information assets and the quest to gain more value from data, Curry predicted we will have learning systems that will interpret data in a way to help make better decisions. “This ability for intelligent systems to be able to find information and refocus it or realign it to a particular need will become much more progressively available in the marketplace,” he said.
On the subject of distributive cloud capabilities, Curry made the following observations:
- Cloud computing is changing due to all IoT sensors and devices out on the edge.
- Some call it a fog—a cloud that is closer to you and comprises edge computing devices that are physically closer to you.
- It will become a pervasive layer of connectivity, a cortex-like structure where edge devices and the cloud will become interchangeable according to user’s needs.
In terms of how this all translates into Konica Minolta’s Workplace of the Future vision, the company has introduced its Workplace Hub, a platform the company has been cultivating during the past few years to drive more progressive and value-oriented AI, structured on the enablement of people, places and devices. Some of the key elements of the Workplace Hub include:
- It offers all-in-one or hybrid IT.
- Provides an IT-enabled information hub for effective working.
- It unifies all of a user’s existing technologies and makes them work together intuitively.
- It integrates hardware, software and services into a multi-vendor, one-stop solution.
- It removes legacy restrictions.
- The platform is future-proof, so it grows as you need it to.
- It is safe and secure, using the latest unified threat management technology.
- The hub bridges onsite and cloud technology.
You can check out some of the more granular details of the Workplace Hub by visiting Konica Minolta’s website. Curry noted that future extensions of the platform are already well in progress and will address various elements including a smart room booking system to manage your physical environment via predictive availability. Other touch points are predictive maintenance, a privacy center, collaboration suite, and cognitive meetings that allow users to find the people they need in real time. Future products will help enable intelligent decision making, intelligent collaboration, cognitive meeting execution, intelligent planning and searching, intuitive office management.
Clearly, the nuts and bolts (or distributive cloud principles) cannot be digested in a single sitting, and it behooves dealers to perform a deep drill down to interpret the usefulness, as well as the potential, of an AI-enabling platform such as Workplace Hub for their customer’s environment. It seems obvious that Konica Minolta is one of the main players in the foreground of this technology, but as the benefits and long-term potential of such an enabling platform come into focus, it becomes apparent that the future of information enabling is upon us.
