Amazon, LG Partner on Smart Homes. Have You Seen the Alexa Refrigerator Yet?

Prime Day 2017

It seems that partnerships between tech companies and appliance makers are increasingly becoming more commonplace. Amazon has tied up with South Korean appliances giant LG Electronics to put Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa on its refrigerators.

The companies are interested in using Alexa’s capabilities – specifically, voice recognition – to make LG’s appliance line really smart. LG’s own smart technology, Smart ThinQ Hub, will be integrated with Alexa so future appliances can actually be controlled by voice.

Alexa’s voice-recognition capability is already well-known to users of Amazon’s Echo products, the Tap and its smaller cousin the Dot. When Echo was first released people thought it was merely another bluetooth speaker on the market. However, buyers soon realized the power of voice and Alexa was soon catapulted into fame.

The technology behind Alexa is based on artificial intelligence components such as natural language processing and machine learning. Similar to Apple’s Siri, Alexa can not only pull up data from Google and other search engines, but also plays music from your Spotify, Pandora or even iTunes account, once synced.

LG’s plans for Alexa go beyond managing schedules, answering trivia questions, telling you jokes or adding items to your shopping list. The integration with Smart ThinQ Hub will allow you to control various appliances with your voice.

The best part about Alexa is that it is always on. Just plug it in and forget about it, and when you need assistance, just say the “wake up” words that you can preset to your preference. Something as simple as “Hey, Alexa” will do. And because Alexa gets its updates from the cloud, it’s constantly learning your preferences so its responses get quicker over time.

Amazon teamed up earlier this year with Samsung to launch an experimental refrigerator with Alexa on-board. Here’s the article we did on that:

First Amazon, Now Microsoft to Launch Artificial Intelligence Refrigerators

If these integrated products are successful in the market, it’s very likely that Amazon and LG will independently create new partnerships with other companies to keep extending the commercial applications of artificial intelligence.

Why Does Artificial Intelligence Need to Go Commercial?

Artificial intelligence is expensive whichever way you look at it. From a research and development viewpoint, it requires highly skilled and trained manpower and material resources – none of which is cheap. Even before a product hits the market there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on just getting it right. And once it’s in the market there’s the cost of marketing, distribution, sales and service.

So rather than take the slow route and depend on government-funded research, big tech companies are putting their own money into developing practical applications for artificial intelligence. But it’s not just the tech biggies in this space. Dozens of startups are also getting into the AI fray with a slew of innovative products and services.

Obviously, larger companies have a duty to their shareholders to show a return on their investment, which is why it’s important that they stay on the leading edge of this age-old technology. I say age-old because artificial intelligence was dreamt of as far back as ancient Greece, when stories of Hephaestus crafting powerful – and intelligent – weapons and smart assistants for the Gods became popular.

Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Our Lives

In more recent times, the advent of computing machines in the 1940s gave rise to the field of cybernetics, which many consider to be the precursor to neural networks, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing and all the other components that make up what we call artificial intelligence today.

The long-term implications of artificial intelligence around our homes is tremendous. Stanford University’s One Hundred Year Study, for example, outlines what life with AI will be like in the year 2030. In every area from transportation to manufacturing to smart homes to medicine to education to entertainment, AI has made an ingress. And it’s not going to stop until our world is filled with automatons.

Virtual assistants, smart cars, smart homes, self-driving vehicles, delivery drones, e-teachers, digital financial advisors, super-efficient surgical assistants and legal assistants and all of these innovations will soon create a society that is heavily dependent on automated technology.

From the Information Age, we are gradually making a shift to the Age of AI, and companies like Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Google, Facebook, Samsung, LG, Tesla and others are at the forefront of that movement. These companies will grow larger than ever over the next 20 years as long as they keep adding bits and pieces of AI into our lives.

And that’s why the commercial aspect of artificial intelligence is critical to its success. As long as there’s money to be made, it will keep growing. And as it grows, it will change our lives for the better as much as disrupt it for the worse. Yes, jobs will be lost because of AI, but more jobs will be created in different areas. Yes, AI products may drain our credit, but they also afford us the opportunity to be more productive and do more and ultimately earn more. Yes, they might make us mentally lazier than ever, but they also will stimulate our minds in different ways and make us more creative.

We need to prepare ourselves for this onslaught of AI products. By becoming “early adopters” of such technologies and supporting this shift into the Age of AI, we will be better prepared for the inevitable upheaval it will bring with it.

If we don’t, we run the very real risk of becoming obsolete – like typewriters in a world of keyboards.

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