Here’s how ‘context awareness’ is going to bring AI to your daily life

If yesterday’s Google I/O keynote was anything to go by, it’s abundantly clear that Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. And how.

Many of the mobile apps and services we use each day already have some level of AI powering their internals, but these days it’s become so seamless that we hardly ever notice. I frankly don’t talk to my phone too often, but when I do--from asking Google Now to ask for information about the new city I’ve landed in, to querying Google Photos to show me all photos of my daughter laughing, it’s fascinating (and sometimes scary) to see these tools in surprisingly accurate action.

Many of these advancements are thanks to rapid developments in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, developments that now enable computing devices to understand our voice, or recognize features in photos. Coupled with cloud-based services and cellular connectivity, all of this ‘intelligence’ is suddenly available to billions of smartphones, from mega-metropolises to humble villages.

The ‘context’ secret sauce

But there’s something even more stunning happening right now. All of these individual streams of evolving AI--from language to image recognition--now have a new magic element in the mix: Context.

So from a time when your phone could simply understand your question of “What movies showing near me?”, AI systems can now take it a step further by pro-actively offering suggestions on movies you’re likely to select based on past queries, or your movie watching history, or even based on whether you have kids (and would likely choose a PG13 movie.)

It’s this revolutionary ability, of making that jump, from understanding human intent to connecting it with a person’s current locational, social (and possibly even financial) context that is going to put AI systems up front and center in our daily lives.

Announced at Google I/O was what appears to be a culmination of their bleeding-edge AI expertise--Google assistant. In the company’s words, “The assistant is an ambient experience that will work seamlessly across devices and contexts.” They key word here being ‘ambient’. The fact that AI is now that it is ubiquitous, that people won’t even realize when it’s in action, is proof of how pervasive a direction it is headed in.

This assistant will power a range of upcoming Google devices and services, from the Google Home voice-activated device that appears to do everything from telling you about your agenda for the day, to sending the best driving directions to your phone to helping you book a table for your evening rendezvous, it looks like game changing stuff. An AI butler of sorts that listens to voice commands, figure out what you want, and assists in the most relevant way possible. It was also shown to work with multiple family members, which makes it particularly enticing (although it’s left to be seen how it actually fares in real life once it becomes available.)

The other app that leverages AI-backed context in a big way is the newly announced Allo, Google’s new messaging tool that can draw from a variety of a user’s contexts (from photos to typing styles to daily agendas) to provide more meaningful, intuitive suggestions during a chat conversation.

We’re clearly on the cusp of something quite fantastic--an age where we’ll be able to seamlessly interact with devices around us using the most natural form of communicating. And these devices will be ‘aware’ of our intentions in relation to what we’ve just done and what we’re about to do. Like a hyper-perceptive Man Friday.

I’m both super excited and terrified.