Yeah – who knew this was a technology blog post. But seriously I come from a family of car karaoke experts. Even my 2 year old daughter belts out Foo-fighters “All my life” and Johhny Clegg’s “Impi” with full enthusiam, not knowing what half the lyrics are.
I take much amusement as well from lying to wife about what the lyrics of a song are, and then listening to her belting them out.
So what does this have to do with technology. Well, we at GTconsult are really getting into digital transformation, as ardent Microsoft supporters we are loving their new approach to artificial intelligence, machine learning and the AI platforms they are building to harness these new powers. I use Cortana for some many things now, from monitoring traffic and telling me when to leave for my next meeting, to giving me directions to get there. Allowing me to set reminders in the meeting to perform tasks I have promised, reminding me about them. Reminding me to go home and spent time with my kids, letting me know ahead of time what clothes I need to pack, any pressing news. Cortana integrates to my Office 365 account and monitors my life. She tracks my comings and going and learns from my daily activities, so every time I interact with her, she gets to know me better.
The sheer fact that she knows my voice and only reacts to it when I say “Hey Cortana” on my computer blows me away. Its also great that when Brad tries to mess with her, she ignores him!
So back to karaoke… I saw the coolest cortana action that I had not seen before. I happened to be playing some Youtube 70 / 80’s classics as one is prone to do on a Sunday at work, when suddenly I noticed in the top corner of my browser – “Want the lyrics?”, despite knowing all 5 lines of Europes “The Final Countdown” I figured lets check it, boom opened up with the lyrics. Now this would be a great feature on Youtube, however it wasnt, Cortana had figured that I was playing music videos on Youtube and offered me the option to grab the lyrics.
The sheer power / potential of this type of application blows my mind. Imagine creating documentation and AI tracks what you are writing and offering you content about that subject to cut and paste into your documentation. That is a reality, “we been having it”, Office tool is already providing us with that sort of implementation of AI.
Life as you know it changing rapidly, and digital transformation will leave you behind and obsolete if you aren’t planning for it. Contact GTconsult to see how we can assist you with Digital Transformation in your organisation.