Intel Experience Day 2019 Recap
The Intel Experience Day has come and gone. Key members of the Intel team from around the world had gathered this past Tuesday to speak on the future and the innovations that will help lead the planet into a new era of streamlined technology. Above all else, what was driven home was the fact that we have entered a new era in which data collection is becoming the real currency of the world. Hideo Kojima was right all those years ago – information is now worth more than silver and gold.
Kicking things off for the event was speaker Steve Brown, otherwise known as the “Bald Futurist.” Steve spoke on specific technologies that we can look to that will soon shape every single business. When 5G becomes commonplace, we can expect to see improved latency, bandwidth, and above all else, being able to receive a cellphone signal from anywhere on the planet. Blockchain, the underlying tech for Bitcoin, will be used to record information on where products are coming from, thus being able to prove to consumers exactly where said product was made. This will be massive in the 2020s.
The Future is Now
Also, becoming more woven into our society in the next decade will be artificial intelligence. A.I. will completely change the way we interact with businesses, by giving computers eyes and ears for the first time – thus, A.I. will begin to understand human language. Another mind-blowing application we saw was the ability for these A.I. machines to hear diseases. In the future, it’s proposed that A.I. will pick up biomarkers from patients, meaning they’ll be able to filter and detect medical conditions like diabetes or cancer.
Augmented reality and autonomous machines were the other two technologies Steve talked about, and he was excited for both. Augmented reality will eventually become more significant than V.R. because with virtual reality, once you put a headset on and pick up your controller, you’re shut off from the real world. Augmented reality is going to break this wall down, by blending augmented objects into our real spaces. This will change the way people work, as 80% of the current workforce uses their hands day-to-day. A.R. is promising to change the way we handle our minute-to-minute schedules.
Finally, autonomous machines – robots, drones, self-driving vehicles – all will be able to be operated without the need for any human interaction. A term Steve used – which for anyone that’s seen iRobot may find disturbing – was that robots would be able to escape the cages they’ve been in. He made sure to make a note of the fact that this will all be done safely, of course, but the fantasy of iRobot isn’t starting to feel like such a fantasy anymore. Undoubtedly, soon enough, we’ll be using this technology as a partner, working side by side with it.
Data Overload
Scott Overson, General Manager of Intel’s Enterprise and Government Data Centre Sales, was next to speak, and he wanted to bring everyone’s attention to the importance of data moving forward. He mentioned the fact that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the past two years. Only 2% of this data is used, but this is now rapidly changing. More and more useful data is being created every day at an exponential rate, and Intel plans to optimize this. This “digital transformation” will be profound, impacting nearly everyone. 60% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to be digitized by 2022. Scott believes this will instantly move almost 2 billion people to the middle class, and by 2030 he expects this number to be between 3.4 and 5.5 billion.
All of this leads back to precisely what Intel is investing in – being the leading end-to-end platform provider for the “new data world.” This means being at the forefront of advancements to the power of platforms and the power of software, which they hope to achieve by combining Intel hardware and software to accelerate A.I. workloads for data-intensive tasks. Moving forward, Intel isn’t just building chips, but building a thoughtful architecture to deliver solutions that consumers want.
Finally, Intel’s Country Manager and Director of Americas Territory Enterprise + Government Teams, Denis Gaudreault, took the stage. He wanted to speak about an upcoming project called “Athena.” Athena is set to be an innovation program that promises to increase performance, battery, connection, graphics, form factor, and A.I. Intel recognizes that by 2021, 75% of all software will use A.I., and Athena is Intel diving headfirst into the deep end.
A short video was played for us, demonstrating the possibilities of Athena. Things like gaming, uploading, and computer projects will all be brought together and streamlined into one slick package. Intel’s aim here is to make the lives of its users more comfortable than ever before, and they’re starting with the I9-9900KS Core Processor (which you can find my preview of on COGconnected). The I9-9900KS is the fastest processor the world has ever seen, and it’s only the beginning of the future with Intel.
It’s easy to see why you should be excited for what’s to come. In the 2020s, the average consumer will start to see more and more technology that we once thought would never be anything more than science fiction. Things are moving faster than ever before, and we’re on the precipice of something truly life-changing. The age of data is upon us, and Intel is here to take our hand and lead us into it.