Artificial Intelligence That Makes Your Smartphone Smarter

By: Rachel Metz

Narrated by: Todd Mundt

Despite their ubiquity, smartphones are still not very helpful at getting you information based on what you're already doing. For instance, if you get an e-mail from a friend asking if you want to check out a new restaurant in town, you have to leave the app behind and go conduct a Web search to learn more. An early stage startup called Weave.ai is trying to make this less of a chore by building technology that brings up information that takes into consideration what you're already doing on your handset. The London-based company has built a demo of its technology that gives a sense of what it's building by analyzing the content of tweets and bringing up related information in other apps on the phone (although since it's still its own separate app, it's not yet integrated within other apps for easy access).©Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A Look Down Memory Lane

This 2015 article was a look down memory lane from my 2019 viewpoint. It's interesting what they envisioned, what they wanted, and what we have today. In 2015 they wanted the app to do contextual searches and to anticipate what you might want. For example, you may search for a movie title, and by the way would you like to purchase one? Yelp, other apps, and especially Google Assistant can do that for us to day.

I like looking at what was dreamed and what we have today. A humorous look can be seen in Dick Tracy cartoons in the 1930's. Tracy had his phone watch and today we have wearables like Apple Watch. Although this article s out-dated, it shows us how what was envisioned became reality.