Once again, Google I/O is the birthplace of today’s most exciting innovation: Gemini Nano. This tiny artificial intelligence prodigy is set to bring biologically-inspired computing to the masses. Today we examine Google’s latest AI marvel, and how it’s changing the way we browse the web, as well as how it will protect you from malicious and dangerous websites with the upcoming features coming to Chrome. This is Google’s future of AI.
It is certainly a breath of fresh air at a time when AI is so often dependent on powerful servers and data centres. The main advantage of running some kinds of AI on-device is that it is faster, allowing for better response time in, say, an autonomous vehicle or a hearing aid. And of course better response times can mean more privacy. At Google I/O I lost count of how many times I was told that certain features required an internet connection ‘for the best experience’ – which, translated, seems to mean that the device cannot run miraculously fast all by itself. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a good internet connection. Gemini Nano isn’t Google’s first attempt at on-device AI. Just a few months earlier, in January 2022, Google launched Presada, an AI model for translating sign language to speech, where all the processing takes place on-device, and so is faster and privacy-friendly (though I was unable to see a surfeit of sign language in the rooms at I/O). At one session, where computer-generated synthetic voices read out the soundwaves from artworks, an Autism Spectrum contributor asked if it would be possible to make the system generate an upper nasal voice that’s more familiar to autistic people, and she was let down: sorry, Google said, not enough computing power. Yet, as soon as a new element of technology could benefit from on-device AI, the benefits were apparent. Here’s one example of that raised at Google I/O: Gemini Nano’s latest application is helping people who are blind or have low vision understand more about the context of images – which, to me, is Google showing us that using technology is an act of social generosity, aiming to make it available to us all.
Another eye-catching newsfeed demonstrates how Gemini Nano is helping us deal with incoming calls, in particular spam calls. As scammers become more persistent in making phone calls, Google’s AI model can now flag certain calls and analyse them in real time with the intent of blocking dubious sources of calls and therefore shielding users from fraud. In this case, the model’s on-device nature means that nobody but the user ever gets access to sensitive information contained in the audio data. And this is the point – we can trust our devices to keep information private in the completely digitalised world we are now facing, and this is quite a promise from the IT giants.
Google’s mission to AI up your daily Google browsing just got a hell of a boost with the Google insertion of Gemini Nano into your Chrome browser with version 126, set to launch sometime in 2023. Now, imagine that web form asks you to type in something like a shopping list and, lo and behold, you had planned to ‘buy carrots tonight…’. A headline ‘Winter leads to inevitable carrot shortage…’ pops up and you think to yourself: ‘Whoah there, hold on a minute. Why would I possibly want to write that?’ Your answer is: I didn’t. My AI chat assistants did! And guess what? It is completely natural-sounding. However, can AI engage in a more normal human discourse with us? We intuitively believe it cannot. In text-to-speech (TTS), it may sound fine overall, but sometimes it clearly sputters like it’s trying to chew through its written source material or read it without completely understanding what the words mean. For instance, listen to the TTS AI version of my recent conversation while deeply delving into why ‘The Matrix’ (1999) programme is so compelling, despite its occasionally patchy screen story. While I am the author of the script, I did not actually write or speak the words ‘…coding… trance… keep you in a trance… virtual reality…’. The above AI text-to-speech version sounds like I am succumbing to a thousand incoherent sentences that I am unable to control – and that’s just what it feels like, apparently.
And as we increasingly start to live and work in the AI-powered world of tomorrow, the creation of Chrome with Gemini Nano inside signals Google’s desire to build a browser that’s not just a search portal to the Internet but a smart, active tool that adapts itself to you. With chatbots and automated content creation among some of its possible future features, Chrome is about to become even more essential.
As such technologies as Gemini Nano become part of everyday apps, we’ll need to attend to questions of privacy and data security, especially as they become part of our devices. One thing I like about the example of Google, mentioned at the start of this article, is that it points to an industry trend of keeping user data on the device rather than having it sent to the cloud. As more of our devices become more deeply integrated with AI, keeping these technologies respectful of users’ privacy will be increasingly important.
And as we look at the diverse range of ways that the company is using AI to improve our lives online, we see that Google is not just following the technology trends – it is setting them. Helping blind people shop more easily is just one of many AI-driven advances in digital living, from extending protection to vulnerable seniors against home-improvement scams to improving our googling.
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Whatever you do, if you want the best price, make sure your device is in good working order, reset it to factory defaults and send it with the original accessories (provided you still have them).
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