The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has had a seismic impact on virtually every segment of society. From finance to healthcare and manufacturing to entertainment, there isn’t a field that hasn’t benefited. And now, through fields such as Machine Learning (ML), Neural Networks, and Natural language Processing (NLP), AI is on the cusp of changing the way social is experienced. Having said that, as we begin a new decade, a question we have been asking and striving to solve is why are digital social experiences still stuck in the last decade?
It’s now clearer than ever that as the world evolves at a dynamic pace, social products must keep up. One parameter here serves as perhaps one of the strongest catalysts – the advent of AI. AI has made things possible today that weren’t even a few years ago, from being pushed to devices to enabling multiple new use cases. Here’s my take on some key AI trends that will change the way social is experienced.
Hyper-personalization and hyper-localization
People have always grouped themselves based on the mutual enjoyment of certain activities and hobbies. Look hard enough and you’ll find a community centered around just about anything. Specific games or sports, music genres, automobiles, travel – the list is endless. As technology advances, we find a similar dynamic unfolding online. Online communities across social media have now become prevalent. For proof, you need to look no further than your own
social media accounts, where you’ll find that you’ve subscribed to a wide selection of communities catering to your tastes and interests.
AI algorithms have an enormous role to play in driving these vertical communities. By transforming their intrinsic cultural aspects into online conversations and parsing specific talking points and touchstones, these algorithms can drive a hyper-personalized and hyper-localized experience for each user. The end result is the formation of new networks and contacts, united through a shared bond.
Multilingualism
India is famed for its linguistic diversity, with hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects creating a patchwork unrivaled by any other country in the world. Unfortunately, this variety of languages often comes at the cost of mutual intelligibility. This problem is especially apparent on social platforms, the vast majority of which are programmed with a limited selection of languages. Catering primarily to a handful of the most widely spoken languages, speakers of regional and localized tongues are often forced to communicate in a language that is not their own.
AI has tackled this problem through the introduction of new modes of communication. Through innovations such as sticker and graphic-based chat platforms that leverage AI-driven UX platforms, people from different cultural backgrounds and language groupings can freely communicate and form connections that would be impossible on traditional messaging services.
Interpreting non-textual data
Current communication models have trained us to believe that text is the only non-verbal mode of communication available to us. Short of a phone call or video chat, the only other options are SMS, emails, and texting. State-of-the-art machine learning algorithms have proven this to be a false assumption. Through fields such as natural language processing, computer vision, and speech processing, AI has begun to replicate the complexity of human communication systems. It is enabling computers to identify and process objects in images and videos in the same way that humans do. These advances have allowed the creation of multimedia modes of communication, which combine voice, video, and text in bandwidth and compute-efficient manner. By expanding the means in which people can express their feelings and emotions, AI has allowed static conversations to achieve new levels of texture and depth.
The evolution of AI has advanced at an exponential pace and taken the field of social connectivity to previously unimaginable heights. By delivering multiple social experiences directly derived from user inputs, it has succeeded in amplifying individual identities while simultaneously strengthening group dynamics. As we enter a new phase of communication, we can only imagine where it will take us next.
This article is written by Dr. Ankur Narang, VP, AI & Data Technology, Hike
