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Cisco AI: What's Being Done Today
My fellow attendee, UC analyst and Cisco watcher Zeus Kerravala, told me this one-day Cisco AI gathering was one of the most visionary UC events he has attended. "What Cisco showed is how machine learning can be used to change the dynamics of a meeting to make everyone significantly more productive."
So how will AI changing the dynamics of meetings? This first version is a voice assistant that automates call initiation for ad hoc or scheduled meetings and call control tasks, and identifies people in a collaborating session. A lot goes on behind the scenes to accomplish these items.
For example, Cisco has enhanced its video codec with AI to improve speaker framing in video conferences. The system will recognize that only two people are in a room, and frame the view on them, eliminating empty space. Should a third person enter the room, the system would widen the view to add in that participant. The codec learns framing requirements throughout the meeting, making adjustments more quickly and accurately as the meeting progresses.
In addition, in-room Spark video systems can detect and suppress background noise, so the days of having meetings interrupted by a colleague's barking dog are long gone. In fact, Rosenberg quipped, Cisco even has data and sound heat maps for 100 different breeds of dogs -- so you can rest assured that whether you have a Pomeranian or a Labrador, Spark will suppress your dog's barking.
To identify meeting participants, Cisco uses facial vectors that map the distances between nose, eyes, and chin to create an array unique to each individual. So as you can see in the picture below, when attendees lined up to see the demo, the system recognized who we were and added name badges below our images. (That's me taking the picture on the left.)
"Given how long we have been conducting meetings, it's fair to say that we have yet to perfect the art of running them efficiently because there are too many tasks filled with human latency," Kerravala said. "By embedding machine learning into the meetings, Cisco is having machines take care of the onerous tasks we aren't good at and also improve the quality of meetings."
Cisco AI: What's Coming
Beyond what AI can do for meetings for today, Cisco showcased some of the innovation coming out of the Emerge Lab, which works on figuring out the future of AI in teamwork and collaboration. One of the demos the Emerge team showed was a beta product, called TeamTV, that essentially turns Spark team spaces into live, always-on TV channels.
TeamTV is aimed at capitalizing on the informal conversations that help build trust and foster creativity -- the "unmeeting," in Emerge Lab parlance. As you might guess, AI is woven into this product in a number of ways. The Spark room system recognizes gestures to bring remote team members into the space. For example, a user can wave at the system to get its attention and invoke an action, such as muting or blurring a team member's video image. And it uses facial recognition to introduce team members to one another. But one of the cooler experimental features is an always-listening AI-enabled virtual assistant that can proactively contribute to conversations. For example, if a team is talking about a particular company, the system will pull up that company's profile and stock price on the screen. This is just another way that Cisco is turning AI into an active meeting participant.
The Emerge team also showcased Cisco Spark in VR, which is now available in the Oculus store. The AI assistant within Cisco Spark in VR can do things like build a customized virtual meeting space and populate the room with 3D images. But it can also learn and bring in knowledge and resources. In a demo, the team prompted the Spark Assistant to learn about jet engines and after a quick scan of Wikipedia, it was able to answer questions like how much a jet engine weighs or what causes jet engine noise.
Of course, big companies dabbling in advanced technologies like virtual assistants, AI, and virtual reality have a responsibility to figure out the difference between what they can do and what they should do -- and Cisco takes that to heart, Trollope noted. "We have a very big group of people that dedicate themselves to legislative and privacy concerns so that the 'big brother problem' doesn't become a reality. If a virtual assistant is spying on you, no one is going to use it. The symbiosis of man and machine is where we are going."
Hear directly from Rosenberg on Cisco's vision and product direction in a keynote address at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2018, coming March 12 to 15. He'll take the stage on Tuesday, March 13, at 10 a.m. Register now using the code NOJITTER to save an additional $200 off the Advance Rate or get a free Expo Plus pass.
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