Edge computing and Artificial Intelligence: a new competitor for 5G

In 2016, I visited the CEBIT conference in Hannover. It was full of so called'smart' things which I did not find smart at all. This'smart' things hype included, in fact, many devices which were simply'connected' and which, in most cases, delivered a narrowly defined single purpose benefit to the user. However, one very special presentation at CEBIT influenced my views on how AI might be delivered in the future. IBM presented a research project called SyNAPSE, developing an AI chip named'TrueNorth' which could deliver computing power equivalent to the brain of an ant while consuming just 73mW of energy.