Understanding the Artificial Intelligence Hype Cycle, in 5 Stats

At last week's Google I/O conference, a few choice terms came up repeatedly. They were mentioned so often that New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo joked that "machine learning" had reached "70 trillion" utterances only a few hours into the conference's first day. I have been counting occurrences of the phrase "now, we use machine learning" here at Google IO and I got to 70 trillion Google is using AI to improve just about every realm of its vast technology empire. On Android, for example, the company announced an update to its virtual assistant with futuristic features like Google Lens, which can "read" photos in real time. It also announced a hyper-fast AI processor built to grow its cloud computing business, and a more "proactive" Google Home product. With Google Lens, your smartphone camera won't just see what you see, but will also understand what you see to help you take action.