5 things we learned on Google I/O
This year’s annual Google conference I/O was fully streamed online. Developers had the opportunity to attend lectures or participate in meetups. If you missed the conference, here are the five most exciting things we learned on I/O:
LaMDA — Language Model for Dialogue Applications
In their keynote presentation, Google’s CEO presented their work on LaMDA, their breakthrough in conversation technology. Like many recent language models, including BERT and GPT-3, it’s built on Transformer, a neural network architecture that Google Research invented and open-sourced in 2017. That architecture produces a model that can be trained to read many words (a sentence or paragraph, for example), pay attention to how those words relate to one another, and then predict what words it thinks will come next. If LaMDA gets fully put in use, users will be able to retrieve information from the web by having a conversation with Google.
Android 12
Google announced a new version of Android with personalizable color palettes, updated notifications, and faster, battery-saving performance. Also, you will be able to use your phone as a remote for your Android TV. Android 12 will arrive later this year, but the first public beta is already available for Pixel, OnePlus, and Xiaomi devices.
Material You
Material You is all about finding colors that match your style, with full customization across everything from the lock screen to system settings. By exploring a more humanistic approach to design, it can also use color extraction from pictures, so you have various tones at hand when creating an individualized look for yourself or crafting stylish themes based on others’ photos.
Project Starline
Project Starline is an innovation from Google that can make video chatting feel more realistic than ever before. The technology uses high-resolution cameras to map the depth of your subject and create an accurate 3D image, which is then highly compressed for transport, so it’s quick enough without overwhelming you with data! After being projected onto their light field display (which has over 1 billion different points), these images are quickly reconstructed into something extraordinary – like looking into someone else’s eyes just as they’re telling their own story, sitting right there next to you.
Android Digital Car Key
Android can now replace your car keys for many new car models, including BMW. The digital “key” will be able to unlock and start a vehicle from the comfort of one’s phone! You’ll also have access to share this valuable asset with friends or family members who may need to use them occasionally – just like you would share an extra set of keys between drivers.
The Google I/O keynote was a fascinating look at the future of technology. As we continue to move towards a more digitized world, programmers must keep up with how people use their products and what they need from them. Some interesting takeaways from this year’s event include:
- A focus on privacy, as well as security, is essential now that so many people are using mobile devices;
- Continued improvement in voice search technologies will make talking to your phone even more accessible than it already is;
- Virtual reality is finally becoming mainstream, showing us just how immersive VR can be.
If you’re a programmer, we hope you learned something new and exciting during Google I/O. We want to hear what the most exciting takeaways were for you! Let us know in the comments below how this year’s Google I/O impacted your views on design or mobile development.
