At the recent “Tech beyond borders” workshop, organized by DiChi Academy, Marc Ettlinger, the linguistic engineering manager at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, shared a bold prediction of his: the future of technology will shift from smartphones to wearables, such as smart glasses. Smartphones are the most used gadgets in the whole world. There are so many people without smartwatches, but smartphones? No, but according to Marc Ettlinger, all of this is about to change. This transformation will be a stir-up between human-computer interaction, making the next step in technology’s evolution.
Ettlinger addressed an eager audience of Cambodian tech, talking about the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and the impacts that they have over the world. He stated that we were already living in an age of AI. He also talks about how artificial intelligence has already replaced several jobs and how it influenced technologies in many ways that could not have been imagined a period of five years ago. He stressed the importance of recognizing that AI was not a futuristic concept but a reality already existing in various industries. He said that Meta’s reality labs division was actively working on smart glasses, virtual reality headsets, and augmented reality systems, which would become the “next generation of the operating system.” These developments would move beyond the era of smartphones to a more natural interface for human-computer interaction. Ettlinger predicted that these new devices would make technology more accessible and integrated into the daily lives of people. He stated, “The operating system, the computing platform, won’t be a phone anymore. It’ll be your glasses, and the interactions will be completely natural, like using human language or gestures.” He reportedly believed that this vision could become a reality within the next three to five years, which will let the users access information and interact with AI through “ambient computing,” which will be supported by wearable devices. Ettinger also discussed chatbot technology advancements, stating that “chatbots are getting very close to passing the Turing test.” He predicted that voice interaction with AI-powered systems would soon become easy; what is difficult would be to distinguish between human and chatbot conversations. The workshop, attended by young professionals and students, aimed to introduce them to the latest technological advancements as Cambodia prepares to embrace Industry 4.0.
Other industry experts from big tech companies shared their insights into the evolving digital media and talked about the need for Cambodia’s youth to stay informed about global tech trends and build skills to remain competitive. Socretquuliqaa Lee, machine learning engineer at EKYC Solution Co., Ltd., gave a demonstration of AI modeling using the Google Collab application, providing the attendees with practical tools for their AI projects. Vitou Phy, a software engineer at Indeed, provided his insights on system architecture, giving an overview of modern systems from a broad perspective.
The workshop ended with a full-stack demo on how to build apps from beginning to end by the senior full-stack developer at OnTheGoSystems, Sokmesa Khiev.
