5 ways mobile could disrupt our lives

Inno­v­a­tive mobile tech­nolo­gies have been respon­si­ble for dis­rupt­ing estab­lished com­pa­nies in vir­tu­al­ly every indus­try, with apps such as Uber and Apple Pay show­ing the poten­tial mobile solu­tions have to change our lives for the bet­ter. The increas­ing­ly inter­con­nect­ed world we live in is cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for for­ward-think­ing com­pa­nies to devel­op enter­pris­ing ser­vices that utilise mobile tech­nolo­gies.

Count­less tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments that are hailed as the next big thing fiz­zle out before mak­ing any mean­ing­ful impact, but mobile still has the abil­i­ty to dri­ve major social and eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tions. It’s not just busi­ness­es that will be chang­ing in the wake of mobile dis­rup­tion, the way we com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and car­ry out day-to-day tasks will be sim­pler than ever before.

From uni­ver­sal trans­la­tors to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based per­son­al assis­tants, inno­va­tions that were once believed to be light years away are now in clear sight due to the rapid pace at which mobile is pro­gress­ing. Time will tell when these trans­for­ma­tive ideas come to fruition and when they do we will won­der how we ever lived with­out them.

Here’s a selec­tion of dis­rup­tive poten­tials of mobile tech­nol­o­gy:

1. Universal translators

Once thought of as only pos­si­ble in sci­ence fic­tion, real-time uni­ver­sal trans­la­tors are on track to be real­i­ty in only a few years, with both star­tups and inter­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies work­ing on inno­v­a­tive solu­tions. The Google Trans­late mobile app can pro­vide two-way instant speech trans­la­tion in 32 lan­guages, although it’s not ide­al for free-flow­ing con­ver­sa­tions as you have to look at the smart­phone for each trans­la­tion.

New York-based Waver­ly Labs have over­come this issue by cre­at­ing an in-ear device called Pilot that con­nects with a ded­i­cat­ed smart­phone app to trans­late con­ver­sa­tions instant­ly. At the moment Pilot only works between two peo­ple wear­ing ear­pieces, lim­it­ing the sit­u­a­tions where it could be used. How­ev­er, future gen­er­a­tions of the smart ear­piece could lis­ten to mul­ti­ple peo­ple speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages and still quick­ly trans­late their speech to the user. The com­pa­ny has raised more than $3.3 mil­lion on crowd­fund­ing web­site Indiegogo, with an expect­ed prod­uct release date of May 2017.

Wide­spread adop­tion of uni­ver­sal trans­la­tors will not be reached until the qual­i­ty of trans­la­tion is vir­tu­al­ly per­fect. The fusion of voice recog­ni­tion, machine trans­la­tion and mobile tech­nol­o­gy could soon make lan­guage bar­ri­ers a thing of the past, and com­plete­ly change how we trav­el and learn for­eign lan­guages.

2. Personal assistants

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based per­son­al assis­tants are becom­ing more and more advanced, with improve­ments in speech-recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing them a real threat to the job prospects of human PAs. Since the launch of Apple’s pop­u­lar AI-based per­son­al assis­tant Siri in 2011, dozens of oth­er high-pro­file tech com­pa­nies have released their own prod­ucts. The lat­est intel­li­gent per­son­al assis­tants can do so much more than just check the weath­er or tell the time. Viv.ai, for exam­ple, can do every­thing from arrang­ing the per­fect hol­i­day to order­ing a piz­za.

“Just like a human PA, an AI PA can adapt to your rou­tine, habits and taste. The main dif­fer­ence is that they don’t get bored,” says Julien Hobei­ka, co-founder of vir­tu­al assis­tant Julie Desk. “AI-based PAs work more effi­cient­ly and can do simul­ta­ne­ous tasks like writ­ing an e‑mail to thank a client for con­firm­ing a meet­ing, while insert­ing it in the agen­da and pur­chas­ing a train tick­et.”

It might take a few years to get AI per­son­al assis­tants on the same lev­el as humans, with Julie Desk still requir­ing a human AI super­vi­sor to give final approval before any e‑mail is sent, but if machine-learn­ing con­tin­ues to devel­op at its cur­rent pace, mobiles will become ful­ly fledged per­son­al assis­tants very soon.

3. Disability

Well-designed smart­phone apps that utilise the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions can improve the lives of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and enable them to live more inde­pen­dent­ly. iPhone and Android app Be My Eyes con­nects vol­un­teers with blind peo­ple who need help with every­day tasks, such as check­ing the expiry date on food, via live video chat.

Once a blind per­son has sent a request for help, a vol­un­teer receives a noti­fi­ca­tion and the video con­nec­tion can be made. The vol­un­teer can then answer the ques­tion by sim­ply describ­ing what they see. Since launch­ing, almost 400,000 sight­ed vol­un­teers and 30,000 blind and visu­al­ly impaired peo­ple have used this ser­vice.

Oth­er inno­v­a­tive apps use voice recog­ni­tion soft­ware to pro­vide cap­tions to deaf peo­ple on video calls, let­ting them “hear” what the per­son on the oth­er end of the line is say­ing. Mobile app Talkitt has been life-chang­ing for peo­ple with motor, speech and lan­guage dis­or­ders, such as ALS (amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis) and cere­bral pal­sy, as it trans­lates extreme­ly hard-to-hear speech into clear prose. No mat­ter what the dis­abil­i­ty, there is like­ly to be a mobile solu­tion which can make life eas­i­er, espe­cial­ly for issues around mobil­i­ty.

4. Healthcare

Health­care is per­haps one of the indus­tries most at risk of dis­rup­tion by mobile tech­nol­o­gy, due to the mas­sive gap between demand and sup­ply. Far from just offer­ing rel­a­tive­ly sim­plis­tic advice on how to live a health­i­er lifestyle, a range of health­care apps are giv­ing users access to ser­vices pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able at GP prac­tices or hos­pi­tals.

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-based per­son­al health assis­tant Your.MD offers an alter­na­tive to a phys­i­cal con­sul­ta­tion with a doc­tor by using AI and machine-learn­ing to deter­mine the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a person’s con­di­tion, based on their symp­toms, per­son­al fac­tors and wider med­ical his­to­ry. “Mobile health (mHealth) apps have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer peo­ple pre-pri­ma­ry care sup­port so that in many sit­u­a­tions it won’t be nec­es­sary to vis­it a doc­tor in the first place,” says Mat­teo Berluc­chi, chief exec­u­tive of Your.MD.