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Researchers at NVIDIA, an American technology company that specializes in computer hardware such as chipsets and graphic cards, recently announced a new video streaming platform for developers called NVIDIA Maxine. This new platform will enable video-conference providers to implement new AI-powered features into their existing streaming platforms (NVIDIA, 2020). While this does not seem to be exciting news at first glance, something about NVIDIA Maxine is different: it claims it can help solve some of the most common issues we encounter while making video calls, and might enable millions of people without access to a high quality internet connection to start making video calls themselves (Vincent, 2020).

Since the emergence of the novel Coronavirus, the usage of video conference calling has increased exponentially among all segments of society. This contributed to the fact that the internet, which has seen a significant increase in usage in these last couple of months, has come under huge strain. While internet service providers still seem to have enough capacity to manage this high demand for internet right now, it is uncertain if they can cope with this scale of increased traffic over a longer period of time (Browne, 2020). To combat this problem, high bandwidth using services such as Netflix and YouTube committed to start decreasing bandwidth usage of its users, by reducing streaming quality (Alexander, 2020). While in the short run, these initiatives help decrease bandwidth usage, long term solutions for all types of video streaming might be necessary to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for speedy and high-quality internet.

The development team at NVIDIA might just found a solution that could help reduce bandwidth for video calls specifically, while retaining a high-quality picture that users expect. As opposed to sending data of every pixel, from every frame of a video stream to the receiving end of a video call, the AI system makes an initial analysis about some of the key features of the video call such as the individual features of someone’s face. Using this information, the AI system can re-animate someone’s face and facial expressions on the receiving device that is being videocalled, while only using a minimal amount of data transfer compared to a full frame by frame data stream (NVIDIA, 2020). The re-animating part is done by the NVIDIA Maxine platform in the cloud; thus users are less dependent on device capabilities they use to make the video calls.

This innovation has the potential to drastically decrease the bandwidth that is necessary to make quality video calls. NVIDIA estimates that using this system may decrease bandwidth requirements for video calls up to 90% (NVIDIA, 2020). This can be beneficial to both streaming platforms and consumers, as platforms can reduce their costs due to lower capacity needs, and consumers can enjoy high quality video calls without the need for a high bandwidth internet connection. Moreover, these low bandwidth requirements have the potential to enable people in developing countries or rural areas with limited access to a high bandwidth internet connection to start video calling, and can have a massive impact on the demand for these streaming and conference calling services in these countries in the near future.

It remains to be seen how NVIDIA will further develop and implement this recent innovation. However, when deemed successful, it could transform our current way of video calling into an experience where the video stream of the people you are talking to, is mostly generated by AI. It will be interesting to see how consumers will react to this type of innovation, as it remains unclear if these consumers actually want to use a service that shows a video stream of their colleagues, family and friends that is largely generated by artificial intelligence.

 

 

Sources

(NVIDIA, 2020) NVIDIA Announces Cloud-AI Video-Streaming Platform to Better Connect Millions Working and Studying Remotely. [online] Available at:  https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-cloud-ai-video-streaming-platform-to-better-connect-millions-working-and-studying-remotely [accessed 7 October 2020].

(Browne, 2020) The internet is under huge strain because of the coronavirus. Experts say it can cope — for now. [online] Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-can-the-internet-handle-unprecedented-surge-in-traffic.html [accessed 7 October 2020].

(Alexander, 2020) The entire world is streaming more than ever — and it’s straining the internet. [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21195358/streaming-netflix-disney-hbo-now-youtube-twitch-amazon-prime-video-coronavirus-broadband-network [accessed 7 October 2020].

(NVIDIA, 2020) NVIDIA MAXINE, Cloud-AI Video-Streaming Platform. [online] Available at: https://developer.nvidia.com/maxine [accessed 7 October 2020].

(Vincent, 2020) Nvidia says its AI can fix some of the biggest problems in video calls. [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/5/21502003/nvidia-ai-videoconferencing-maxine-platform-face-gaze-alignment-gans-compression-resolution [accessed 7 October 2020].

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In recent years, American based aerospace company SpaceX, founded by world-renowned entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002, has become one of the leading companies in terms of manufacturing and launching reusable spacecrafts, that someday in the near future might empower humanity to explore new places in our solar system and beyond.  While most people are familiar with SpaceX’s spacecraft program and mission to have humans ‘’going out there and being among the stars’’ (SpaceX, 2020), the aerospace company is also actively developing other technologies that could have a massive impact on people’s lives on earth. One of these new technologies is Starlink, which aims to develop a network of at least 12,000 satellites that can provide global high-speed internet coverage to almost anyone on earth as early as 2021 (Starlink, 2020). With this new internet infrastructure, SpaceX will be able to provide reliable and less expensive internet access to people in developing countries and remote areas where offering traditional internet infrastructure would be deemed economically unviable.

When the implementation of Starlink is successful, SpaceX will be able to compete with virtually any internet provider in the world within the next 5 years. This will lead to what might be the last large expansion of new internet users within the global internet marketplace, before internet will be abundantly available to anyone worldwide (Cashel, 2019). This provides a big opportunity to businesses to extend their customer base, or can provide new opportunities for emerging startups. Using Starlink, these companies might be able to ‘’leapfrog’’ certain technical innovations to people in developing countries, as we have seen with the emergence of mobile telephones in countries like Kenya and Nigeria (Pilling, 2018). These countries mostly skipped the utilization of traditional landlines due to high initial investment costs, and went straight to using cellular phone systems when they became available. Like mobile phones usage, a similar process is now happening to the internet.

Besides developing countries, Starlink might also facilitate technological innovations in developed countries. Starlink can for instance function as a base network for work wide connectivity of IoT devices, which might bring new innovations in a variety of industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and energy. It might also even open up certain markets that were previously unreachable for most businesses, such as in China and Russia that currently have firewalls in place that blocks access to a portion of foreign internet sites. While some governments might try to outlaw Starlink to keep its current grip over national internet use, it may very well be impossible to physically block access to Starlink’s services worldwide (Koetsier, 2020).

It remains to be seen how Starlink will shape our future internet access. Starlink’s goals are ambitious but, if proven to be successful, could further transform the world into an interconnected network of people and machines where internet access truly becomes available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Existing companies should be aware that this technology is around the corner and should start exploring business expansion opportunities that Starlink might offer, but should also be aware of the threat of new market entrants that will utilize Starlink in their respective industry.

 

 

Sources

Cashel, J. (2019) How Businesses Should Prepare for Global Internet Access. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/07/how-businesses-should-prepare-for-global-internet-access [Accessed: 6 October 2020].

 

Pilling, D. (2018) African economy: the limits of ‘leapfrogging’. [online] Financial Times. Available at: https://www-ft-com.eur.idm.oclc.org/content/052b0a34-9b1b-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d [Accessed: 6 October 2020].

 

Koetsier, J. (2020) Elon Musk’s 42,000 StarLink Satellites Could Just Save The World. [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/01/09/elon-musks-42000-starlink-satellites-could-just-save-the-world/#2a7a82834c2c [Accessed: 6 October 2020].

 

Starlink (n.d.) Starlink. [online] Available at: https://www.starlink.com/ [Accessed: 6 October 2020].

 

SpaceX (n.d.) SpaceX mission statement. [online] Available at: https://www.spacex.com/mission/ [Accessed: 6 October 2020].