The advancements in AI over the past couple of years have been nothing short of incredible. Initially driven by Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI, this wave has spread everywhere, leaving few companies outside of this AI feeding frenzy.
As with all early technology advancements, most vendors are screaming, “You need to deploy AI now!” » However, they still have little experience or understanding of AI, fueling a staggering failure rate approaching 90%.
One exception is HP, which has aggressively deployed and used AI internally. At HP’s Imagine event last month, we saw a brighter future for AI, focused not on deploying AI per se, but on developing detailed plans encompassing internal HP resources. HP and an impressive number of partners to ensure the success of AI deployments.
Let’s talk about HP’s unique AI strategy, and we’ll finish with my product of the week: the first AI-powered HP Envy printers that, thanks to AI, promise to accomplish your complex printing jobs.
HP Hope Program Addresses 2 Key Issues
One of the programs announced at HP Imagine was the HP Hope program, which kills two birds with one stone, or a PC in this case. This program addresses two problems. One of them is the excessive number of older computers that still work but end up in landfills. The other problem is the large number of people, young and old, living in underdeveloped areas, who cannot afford new computers.
THE HP Hope Recycling Futures The program offers buyers an assignment option. When customers return an HP computer to HP, it is refurbished and sent to people who need a computer but don’t have the funds to purchase one. This process is not a single cycle program; These refurbished PCs can be refurbished cyclically over multiple generations, much like textbooks are resold, so fewer new machines have to be purchased and fewer PCs end up in landfills or junk stores. recycling while they still have substantial utility.
Since AI remains cloud-based, these refurbished PCs are ideal for accessing AI in the cloud and increasing the use of AI tools to remotely monitor, manage, repair and protect via Wolf Security. The result brings solid improvements even if these PCs are older. In some or most cases, even refurbished PCs can often perform better in terms of reliability, security, and availability than new PCs that do not feature HP’s growing number of AI services. .
3D collaboration
HP and Google presented their Starline Project effort, which is impressive. I have been following video communication with a passion since I saw my first video conferencing system at Disneyland in the 1960s.
One of the long-standing problems with videoconferencing technology, dating back to systems in the early 1960s, is that talking to someone on a screen just doesn’t feel natural. The 2D representation of the person reduces the realism of the interaction. This lack of immersion often leads to the need for in-person meetings, especially for critical interactions such as job interviews, performance reviews, collaborations, and relationship building, whether personal or professional .
The Starline Project allows a 3D image of the person you are speaking with to extend off the screen and join you visually in front of the monitor rather than inside it. If you’ve seen those high-tech billboards where the image appears to move away from the screen, the experience is similar to that. You can even wave at the remote speaker, but it’s not a tangible projection, so you can’t feel their hand and it disappears if you try to touch it.
This technology represents a new level of use of AI. I call it “Remote Presence” because it makes the remote person feel like you are in the room with them. This is pretty amazing, and I expect this technology to eventually adopt future digital assistants, making them more realistic without building a robotic body.
HP Wolf Security’s Enhanced AI
HP is also monitoring the use of AI in malware attacks and reports that while AI-based attacks are still on the horizon, significant testing is underway, indicating that malicious actors are still learning how to use these tools.
One of the most interesting but also troubling changes concerns the embedding of malware in SVG images on websites and online using XML. These attacks tend to install a significant number of scripts that infect devices using at least four separate Trojan horse carriers. This shotgun-like approach greatly increases the likelihood of a successful infection, giving a hostile actor full control of a PC.
HP’s Wolf Security is being developed to address these aggressive new threats. However, with AI now used to create them, the only defense capable of mitigating or eliminating the problem will be one that uses equally capable AI coupled with regular reminders to the employee to avoid clicking on files surprise images.
Conclusion
This year, HP Imagine has been inundated with AI efforts, but the most powerful has been HP’s effort to create, with partners, an approach to motivate employees to use these new tools. Often, users’ inability to try new tools leaves the majority of them underutilized. HP is focusing its AI efforts on helping its enterprise customers’ employees quickly become familiar with these AI tools so that businesses achieve the return on investment promised by this class of tools.
This approach positively differentiates HP from companies like Dell, which mostly just throw products at the problem and don’t put much effort into successful implementation. HP’s approach represents its relative maturity in that it is measured and focused on benefits, not just selling hardware and software to an inexperienced and somewhat naive customer base still learning what AI can and cannot yet do.
What continues to shine through at events like this is HP’s focus on its customers, the environment and doing what’s right. I hope HP, unlike others, never loses this.
HP Print AI
At its Imagine event, HP introduced two new Envy all-in-one printers, the 6100th and the 6500th. These will finally be packaged with HP Print AIthe industry’s first intelligent (AI) print manager.
(L/R) HP Envy 6100e and HP Envy 6500e All-in-One Printers
We have all encountered problems when printing a document and having it poorly laid out. Spreadsheets are the worst, often printing one row or column on a page and then discarding hundreds of unnecessary copies that make little or no sense, like this:
Available in beta this year, HP Print AI will automatically format print jobs so that the printed document is useful. This means that spreadsheets that look like spreadsheets and documents that otherwise wouldn’t fit on the paper you’re printing on will fit on that paper. AI analyzes your print job based on your previous training to determine the optimal format. Then it automatically configures itself for that result so that every print job is as perfect as the AI can make it, like this:
Ironically, I encountered a problem printing my HP “know before you go” report for the event. My HP printer cropped both sides, blocking out the names and numbers I would need if I ran into problems (and I did run into problems).
Although I have a photo of the new and very nice HP Envy 6100e and 6500e printers at the top of this section, the printing service is my product of the week because, like most of you, I am tired of it to struggle with my printer. The idea of it working well automatically is something I’ve looked forward to for decades.
Editor’s note: Images in this article are credited to HP.
