What Display Daily thinks: Is artificial intelligence (AI) a great excuse to cut out the dead wood in your business or is it really a defining sea change in the focus of modern technology titans?
As for the former, it certainly seems to be a good time to cut your losses on Alt Reality and to put the focus on the potential for huge ROI on AI. And as for the latter, yes, it is a sea change. It is the modern equivalent of the changes that occurred in the mid-90s when companies like Microsoft started to feel the heat from the growth of the world wide web. No one wants to get left behind this time.
Undoubtedly, we have not see anywhere near the levels of activity that AI will create whether in the formation of new companies, or changes in how computing tasks are carried out, or products that we have not foreseen. That also means that the gold rush will leave many behind while creating new giants of tech. The world wide web was open for a long time until it got choked off by the power of companies like Google and Meta. Those companies can’t quite choke off the threat of AI usurpers but they sure hope that karma doesn’t pay them back this time.
It also means that AI is a catch-all term for any data processing application. Samsung is touting new gaming monitors with AI to improve display performance. I have a feeling that display hardware with AI capabilities, whatever that means, will lag behind the market, but not the marketing. Displays need long lead times, AI is constantly changing and evolving at a pace that is quite astonishing, even by the standards of the tech industry.
As for Alt Reality, AI is the best reason to get out of the mire of thinking that there is a new paradigm in man-machine interactions, like spatial computing. AI is the man-machine interface of the future. What that means is anyone’s guess.
How much of the moves that companies like Microsoft are making here (or as Foxconn did in saying it was reallocating Sharp’s resources to AI development) is FOMO, fear of missing out, and how much of the AI hype is business acumen remains to be seen. A future of pervasive AI will not look anything like what we think it will be today. That’s for certain.
Microsoft Laying Off Employees in Alt Reality Division
Microsoft has announced layoffs affecting employees in its Mixed Reality division, which includes work on the HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset. Despite these cuts, the company plans to continue selling and supporting the HoloLens 2. The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring effort within the Mixed Reality organization.
This move follows a significant round of layoffs last year that affected 10,000 employees, including some in mixed reality. Along with these layoffs, Microsoft also discontinued several keyboard models, which upset some customers.
Microsoft remains committed to fulfilling its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), a modified version of the HoloLens. Although the device has faced challenges, such as causing nausea for soldiers, tests of an updated model have shown promise.
In addition to layoffs, Microsoft has been shifting its focus and investment more toward artificial intelligence (AI). The company has heavily invested in AI technologies, including deploying Nvidia graphics processing units to support AI applications like the Copilot chatbot and features in Microsoft 365 that can automate tasks such as writing memos and summarizing meetings.
In December, Microsoft reduced its investment in augmented and virtual reality, deprecating Windows Mixed Reality, which was a platform for running applications on head-mounted displays. While Microsoft will continue to sell the HoloLens 2, there are no indications of a new model being developed.
