AI Can Make Smart Collaboration Even Smarter and More Collaborative

The benefits of what AI can do for our society are unparalleled.

The AI PC— A new era for hybrid work and productivity

It’s no secret that I support hybrid work: working from anywhere has been the norm for me long before 2020. With 22% of Americans predicted to work fully remote by 2025, and a huge 98% of workers wanting to work remotely at least some part of the work week, it’s clear that hybrid is still gaining immense popularity amongst the workforce.

So where does AI fit into all of this? Pretty perfectly, actually.

AI will further help professionals all over the world embrace hybrid work to enable productivity, enhance output, and create new solutions. 2024 will be another transformative year in this regard. For example, at CES this year, Lenovo unveiled a full lineup of more than 40 new devices and solutions, including many that are enabled and optimized by AI.

I believe that with the evolution of tech over the next few years, it’ll be realized on a global scale that AI isn’t here to hinder us, but rather enable us to do more, see more, and create more. AI isn’t here to take jobs; it’s here to change our jobs for the better.

I know that my day as it stands is busy: from lunchtime meetings to strategizing with my global team, I have to remain on top and ahead of my workload to make sure that deadlines are met, goals are exceeded, and my team is working to the best of their ability. I’m looking forward to seeing how Microsoft Copilot and other new AI-powered tools will help me get more done. I can already see how AI tools will enable smarter collaboration.

AI Enabling Smarter Collaboration Solutions

I wrote about my thoughts on BYOD versus investing in compute solutions in my last article, where I explored the benefits of both practices. I concluded then when it comes to future-proofing your workspaces, investing in compute solutions is the better option. This is even more true when you factor in the growth of AI-enabled features that are beginning to enhance UC solutions.

For example, Lenovo’s latest collaboration with Jabra on the ThinkSmart Bar 180 offers a solution to transform both small and medium-sized meeting spaces through both an integrated room system and BYOD. This video bar utilizes the Lenovo ThinkSmart Core and Controller to deliver a more seamless, premium, and inclusive collaboration experience, by utilizing AI-enabled video and audio streams.

The solution features a 180-degree field of view achieved through an innovative three-camera system unique among front-of-room solutions. The camera provides full room coverage in panoramic 4K resolution through seamless real-time video stitching, creating a more natural visual experience for remote meeting participants. The wide visual field, combined with world-class audio capabilities and onboard intelligence, creates three configurable video modes— Intelligent Zoom, Virtual Director, and Dynamic Composition.

With Intelligent Zoom, meeting participants are always presented with an optimal view, as the smart camera frames all of the people present within that 180-degree field of view and dynamically adjusts as people enter, leave, and move about the room. Virtual Director provides a different perspective, focusing on the active speaker and changing the focus from person to person as the conversation flows naturally. With a Dynamic Composition meeting, participants have better context for what is happening in the room both audibly and visually as people in the room are automatically detected and prioritization is given to recent speakers.?

The smart collaboration system also features intelligent microphones that identify the voices of up to ten meeting participants in a room for applications such as live transcription. And dual-stream whiteboard makes collaboration easier, displaying both whiteboard content and in-room participants simultaneously without the need for a dedicated content camera.

These AI-enabled features in a smart bar form factor can either be combined with an integrated room system or BYOD, offering the enterprise a lot of flexibility and power while increasing meeting equity through a superior experience.

Investing in Future-proofing Collaboration Spaces?

The market is going to see a lot of innovation in the next few years as smart collaboration solutions get super-charged with AI. Meeting participants will be able to enjoy everything from smart cameras with individual speaker tracking, dynamic group framing, and video fencing to smart audio with background noise and echo cancellation, voice commands, live captioning, and more.

Enterprise customers will want to be ready to adopt and manage these new technologies to get the most out of them sooner rather than later. This takes planning and investment, as well as clear objectives on how you want to build and support workspaces so that you can scale the technology as you need and achieve the future of work you envision for your employees. Just wiring rooms for video conferencing won’t be enough, you will need to consider how smart those rooms are today, and how smart you’ll need them to be tomorrow.

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