Nvidia aims to spread Google AI through home

LAS VEGAS—Nvidia is best known for the high-end computer graphics cards prized by hardcore gamers. If co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang delivers on his bold vision, more people are likely to recognize Nvidia as the powerhouse behind artificial intelligence in your home and in your vehicle.

Clad in his trademark black leather jacket, Huang delivered a high energy opening night keynote address Wednesday night at CES, assuming a prestigious speaking slot that for years was reserved for Microsoft’s Bill Gates and later his successor Steve Ballmer.  

Nvidia (NVDA) is already a star on Wall Street. It is coming off a two-year hot streak, with a particularly sizzling 224% gain in 2016 that made it the top performing stock in the S&P 500. Nvidia’s share performance far outpaced chip rival Intel, whose own CEO Brian Krzanich has headlined recent keynotes.

Nvidia is at the intersection of key, changing dynamics in the tech industry, notably AI and deep learning and their respective roles in pushing home entertainment and in fueling those next generation autonomous vehicles. Nvidia has lined up an impressive roster of A-list partners —Google, Facebook, Samsung, Audi and Bosch, among them — to help advance Huang's vision.

“The ability to perceive the world is an enormous breakthrough,” Huang told a packed audience in a Venetian Hotel ballroom. “What used to be science fiction is going to be reality in the coming years.” He described the big bang of AI as software writing software.

Among the highlights from his presentation:

*Google Assistant on TV, and more. Huang announced a new version of its $199 Android TV-based Nvidia Shield console. The big news is that the new Shield incorporates the AI-infused Google Assistant, bringing Google’s natural language-capable digital assistant to the TV.

The new Shield will also be the first entertainment platform to let you stream Amazon and Netflix content in 4K HDR, Nvidia says.

However useful controlling the TV by voice is, Huang wants to spread AI assistant through your home. That's accomplished, he says, through an upcoming, yet-to-be-priced ball-shaped peripheral for Shield called Nvidia Spot. Each has tiny far-field processing microphones and echo cancellation to pick up your speech from 20 feet away. Huang says the Spot devices can employ “triangulation” and other technologies to determine who in a room is talking.

So you’ll be able to expand the Google Assistant’s presence, to order an Uber by voice, make coffee, turn on music or ask about the weather. The new Shield also integrates with Samsung’s SmartThings hub to connect to smart plugs, coffeemakers, garage doors, locks, thermostats, cameras and other devices. That could pit Shield against Amazon's popular Echo, or even Google's own Google Home devices.  

Gaming: About 1 billion personal computers in use aren’t PC-game ready, Huang maintains. They might be older machines, Macs, or thin and light models that don’t let you install so-called discrete graphics.

Nvidia's remedy is GeForce Now, a cloud-based solution that promises to do for consumers what Amazon Web Services (AWS) does for businesses. Five years in the making, it can turn relative-weakling computers into gaming PCs on demand, letting someone who hasn’t taken the effort to build or buy a gaming PC, or who only wants to play such games here and there, play them. Huang demonstrated GeForce Now by launching the online Steam store in about 20 seconds and playing a graphics-rich title Rise of the Tomb Raider on a PC laptop and Mac that normally couldn't handle the job.

GeForce Now will debut in March and cost $25 for 20 hours of play. So it isn't cheap.

Separately, Huang was joined on stage by an executive from EA-owned Bioware, who previewed an upcoming role-playing game called Mass Effect: Andromeda. With just a couple of clicks, Huang said consumers can share their gaming experiences in real time over Facebook Live.

'Mass Effect: Andromeda' launches in March

*AI-powered cars.  Huang showed off a tiny AI-car supercomputer called Xavier meant to be the brains in future self-driving cars, and also created a self-driving car it uses for testing called BB8.

“Our vision is that these cars running AI networks connected to HD clouds should be able to drive from address to address in a very large part of the world,” Huang says. But he also wants to have AI in the car “pay attention to you too. Maybe you’re not looking where you should be driving, maybe you're dosing off, maybe you had a little bit too good of a time, (or) maybe the AI notices that you’re a little bit aggravated and should pull over.” Among the ways it can detect such things is by reading your lips or detecting your gaze.

In building out its automotive AI ecosystem, Nvidia is working with leading global mapping companies, including Baidu in China, Tom Tom in Europe, Zenrin in Japan and Here.

Nvidia has also lined up auto tech supplier Bosch to adopt Nvidia computing platform for autonomous vehicles.

And finally, it is teaming up with Audi on a vehicle built around the Nvidia AI-car computer that the companies expect to hit the road by 2020.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter