One of the most impressive demos at Google I/O was Duplex, an artificial intelligence that made calls to places of business—in this case a hair salon and a restaurant—to book appointments. The humans on the other end of the line were seemingly none the wiser, and Duplex handled challenges with ease, like when the restaurant said it didn't accept reservations for small parties.

This particular AI announcement got a lot of coverage at Google I/O, but AI and machine learning was prevalent in all the products and services showed at the developers conference. Just look at this chart, which Google displayed at an AI-focused analyst event the day before I/O opened.

There were two other things showed at that event that I consider potential game changers.

The first is how AI is applied to voice-to-text translation. The goal is to get this to 99 percent accuracy using AI and ML over the next few years. That said, the demos in which they dictated comments into various G-Suite applications were already pretty accurate. We also saw a more in-depth demo of Smart Compose, where a person writes a sentence in Gmail, and Smart Compose writes the next sentence for you based on the first sentence's context.

Various voice-recognition products, such as Dragon Dictate, have been on the market for years. But these programs relied on localized software and took advantage of the current processing power available at the time of each release. These programs did get better over the years, but if you ad AI and ML, the accuracy rate is bound to get better.

Google understands the importance of speech-to-text as it relates to our everyday lives. An accurate voice-to-text interface is critical when answering a message while driving. It is a meaningful way to respond to an email or text message on wearables or smartphones. It will eventually become a valuable input when using mixed reality glasses, where using voice as part of the navigation process and voice-to-text is needed for various types of AR applications.

The second is how AI and ML are used in Google Translate, which will be genuinely transformative when translations occur in real time. As an international traveler who only speaks English, this type of translation would be a godsend. There are some handheld devices that attempt to translate what you say into a local language, but they currently have many limitations.

Google has its eye on this type of translation, so it's safe to say we could see some real breakthroughs in more accurate language translation on Android phones shortly. Apple also has AI and ML research going on around various aspects of voice and text translation so it too, along with potential partners, could deliver a mobile language translation solution on iOS someday.

AI and ML will have a dramatic impact on voice-to-text translation, and its most prominent effect may be as part of the UI in AR and VR or mixed reality glasses. Personally, the language translations excite me the most, as it would make my world travels easier.