On the opening day of the Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco, connected devices took center stage as the company announced the consolidation of its SmartThings, Samsung Connect and ARTIK services into one “internet of things”-branded label of SmartThings Cloud. The move on Wednesday demonstrates how the software as a service generation may now be yielding the spotlight to social preferences as the driver of future innovation in the hardware space.

“Hardware is now becoming as extensible as software. Now the human is moving to the center, and with that they’re clutching to their devices,” said Gregarious Narain (pictured), co-founder of Before Alpha Inc.

Narain paid a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with host John Furrier (@furrier) at the Samsung Developer Conference. They discussed the intersection of technology with society and how Samsung Electronics America Inc.’s recent announcements were designed to appeal to consumers.

Bixby voice assistant showcased

A cornerstone of Samsung’s consumer device strategy is Bixby, the company’s AI-driven personal voice recognition assistant. Wednesday’s news focused extensively on the latest (2.0) version of Bixby, as Samsung clearly believes that users will warm up to a connected device world more rapidly if they don’t have to tap multiple screens in their home just to turn off the lights.

“Innovation is really about blending cultural change and technological change together and forming new things,” Narain said. “It usually is a succession of small iterations and some moonshots.”

Samsung’s keynote session announcements did not include a tremendous amount of detail involving data and artificial intelligence, a curious decision since the audience of developers likely had more than a passing interest in those areas. This may be a further concession to the need to “sell” consumers on a fully connected world without complicating the picture with how data is being collected and used.

“AI scares the crap out of a lot of people,” said Narain, who felt that Samsung’s lack of detail was probably intentional. “The more you put out there, the more you alienate adoption.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Samsung Developer Conference.

Photo: SiliconANGLE