Imagine waking up to a new day. A smart alarm clock nudges you awake at the optimal time, as you check your smartwatch to see how the quality of your sleep was. As you ready yourself for work, the virtual assistant on your smart speaker reads you the news, and weather and traffic conditions as you brush your teeth.
Freshly brewed coffee from the automated coffee machine awaits you as you grab a cup before work. Just as you are about to head out of the door, a drone from the logistics company drops off a package just in time. You are scheduled to reach the office at 9am and you get some work done on the commute, thanks to your self-driving car.
All this sounds like science fiction, but the foundation for this scenario to happen is here today. Here are some tech trends from 2018 that are making the above a reality.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The buzz and interest surrounding AI has built up tremendously as it is expected to reach into many aspects of our lives and has the potential to reshape entire businesses. AI has far-reaching uses that will impact the finance and banking sector, self-driving vehicles, news reporting and many other disciplines.
In 2018, the best firms will incorporate AI applications into strategic and organisational development. In the age of AI, we are able to sift through large volumes of data within minutes instead of hours. While there has been worry by the man on the street that AI would take over jobs, the reality is that it will help augment jobs so that repetitive tasks will be automated, allowing humans to focus on complex problems.
An example would be Adext, a platform that automates digital advertising processes, saving businesses hours of mechanical tasks through the use of AI. Industrial use of AI can be seen in the use of General Electric’s efforts to build an AI workforce to monitor aircraft and locomotive engines to predict failure and conduct maintenance work.
AI is also being used to keep us safe from cyber attacks. Startups such as Darktrace have developed AI that can conduct behavioural analytics to automatically detect abnormal behaviour.
