According to forecasts by IDC – global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets, – in just two years’ time global expenditures on Artificial Intelligence will reach $ 47 billion. The growth rates in Russia are impressive as well. The assessments of Jet Infosystems and TAdviser show the artificial intelligence market and machine learning will by then increase 40 times and reach RUR 28 billion ($ 475 mio). How will AI evolve in 2018 and what areas of our life will change in the first turn? Joseph Reger, Chief Technology Officer for Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) at Fujitsu, shared his views of AI’s further development and application with Invest Foresight. In his opinion, next year the technology will bring about a broad range of innovations, which he listed below.
- Ubiquitous virtual assistants– Over the course of the year we’ll see an increase in the number of virtual assistants and chatbots that are currently in use by banks and insurance companies. Consumers will notice a significant ramp over the next year; however by 2020 they will no longer notice that their interface is not human.
- Government health programs will turn to AI – We’ll see governments start to invest in AI to improve health and reduce medical spending. The focus will be on leveraging the technology to accelerate diagnosis and for preventative medicine.
- Eighty percent of all larger organizations will investigate AI – Sixty percent of these will actually be undertaking proofs of concept. When they reach the implementation phase, 100% will encounter a lack of appropriately skilled employees.
- Over the course of 2018, the net effect of AI will be positive for the workforce– a whole new market for AI-based jobs will emerge, and the technology will not yet significantly replace workers. However, as AI systems increasingly automate many traditional jobs – this will create a growing challenge by 2020.
- By the end of 2018, artificial intelligence will be used to optimize the next generation of production AIs– to date, techniques where one AI is used to improve the performance of another have only existed in research settings. In 2018 we will see such techniques, e.g. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), deployed to enhance production AI systems.
- All aspects of manufacturing will use AI to some extent by the end of 2018– all manufacturing companies will use AI for at least some part of the value chain either in logistics, manufacturing or maintenance.
- Assembly line workers will increasingly have robotic colleagues – to date, robots have been restricted to working inside cages on manufacturing processes, however, the emerging generation of smart autonomous robots can see, touch, and collaborate safely with humans while taking on the heavy lifting of assembly work in addition to boring, routine tasks.
- Increasing conversations around the ethics of AI– we’re going to see a marked rise in debate regarding the ethics of AI. Concerns will be openly debated at government level in a number of countries.
- AI systems will start to become virtually invisible– as we rely on AI for more and more tasks, they will rapidly become as familiar as all the other technologies we interact with every day. This growing reliance on AI will lead to ‘artificial’ intelligence being accepted as ‘natural’.