Emerging Trends In Technology To Watch Out For

A great wave of advancements anchored in robotics, self-driving cars, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data is underway. In this era of rapidly accelerating technological advancements, changes within one industry necessarily impact another. And as these technologies move from the fringe to the mainstream, they promise to forever change how we live, work and play.

Breakthrough technologies continue to transform experiences for businesses and consumers alike. At any moment, there are hundreds of small shifts in technology — developments on the fringes of science and society, that impact our lives. Trends are manifestation of sustained change within an industry that leverages our basic needs and desires in a meaningful manner. Let us now map what the future holds, seek out the early adopters, and deduce some seemingly impossible ideas for the future.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Think about AI as the next level of technology that will be integrated into everything you do. This includes learning, reasoning, problem-solving, understanding language and perceiving a situation or environment.

1. Deep Learning
   Deep Learning focuses narrowly on a subset of Machine Learning tools and techniques, and applies them to solving just about any problem which requires “thought” — human or artificial. It essentially involves feeding the system special algorithms alongside a corpus of data, typically many terrabytes of texts, images, videos, speech and the like. And then the system is trained to learn on its own from the information made available.
2. Real Time Machine Learning
   This involves use of continual flow of transactional data and adjust model in real time. Matching customers to the right product as they are looking through an eCommerce website, rewriting content on a website to match the needs of the consumer, real-time fraud detection, and security measures such as authenticating someone based on their typing habits, would soon be made possible.
3. Image Completion
   Image completion would simply mean giving access to the system to skim through enough images so it can patch and fill in holes in the pictures. It would be a great tool for law enforcement and military intelligence agencies to have computers that can assist them in identifying who or what is in the given frame.
4. Natural Language Generation
   Algorithms can transfer data into a narrative using natural language generation. Dozens of organizations, including Bloomberg, and the Associated Press, are using Automated Insights, which mines data and is capable of writing simple stories like financial summaries, sports recaps, and fantasy sports reports. Soon you would see opinion-based articles written entirely by the system.
5. Algorithm Personality Detection
   Marketers would soon have access to algorithms that can access your personality and predict your specific needs and desires. Using your social data, and emails you write to intended recipients, algorithms can predict your success at work, your likeliness of repaying a loan and even your health.

BOTS

A bot is a software application that has been designed to automate certain tasks, such as scheduling or managing basic customer service requests. Most notable among them all, Slack, continues to grow in scale and popularity. Bots within the environment help automate meetings and status updates and more, saving time and increasing productivity.

SMART VIRTUAL PERSONAL ASSISTANTS (SVPAs)

Virtual Personal Assistants like Siri, Google Now and Amazon’s Alexa use semantic and natural language processing, along with corpus of data, in order to anticipate what we would want or need to do next, even before we know to ask. They are being further designed so that you talk, conversationally with them.

Researchers are building them to be able to listen and watch. Soon they’ll know places we go to, people we interact with, our habits, our tastes and preferences, and more. Then they’ll use this data to anticipate our needs. Marketers, credit card companies, banks, and government agencies can harness SVPAs to surface and deliver critical information.

CROWDLEARNING

Crowdlearning is querying our passive data — our mobile and online activity, our public health records, our locations — to learn or understand something new about us. News organizations, marketers, activists, and other social groups, will soon start harnessing data to learn about us.

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR)

Virtual Reality is a computer simulated environment. As a tethered experience, VR is best experienced using a pair of goggles. It can stimulate sensations of being physically present in the scenes a consumer is viewing. And the buzz in this nascent space refuses to die down.

AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)

Augmented Reality doesn’t simulate an entirely new environment, but rather overlays information right onto your field of vision. Pokemon Go’s massive popularity is catalyzing renewed interest in mobile AR integrations.

DRONES

You have probably already seen one in the wild. Drones are now available in an array of sizes and form factors, from lightweight planes and coptors to tiny, machines no bigger than a hummingbird. Harnessing neural networks and artificial intelligence, these drones can make inferences and decisions when programmed to do so. Soon they would be flying on their own.

1. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs)
   Underwater drones with cognitive capabilities, called AUVs are being programmed to function on their own. After giving them a series of parameters — how far to stray, how far above the seabed to move, what to explore and like, these AUVs can be trusted to perform a host of functions from environmental mapping to military support.
2. Drone Deliveries
   In 2016, we saw the advent of commercial drone deliveries. Zipline brought its drone deliveries to Rwanda, where it delivered vital blood samples. In the coming years, we can expect aviation industry and others to catch up with this technology.

GENOMIC EDITING

Genomic editing is a quick-developing, game-changing field promising to influence the future. Mapping the human genome has been one of the most important platforms where researchers have applied sequencing technology to personalize medical treatments for incurable diseases such as cancer.

1. Nanobot Treatments
   Tiny robots capable of delivering medicine only to specific area of the body, or assisting in micro-surgery is the future. In the coming years, a number of nanobots would be made available to the medical community to aid them with treating the patients in ways that were unthinkable before.
2. Precision Medicine
   This approach allows personalized treatment and prevention, allowing doctors to design a treatment strategy using our own genes as guides. In the future, there will no longer be a “one-size-fits-all” approach. With precision medicine, a new form of health care based on data, algorithms, and precision molecular tools will emerge.

SYNTHETIC FOOD AND CELLULAR AGRICULTURE

With a growing need for global initiatives to reduce animal cruelty, the race is on to define the future of human protein consumption, potentially without involving any animals in the process.

Two distinct technological advancements are taking shape —

1. Plant–based proteins are extracted, re-engineered and re-purposed for products that simulate a meat-like experience.
2. Breakthroughs in tissue engineering and synthetic biology are being implemented to grow food like meat, eggs, and dairy in laboratory environments.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs). Audio User Interface (AUIs). Soft Robotics. Imitative algorithms writing pop songs and short films. Virtual reality therapies (VRT) creating multi-sensory environments that trick it into driving biological outcomes beyond the reach of medication. Every single business, industry and government agency is now being affected by the future of technology. And the future is here.

Research Source: Frog Design

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