Published on February 9th, 2018 | by Guest

The Top 8 AI Predictions For 2018

2017 was the year Artificial intelligence landed in the consciousness of the general public. Throughout the year it disrupted multiple industries as it fought for its place in our homes, cars and pockets.

Mainstream media became obsessed with the rise of the technology. They popularized terms like: ‘neural network’ and ‘machine learning’, which now sit commonplace in our everyday vocabulary. AI has arrived and is here to stay – But what should you expect from AI in 2018? Here are our eight top predictions.

1. We’ll Use AI To Run Our Lives

People use technology as personal assistants everyday and there are thousands of chatbots, recommendation engines and AI based personal assistants to choose from. As these platforms learn more about us, our daily habits and schedules they will continuously get smarter. Integration of AI personal assistants across platforms will only make smart assistants more useful. For example if you’re still stuck in the office way past 5 then a smart assistant could use your smartphone GPS to confirm your location and suggest what to cook for dinner from the contents of your fridge!

2. We’ll See AI Make Headlines In Healthcare

In 2018, you can expect healthcare industries to step up their efforts to integrate data-driven decision-making in to their practices. With endless amounts of sensitive personal data, this will call for discussions about ethics of AI in healthcare. The most pressing issue will be how to create the necessary controls.

Artificial intelligence has already began to be used in healthcare settings and has been appearing in headlines. The BBC boldly claimed that early diagnosis through AI could save cancer patients. Invisible to patients, AI has improved image recognition algorithms over the last few years.

3. We’ll See More Funding For AI Enterprises

More money than ever before will pour into AI projects following the huge successes that the AI industry saw in 2017. Our prediction for 2018 is that, as the AI industry will continue to develop at a rapid pace CEO’s will begin to take notice. Corporations around the world will see AI as a tool that they need to use in their business and there will be more and more projects to tender for.

4. We’ll All Be Talking To Machines

Amazon reported selling tens of millions of Echo devices during the holiday season in 2017 and Apple’s Siri is going from strength to strength. But other than asking the weather or doing a quick online search most people haven’t got the hang of talking to their devices. In 2018 there’ll be advancements in speech recognition technologies as well as natural language processing. Machines will get better at picking up on intent, emotion and context, which will see friction to talking to machines fall.

5. We’ll all love Chatbots

Chatbots have come along way since the days of MSN Messenger in the early 2000’s. But, users still prefer talking to a human rather than a chatbot, even when chatbots could provide faster and more accurate information. Talking to our devices and machines will become more commonplace in 2018 and this will ease in the idea of chatbots. Chatbots will get better at understanding user’s intent and emotion allowing them to be able to provide more contextual answers. With this improvement in technology we’ll see large companies begin to use chatbots and we’ll all have more opportunity to use chatbot services

6. We’ll See More Cameras In Machines

With the rise of machine learning techniques more machines will use images to learn. In order to use new technology manufactures will begin to build cameras into more machines, even if they don’t have screens. Machines will be able to use low level intelligence about their surroundings to become more useful to consumers. There will be privacy concerns from the public but some of them will be alleviated. New chips that run AI software will be used in machines, this will enable intelligence to be processed locally without sending information to the cloud.

7. We’ll start discussions about guaranteed minimum salary

We won’t see huge numbers of jobs lost to artificial intelligence in 2018 but as AI improves at a rapid rate it will spark conversations about the future of the workplace. Discussions about guaranteed minimum salary are already ongoing in Silicon Valley and in government think tanks. The obvious advancements in technology will see the question emerge as an immediate and important subject that will affect everyone.

8. We’ll see AI Adoption Grow

The fact is that AI isn’t going anywhere and it’s only going to continue to refine itself. Engineers will find even greater uses for it in all aspects of our lives. We’ll see hobbyists start tinkering with used computer parts and components to come up with interesting applications for the technology. AI will take much of the drudgery out of our daily work and personal lives and we predict that 2018 will be another active year of tech advancement.

Tags: 2018, AI, predictions, top