As the year 2017 has officially arrived,\u00a0here are some of the trends and big ideas that we can expect to develop over the course of 2017, in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things to quantum computing.<\/p>\n
Two of the surprise breakout hits of 2016 were the Amazon Echo and Google Home – smart virtual assistants that help users do everything from play music to listen to the news. Look for other consumer tech companies to jump on the bandwagon, as tech companies race to own the \u201csmart home\u201d concept. January\u2019s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will likely feature a number of novel home uses for smart, Internet-connected objects that are voice-activated.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of 2016, tech guru Chris Messina predicted that it would be \u201cthe year of conversational commerce.\u201d He was largely correct, as chatbots started to take off, mostly as conversational agents for famous celebrities. Even the White House got into the act, creating a chatbot based on Facebook Messenger to interact with everyday voters. Heading into 2017, expect this trend to really take off, as brands experiment with chatbots as a way of delivering personalized, one-on-one interactions with customers. Chatbots could revolutionize the way we think about customer service.<\/p>\n
2016 was the year that Oculus finally officially released the Oculus Rift to the mainstream consumer and Google released Google Daydream, its version of a VR headset. Apple has lagged behind the curve, especially given the fact that Samsung released its Gear VR at the end of 2014. So expect Apple to finally dip its toes into the VR waters in 2017. Virtual reality seems to be a natural fit for Apple, given the fact that VR content could be easily added to the App Store as a paid entertainment product, right alongside movies and music.<\/p>\n
In Fall 2016, Facebook released a brief demo of what a \u201cSocial VR\u201d experience would look like. It\u2019s essentially social avatars connecting in the virtual world when face-to-face interactions aren\u2019t possible. Facebook has been on an innovation surge of late, announcing product after product (including Facebook live). As a complement to products like Messenger, Facebook could release a VR product that enables two Facebook friends to hang out in the virtual world.<\/p>\n
One big clue could come from all the R&D work that Google is doing with robotics. Clearly, DARPA and the U.S. Pentagon are looking for the next generation of unmanned, autonomous fighting machines that will give the U.S. military an edge in battle and prevent the loss of American lives on the battleground. It\u2019s already clear that both the Russians and the Chinese are working on unmanned, autonomous fighting machines, so it only makes sense that the Americans will try to beat them to the punch. It will be another \u201cSputnik moment\u201d for the world, potentially spurring an even more dangerous arms race involving autonomous weapons.<\/p>\n
Legendary innovator Elon Musk has made some dire predictions about the future of AI, claiming that, if not harnessed properly, AI will lead to the catastrophic loss of human life. That\u2019s a hard prediction to walk back, but he will try to do so in 2017. Elon Musk will change his mind and claim that AI is actually the key to solving many of the world\u2019s major problems, including climate change.<\/p>\n
There have been a number of near-wins, as chatbots have almost passed the legendary Turing Test, including most recently in 2014. 2017 will be the year that it finally happens. This chatbot will be able to have responses so human-like that it will finally meet all the official criteria of the original Turing Test.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already had a preview of what could happen in 2016 when an unprecedented hack of Internet-connected objects led to massive denial of service attacks on some of the world\u2019s most popular websites. Hackers had apparently found a \u201cbackdoor\u201d into Internet-connected devices, giving them the unprecedented opportunity to combine all of these hacked devices into one giant \u201cZombie Net.\u201d These attacks will continue in 2017, and prompt the U.S. Congress to legislate an end to this practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake America Great Again\u201d promises to be a major rallying cry in 2017 as the Trump administration comes into office. During the long and bitter election campaign, Donald Trump failed to win over the Silicon Valley tech crowd, so he will make a daring bid to regain Silicon Valley\u2019s trust by allocating an unprecedented amount of funding into \u201csmart infrastructure\u201d – smart roads, smart buildings, and smart bridges. Trump has routinely denounced the sad state of America\u2019s infrastructure – comparing it to the state of infrastructure found in the Third World – and this will give him a chance to give a high-tech approach to America\u2019s infrastructure problem. It will be \u201chuge,\u201d Trump will say, and he will compare it to the epic quest to put a man on the moon after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.<\/p>\n
One of AI pioneers Ray Kurzweil ongoing quests is to replicate the processing abilities of the human brain. After giving up on approaches like neural nets, he will discover a radically new approach based on quantum computing principles that will make it possible for an inanimate object to have the processing capability of the human brain. He will then begin work on hooking up these objects all over the world.<\/p>\n
As artificial intelligence goes increasingly mainstream, a small Silicon Valley AI startup will attract a billion-dollar valuation and be anointed as the next \u201cunicorn\u201d of Silicon Valley. That will lead to a gold rush to fund AI startups and a rash of VC firms launching AI-themed venture funds to invest in this trend. Uber, after all its experimentation with autonomous, self-driving vehicles and its recent poaching of AI researchers from Carnegie Mellon, will rush to rebrand itself as an AI company — leaving all the tech companies that branded themselves as the \u201cUber of [X]\u201d at a real loss of what to do next. If Uber is an AI company now, does that mean they are, too?<\/p>\n
IBM got the AI bandwagon rolling with Watson, and in 2016 saw Salesforce follow up with its Watson competitor called Einstein. 2017 will be the year that another software company follows up, and given the trend in naming, will brand it as Edison, in honor of Thomas Alva Edison.<\/p>\n
Trump has promised to abolish Obamacare as one of his first acts as President, but he\u2019s been slow to describe what exactly will replace it. He will decide that AI is the best way to revolutionize healthcare. It will start with computers capable of processing millions of digital health records at a time, and continue with plans for AI-enabled doctors and nurses to assist patients, as well as natural language interfaces capable of understanding patient problems and prescribing a potential solution.<\/p>\n
Trump has also promised to build a border wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Someone needs to patrol that vast swath of land and one answer could be AI-powered drones and robots. Mexican immigrants attempting to cross the border will coin a new slang term — \u201cEl Terminator\u201d — to describe these robots, as a reference back to Skynet and the Schwarzenegger \u201cTerminator\u201d film franchise.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already seen some early iterations of what social robots might look like, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has famously embraced the concept of social robots. 2017 will be the year that social robots break the $1000 price barrier and become the \u201cmust-have\u201d holiday gift of the year for kids. We\u2019ve already seen early iterations of AI-powered toys (such as the AI-powered Barbie and the AI-powered dinosaur toy), so it\u2019s only natural to expect anthropomorphic social robots to be the next big thing.<\/p>\n
Based on the above 15 tech trends, it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s a lot to look forward to in 2017, especially when it comes to innovation-based around artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"