Elon Musk is trying to protect us. He has been at the forefront of the anti-artificial intelligence movement. In fact, he is considerably concerned with the possibility of rogue A.I. But that type of A.I. may still be a little ways off. The type of A.I. that can rule us in the near future is more parts exciting and less parts terrifying. In addition to A.I., there are other tech trends that are set to explode in 2018, with everyone from the energy sector to the private sector set to benefit from these advances.
Smart Everything
This is nothing really new, right? We have smart light bulbulbs, smart watches, smart thermostats, etc. Well anything that has an electronic pulse, should be put on notice that it will eventually become “smart”. Tech giant Intel predicts that by 2020, upward of 200 billion devices will be connected to the internet. That’s billion with a “buh”. What could possibly be left to connect to the internet? I’m willing to bet we find new items in 2018.
Artificial Intelligence
The aforementioned A.I. will piggy back the momentum it gained in 2017 with videos like this. Most A.I. that has been developed thus far has been developed to know and learn one singular task. In the future, and probably beginning this year, we could see the enormous amount of data that is available some how utilized in A.I. If we are able to collect the data from social media and everyone elses cyber footprint and input it into A.I., we could see a manufactured problem solver that would be able grow and learn at an exponentially faster rate than humans. Then, they take over the world and I get on a Space X rocket and head to Mars with Mr. Musk.
Augmented Reality
Snapchat is probably the most famous company/app that I can use to explain augmented reality. So you know that girl you follow? That one that tells you about how terrible her day is going on a confessional snap chat. She is the one so bummed out but the whole time she has the Snap filter that turns her into a cat on and it’s hard to take her seriously. Especially when the tongue is flopping around every time she talks. That’s basically augmented reality and it’s going to be one of the biggest tech trends we’ll see. Amazon is already on board and some car manufacturers are beginning to dip their toes in the water. In the near future, we will see cars with windshields that use AR to project real-time weather conditions, road conditions, speed, tips and directions. 2018 could see a major bump in AR.
