Image credit: successfulworkplace.org
Gartner’s analyst explore digital future and provide the top predictions for 2016 and beyond. The predictions have a ‘robo’ trend focus and deal with the emerging practicality of artificial intelligence and a smart machine-driven world where people and machines must define harmonious relationships.
- By 2018, 20 percent of business content will be authored by machines.
- By 2018, six billion connected things will be requesting support.
- By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in five percent of all economic transactions.
- By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a “robo-boss.”
- By year-end 2018, 20 percent of smart buildings will have suffered from digital vandalism.
- By 2018, 45 percent of the fastest-growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines.
- By year-end 2018, customer digital assistant will recognize individuals by face and voice across channels and partners.
- By 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment.
- By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40 percent of mobile interactions, and the postapp era will begin to dominate.
- Through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault.
Many of these predictions raise the question of who is going to be serving who in the future–not an examination or definition of what will constitute harmonious relationships. The notion of a “robo-boss” is particularly sobering considering how cold and impersonal many of our day to day business transactions are becoming. Technology should be used as a tool to serve humanity and to enhance learning and life in general. The privacy issues aside too many of these predictions point to a future where these roles are reversed and humanity may start serving the technology that we originally created to serve us.
