AI is Coming

During 2017 it was hard to escape predictions that artificial intelligence is about to change the world. In 2018, this is unlikely to change.
Everywhere you look, there's someone trying to add AI to something. And it's all facilitated by neural networks that Google, Microsoft and their peers continued to invest in 2017, acquiring AI startups and launching or expanding AI divisions. Machine-learning has progressed quickly, and it's going to continue improving.

One of the biggest developments as we head into 2018 is the shift from running machine-learning models in the cloud to your phone. This year, Google, Facebook and Apple launched mobile versions of their machine-learning frameworks, letting developers speed up AI-based tasks in their apps.

The way we interact with machines will continue to shift towards voice. Just as Echo and Alexa have invaded our homes, conversational interfaces will become increasingly common when it comes to interacting with technology in a business environment.

According to one report, next year 20% of firms will look to add voice enabled interfaces to their existing point-and-click dashboards and systems. After all it’s the way most of us communicate most naturally – we can generally structure any query in a matter of seconds. As computers have become more adept at understanding us, there’s less need for us to spend time learning their complicated mathematical languages. Natural language generation and natural language processing algorithms are constantly learning to become better at understanding us, and talking to us in a way we understand. Throughout 2018 this will continue to improve and we should get used to robots which we can converse with, within limited parameters, just as we would with another human.

In 2018 we’re hoping researchers and developers continue to push the cutting-edge of machine learning in order to produce computers capable of extraordinary things. The entire trajectory of the human race could be fundamentally changed in amazing and positive ways with the full-scale implementation of AI into our lives. Let’s make 2018 great for humans!