18 Exponential Changes We Can Expect in the Year Ahead

[Daniel Nenni]

Nice article from MIT Technology Review. Comments?

Some are obvious others are not. Some are conflicting. I couldn't disagree with #17 more. Some have already happened in my opinion. The AI stuff I agree with, absolutely. #11 is my biggest hope. Didn't #13 already happen last year? #15 should include digital media in general. Disinformation is now an artform...

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Where will the trajectory of the tech world, from cryptocurrencies to Silicon Valley culture, take us in 2018? by Azeem Azhar, December 31, 2017

1. International relations, the political economy, and governance will desperately need new design patterns as we enter a new phase of the digital revolution.
2. While Silicon Valley leads, both innovation and scaling increasingly occur across the globe.
3. More money will flow into technology but it will be concentrated at later stages.
4. The AI software stack will continue to diverge from traditional software.
5. Artificial intelligence will be the technology investment priority for large firms.
6. We will increasingly demonstrate how AI is augmenting human capabilities.
7. The discussion on how AI will impact employment will shift from solely focusing on the elimination of jobs to how best to help workers accommodate the inevitable change.
8. Cryptotechnologies will become more important and start to demonstrate their utility.
9. Sordid revelations in crypto-speculation will be outweighed by the wall of money entering the assets class.
10. KITT, the car from Knight Rider, will remain the gold standard for autonomous vehicles.
11. Health care becomes increasingly interesting for entrepreneurs.
12. A novel cyberattack, in terms of scale or quality, will emerge.
13. The U.S. midterm elections will be a focus of systematic information warfare, with the advantage with the perpetrators.
14. Augmented reality will continue to simmer rather than boil.
15. Digital advertising has been invasive for far too long, and this year ad tech will suffer.
16. Crypto-mining’s hunger for energy will overshadow the growth of renewables.
17. Ethics will increasingly drive consumer choice and investing strategy.
18. Buddha, Aristotle, Hayek, and Marx make a comeback.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609868/18-exponential-changes-we-can-expect-in-the-year-ahead/

 

[Bernard Murphy]

Interesting list. Immediate thoughts:
#2 I saw a piece in one of the majors (can't find it now, darn it) suggesting that the big car companies will retake the lead from Silicon Valley in car automation
#4 seems self-evident. This is already well underway
#5 - Up to a point. Deep learning isn't universally applicable and other styles of AI (expert systems, other types of ML) haven't show as rapid advances. There may be a surge in investment, less clear how for how many companies this will pay off
#7 I hope so. I think the eliminating unemployment thing is a storm in a teacup. What will change is more likely to augment human abilities, will take a generation to become widespread and allows time for retarining
#12 Well duh. Of course this will happen - new attack vectors will always emerge
#17 Depends what he means. At an investment level we are already seeing green funds and funds tilting towards stuff like anti-harassment. At a consumer level there are some trends like organic food, anti-factory farming, non-GMO etc. Difficult to feel these are today much more than a new marketing angle, still there is some sense that we consumers respond to some ethical triggers. AI, autonomy likely to trigger more of these but in many cases I expect debate will be initially uniformed by science/fact and more driven by fear, gaming by politicians, special interests. Which won't make it any less of a problem for us in tech.