Emerging Technologies

The relationship between the topics of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) is highly discussed as of late and for good reason.  If you examine the research, whitepapers and articles, the applications space for these two emerging technology areas seem nearly limitless. Some applications seek to turn silicon into experts while other simply want to eliminate the common mistakes all of us make from time to time. Two years ago, technology analysts at Gartner published a piece titled, “How to build a business case for Artificial Intelligence.”  If you are working on an AI or ML project, the article is well worth reading.

LINK: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-build-a-business-case-for-artificial-intelligence/

Recently a rather innocent and quite interesting question was posed to a group of AI/ML practitioners. Or so I thought!  Is ML just a subset of AI or is it a separate and distinct area of technology, all though related? A rather spirited debate ensued and no mutually agreed upon answer was reached. So, at this point since there are separate market research reports, we should probably follow their lead.  A study conducted by multiple industry analysts concluded that the global artificial intelligence market has a projected compound annual growth rate of slightly over 35% to 46% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a global market worth over $390 billion USD by 2025 at the high-end.  In a separate estimate, the global machine learning market was projected to have a CAGR between 30% and 43% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a ML global market worth around $126 billion USD by their 2025 time-estimate-box.  Once again keeping with the common theme of emerging technologies, those are clearly a robust market growths resulting in a large amount of money.

The value of an intelligent system (IS=ML+AI) that learns on its own and can eliminate even a fraction of common errors would be significant. However, along with all the potential value there is a dark-side.  There seems to be a growing amount of fear circling AI and ML.  So call it the fear of the unknown around machine learning and artificial intelligence.  In my recent PMI webinar on “Addressing the Tech Savvy Board” one slide covered: Protesters demonstrated against dangers in development of artificial intelligence and robots. They chanted ‘HUMANS are the FUTURE’ and had signs that said ‘the future is us – STOP ROBOTS!’  There have been reports of protests around the AI and ML subject matter. There are a number of concerns and risks about the growing capabilities of AI and ML as well as many other emerging technologies that we should all monitor and keep ourselves as professionals up-to-date!

Rapidly-evolving emerging technologies have begun to change the future of work.  They have begun to eliminate repetitive tasks.  The essence of emerging work is moving away from focusing on task and activity completion.  Instead, future work will demand problem-solving, interaction with humans and machines, digital communication, listening, analysis, and creative design will all be in dominance when it comes to future work. The emerging job pool will demand creative decision making, as well as the ability to dynamically think, create and strategically think.  The true impact of emerging technologies requires organizations to go well beyond looking at their financial contribution to the bottom line and efficiency and look at their demand for organizations to create the workforce of the future that they will without question require?

The filmmaker Tiffany Shlain said via Pew Research, “The skills needed to succeed in today’s world and the future are curiosity, creativity, taking the initiative, multi-disciplinary thinking and empathy.”

Multiple emerging technologies stand poised to alter many of the business and operational models currently in place and establish new models, industries, markets and expectations.  This will dramatically change the way organizations operate and the way business is conducted as well as what customers are likely to expect and demand.  A survey of professionals determined that only about 5% had initiatives underway and felt they were prepared. Clearly, organizations and professionals must aggressively adapt or risk becoming irrelevant.

The 1,365 cryptocurrencies now have a total value that tops $600 billion USD.  The first of January this year there were 617 cryptocurrencies with a total value of $17.7 billion USD.

Now that is growth - where it goes from here is anyone's guess.

This blog has had multiple entries covering the dramatic emerging technology known as cryptocurrencies.  This topic will continue the coverage.  On November 24th, 2017 the 1329 cryptocurrencies had a total market cap of $265,121,953,652.  The total value of cryptocurrencies was only about $20 billion in January of 2017.   Now that is dramatic growth!