Three predictions for AI in 2018

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the hottest topics at the moment, and most organisations have already incorporated some of its capabilities into their processes and designs.

If your first thoughts are ‘Skynet’, you may not realise how prominent AI is in our everyday lives. If you’re not entirely sure what AI is, TechTarget sums it up quite nicely: “Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence of machines”. AI has grown significantly in the last two years, and will most likely increase even more in the years to come. According to IDC, the AI market will grow to more than $47 billion in 2020. 2016 and 2017 has brought some interesting AI trends, such as language understanding and reinforcement learning. These are our AI predictions for 2018:

More companies will make use of machine learning

Machine learning consists of teaching a machine or computer system how to do a particular thing without being explicitly programmed. According to a survey by SoftServe Inc, machine learning is set to go mainstream by 2018. The survey also states that the financial sector will make the most use of machine learning as they’ve already adopted machine learning technologies. Companies like Amazon and Google offer machine learning platforms which have a number of AI services that will come in handy for most organisations, including image recognition, a deep-learning-driven text-to-speech (TTS) service, and a natural language and speech recognition program. Certain companies may use internal data and create their own machine learning platforms.  

AI will change the UX platform

The effects of AI technology will essentially change the role of the designer, which will bring a new set of opportunities and challenges. UX teams usually turn to traditional metrics and tools in order to understand and improve a system. However, with the rise of AI, UX designers now have access to actionable data which will make it easier to optimise the user experience. As users expect a more personalised experience, UX teams might find themselves using AI to understand and analyse human behaviour patterns when creating new mock-ups. Designers will have to become more data-savvy if they want to meet users expectations in the age of customisation.

Natural language learning will improve

Programs like Alexa, Cortana, and Siri misunderstand words all the time – that’s because machines process information differently to humans. Since language is so complex, language learning might take a while, but we predict significant improvements in 2018. You may have heard that Facebook’s AI created its own language. With machine learning algorithms, Facebook’s chatbots deviated from their usual script, and started conversing in an entirely new language – without human input. So if we don’t want the real life version of I, Robot, we’re sort of relieved that language learning is growing at a steady pace.

With technology evolving every day, businesses have to keep up if they want to stay competitive. Cloud application development is a growing trend, and it’s predicted to double to $101 billion by 2020. If you want to incorporate AI or IoT into your business strategy, we can create and design business applications that will position you as a key player in the digital market.