In the next five years, we expect to see even more advances in automation and AI technology, with new applications and use cases emerging across industries. To keep up, you must stay abreast of the key trends and developments. Here’s what to watch for in the coming years, as well as some of the AI concerns and challenges that businesses will face.
Five AI technologies businesses need to know
Even over the next five years, we’re nowhere near the AI advances we’ll see in our lifetimes. Famed futurist Ray Kurzweil of Google predicts the 2030s will introduce an era of human-machine synthesis. Imagine Midjourney plugged right into your neo-cortex, building on-the-spot visuals based on whatever’s playing through your imagination. The stuff of SciFi blockbusters is coming, but here’s what we can expect to lead the next half-decade.
Gesture controls
Gesture controls are helming a buttonless, switchless, and touchless future.Instead of communicating with computers through clicks and keystrokes, we’ll issue our commands through blinks and waves. All kinds of products are already honing their expertise in distinguishing your human form from the ambient background. BMW drivers can send commands to their infotainment systems with a peace sign or a Vulcan-like salute. The technology is already quietly lodged in most smartphones—depth-sensing cameras are the magic trick glowing up our selfies to magazine cover quality. Coming soon, we’ll be able to live the Minority Report promise and control industrial machines and robotic surgeons without even touching them.
Computer vision
Computer vision can chuck defective products off the assembly line or help cars avoid pedestrians. You’ll also find these virtual eyes inside document automation tech like ProcessMaker IDP. In the office, AI teams up with optical character recognition to help computers read documents. Try it out for yourself: snap a pic of a plane ticket or book cover with a late-model iPhone. In your photo album, you can highlight the photo’s text and copy it into an email or a note. Using platforms like ProcessMaker IDP, you can scale this concept dramatically. The words and numbers hiding in your vault of contracts, HR records, and meeting minutes spring to immediate use, reducing manual swivel-chair data entry tasks.
