It's always hard to accurately predict what will happen in the future (that's why you never see psychics winning the lottery) but we have a few ideas on what we will be seeing in the tech space this year.
The rise of chatbots, self-driving cars, smart assistants and creepy robots are testament to the increasing abilities of Artificial Intelligence. 2018 should see an increase of AI used in our daily lives, from interacting with brands to turning on lights with your voice.
As with any innovation, the level of practicality varies greatly and its success depends on how easily it integrates into our day to day but it’s safe to say that AI is here to stay.
With an increasing amount of Internet of Things (IoT) Devices all around us, we have more data than ever before and are more vulnerable to getting hacked.
With the explosion of the ransomware market in 2017, we expect 2018 to be hit with even more cases similar to ‘WannaCry’ and ‘Petya’ and they will probably be worse. Ransomware attacks are now a big business with people making a lot of money creating the code, so expect more frequent and sophisticated attacks.
Ah Bitcoin, sick of that one mate that brings it up every time you’re at a party? Well be prepared to hear more in 2018.
Cryptocurrency looks like it’s here to stay (for 2018 anyway), we’re not going to pretend like we know what it’s going to do. It could crash and burn or make you as rich as our new overlord Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon).
What we do know however is that there are going to be more and more cryptocurrencies created, with stupider and stupider names.
The amount of data generated by IoT devices is increasing at a huge rate, not to mention data collected by companies such as Uber, Google, Amazon etc. Add to this the potential impact of Blockchain and we’re talking exponential data growth.
So what are we going to do with it all?
Well like most things there are pros and cons.
While it has the ability to reduce our privacy from nosey brands and mean they can target us with more personalised advertising, it can also help improve things like predictive algorithms in healthcare. Every cloud has a silver lining right?
Who knows what will happen in 2018, but at the very least we should get some really cool tech.