- AI in Retail
Over recent years, the retail business has become one of the fastest adopters of technology. With the increase in e-commerce solutions and small local stores that are going digital due to pressure from e-commerce companies, technologies such as AI will continue growing. Ecommerce leaders such as Amazon, for example, have become leading players in AI. Amazon is using new models that incorporate AI technologies to sell its products and offer other services. In the coming years, more companies in addition to Amazon and Walmart will continue adopting AI-based systems such as robots that will do things such as packaging, scrubbing floors and organizing products in warehouses.
- There will be more AI-based disease detection and prevention systems
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many manufacturers and researchers of AI systems are now focusing on automated detection and prevention systems. While this might not be new because we have seen drones being used in some jurisdictions to enforce social distancing, other AI-based wearable technologies will likely come up to inform individuals whether they are socially distanced or not. As the coronavirus pandemic continues spreading, there will be more advanced AI technologies that will help in identifying the symptoms and analyzing data captured.
- AI will enhance accuracy in healthcare
Healthcare seems to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of AI. This technology has already shown a promise of changing healthcare in many ways. It is showing the potential of allowing people to receive the best and more efficient care and prevention of diseases. With the promise that this technology is offering, analysis of health records, trends and medical literature will continually become the work of the AI. AI has already shown the potential of identifying breast cancer in its early stages with lots of accuracy. From now on, we are likely to witness operations and surgeries being carried out by AI-powered robots. DeepMind, an AI lab in the UK that analyzed over a million anonymous eye scans, is an example of what AI can do.
- Prediction of natural disasters and pandemics before they occur
The current coronavirus pandemic has taught us many lessons. One of the biggest lessons is preparedness. With the advancement of the AI algorithms, some of them will be able to predict a pandemic or a natural disaster before it even occurs. While the research might have become famous after the pandemic occurred, there has been ongoing work. An example of such AI-based prediction systems is the Toronto-based BlueDot tool that scanned more than 100,000 media and government sources and issued an alert of a possible outbreak in Wuhan, China in 2019. The potential shown by BlueDot has demonstrated the possibility of predicting an outbreak and allowing people to prepare for it in its early stages. We can expect more research in this field in the future, that will yield more accurate results.
As the venture into the AI field continues intensifying, we should expect more competition and better systems in the coming year. Governments, as well as private entities, have already shown interest in this field and are investing billions of dollars. This funding will increase significantly from now on.
