Seven predictions for the world of technology in 2022

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Everywhere: Digital, or like electricity (as Peter Ng said), AI will not be another thing we do, but will be used by us in most of the objects around us, from cars and phones to TV sets and soon. Everything that goes will be included. This will usher in the Edge AI revolution, where AI is not somewhere in a central server, but embedded in objects ‘on the edge’. As AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous, questions about ethics, responsible AI and interpretability in the use of AI will become more stringent. I hope a major event, the Cambridge Analytica scandal of AI, will happen and bring AI ethics into the common imagination.

For better or metaverse: The metaverse, non-fungible token (NFT) and web3 hype will continue this year, driven by crypto ‘bros’ and even other bored apes. There is essence behind the hype – the rise of the maker economy and the proposed decentralization of the web – but there is also a lot of fluff, and it will likely crash and burn. At the same time, as crypto continues to mature, it will become more mainstream and some of its true potential will be realized. Here’s a specific prediction: the first $100 million of NFTs will be sold this year (unless that’s already done by the time this article appears).

Elon Musk Rules: 2021 was the year of the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, and so will 2022. Musk will continue to reshape the energy, cars, space, transportation and other industries; He might even choose a new one to reshape this year. In doing so, he will not only reign as the tech overlord of the world, but will also give technology a new way of thinking and a new set of rules. He will show how it can be used to remake huge physical and infrastructure businesses. Thus, he will remain the richest man on earth, extending his lead over Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Epidemic ends: This is where I am really going to go out on a limb and say that this will be the year the Covid virus strikes a balance with the human race. The Omicron version will turn a raging pandemic into an endemic like the flu, and we’ll learn to live with it over time with vaccines. Author Laura Spinney, in her 2018 book Pale Rider, states that “the pandemic ends socially, not medically”, and that’s how it will end. However, it will not be the last, as the devastation of our planet may prompt new viruses to consider human hosts.

Rise of Green AI/Software: Cloud, AI, computers and electric cars are highly polluting industries, despite the fact that they are clean and gentle. Building a PC requires 240 kilograms of fossil fuel, training a model for natural-language processing emits as much carbon dioxide as 125 New York-Beijing round trips, and nearly as much electricity as the world’s data centers. consume as much as South Africa does. As this awareness grows, we will see the advent of green AI and software, with governments and corporations beginning to mandate it, as they now do for diversity and inclusion, and environmental, social and governance goals. Expect an announcement on nuclear fusion, a technology that could possibly ‘solve’ the global energy crisis.

Crunch Time: The two biggest crises facing the tech world in 2021 were semiconductors, as global producers struggled with Covid-disrupted supply chains and demand exploded as the pandemic eased, and severe shortages of tech workers as people lost their jobs. Find new ways to work. While the semiconductor crunch will be less, the people crunch will not. Technology is booming, Big Tech is booming, startups are booming and traditional companies are going digital. The supply of technical workers can’t keep up, and the astronomical salaries they pay will not be flagged.

The future of work is here: The pandemic-enforced work-from-home system, the continued rise of the gig economy and the emergence of the ‘passion economy’ have ensured that the future we envisioned for work – work from anywhere, multiple employers, work-life The integration and redundancy of geography – has intensified at present. This has given rise to great resignation and hybrid-work patterns, among other large-scale disturbances. It is expected that this will continue in 2022 as well.

As I have written earlier, the COVID outbreak has forced us to decentralize more or less everything, be it work, retailing (e-commerce), food (delivery), health (telemedicine) or education (home). study from). This great decentralization has set off a trend that I believe will be irreversible, and this is what is driving the huge demand for technology and digital transformation, as traditional companies struggle to adapt.

It was another wise man who said, “Any reliable prediction of the future will be wrong. Any correct prediction of the future will be unreliable.” We will have to wait till the end of the year to find out which one is which of these two. Let 2022 be good.

Jaspreet Bindra is Chief Technical Whisperer in Findability Sciences, and learning AI, Ethics and Society at Cambridge University.