In a world where technology is constantly moving forward, it is important for IT leaders to keep up with new and trending topics that may not have existed even 5 years ago. Here are 3 that are trending in 2018.
1. Voice Recognition Software
A few years back, Siri, and similar voice recognition software, was common, but unreliable. The technology was still developing and it was a game of chance if the software could correctly type a text that you told it to type. Today, the technology has significantly improved and continues to improve as updates are implemented. A recent test stated that voice recognition software has an all-time low error rate of 5.1%, making it more accurate than even human transcribers.
2. Social Media Privacy
Social media is constantly changing, growing, and updating. But it is not just the user interfaces that are changing — so are the privacy settings. With features like GPS locating becoming increasing popular, account settings to access these applications are becoming more personally invasive and in-depth. Social media’s plethora of young users who grew up with social media are innocently sharing their personal information with little to no thought of repercussions. Businesses have to be wary of the privacy information and settings they may be sharing using social media apps.
3. Artificial Intelligence
We are not yet on the cusp of artificial intelligence (AI) fully taking over a human being’s job, but it is beginning to contain the technology to take over parts of those jobs. AI is likely to face growing scrutiny in the coming years as algorithms improve and become more accurate. For example, there is AI in progress that will allow for algorithms to diagnose common, uncomplicated diseases and are predicted to do this both faster and more accurately than a doctor. However, the algorithms still have the potential to be wrong or give biased diagnostics. These are the types of situations that growing AI will face growing scrutiny for as well.
There is no way to know exactly how much these areas of technology will continue growing in 2018, but we expect it to be a lot. Voice recognition software has already made its way into our cell phones, our cars, and even our TV remotes. It will be interesting to see where it makes its way to next. With social platforms constantly updating and growing, privacy and security will become increasingly important in the coming years. The improvement of artificial intelligence will be followed by increased criticism, as it can be an intimidating topic to those outside of the field.
