So where does that leave us, ultimately, when it comes to the future of AI? That depends on your outlook. Media hype and big tech’s advertising machine has set us up for heartbreak when we compare the reality in 2020 to our 2016-era dreams of fully autonomous flying cars and hyper-personalized digital assistants capable of managing the workload of our lives. But, if you’re gauging the future of AI from a strictly financial, marketplace point of view, there’s an entirely different outlook to consider. American rock band Timbuk 3 put it best when they sang “the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.” Artificial intelligence has been a world-beater for the past five years when it comes to market growth and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. The simple explanation for this is that VCs and public investors don’t necessarily care about the big newsworthy AI technologies as much as they do the ones they can profit from. And there are a lot of profits to be made in the overall AI market over the next few years according to most market analysis reports. B2B technologies, such as call center AI, are steadily rising. According to a market report from Research and Markets: We’re seeing similar growth in relevant, related industries across the machine learning spectrum when it comes to narrow-case B2B technologies. Here’s a quote from a Market Watch report on image recognition technology: And, as far as the global market size for all AI technologies is concerned, Allied Market Research makes the following prediction: That’s a massive gain in such a short period, when compared to similar tech markets, and a healthy indication that the AI gravy train is still steaming along the tracks nicely – for those savvy enough to invest in the tried-and-true B2B AI technologies, that is. Quick take: Get your investment advice from professionals you trust, not technology journalists. That being said, everything we can find in the end of 2020 market predictions for next year points to a predictable, universal uptick in AI adoption. As the pandemic forces businesses to invest in AI data technologies to understand an unprecedented consumer marketplace, it’s also reinventing the employee-based technology paradigm through the necessitation of AI-powered remote-working software. We may yet be years or even decades away from truly autonomous vehicles (no matter what Musk tries to tell you), but the market can’t get enough bedrock AI technology. That’s unlikely to change in 2021 or the foreseeable future beyond next year.
