What will drive technological innovation over the next decade? Research and advisory company Gartner has identified five emerging trends it expects to have an outsized impact—“digital me,” composite architecture, formative AI, algorithmic trust and beyond silicon.
“Emerging technologies are disruptive by nature, but the competitive advantage they provide is not yet well known or proven in the market. Most will take more than five years, and some more than 10 years, to reach the Plateau of Productivity [the final stage in Gartner’s “Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies]. But some technologies on the Hype Cycle will mature in the near term and technology innovation leaders must understand the opportunities for these technologies, particularly those with transformational or high impact,” says Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner.
Digital me — Technology’s integration with individuals creates opportunities for personalized, digital representations. These “digital twins” provide models that can represent people in both the physical and digital space.
Composite architectures — Gartner says that a composable enterprise is designed to respond to rapidly changing business needs with “packaged business capabilities built upon a flexible data fabric.” Composite architecture is implemented with solutions composed of these packaged business capabilities.
Formative AI — A set of emerging AI and related technologies that can dynamically change to respond to situational variances. Some of these technologies are used by application developers and UX designers to create new solutions by using AI-enabled tools. Other technologies enable the development of AI models that can evolve dynamically to adapt over time, with the most advanced generating entirely novel models targeted to solve specific problems.
Algorithmic trust — Trust models based on responsible authorities are being replaced by algorithmic trust models to ensure privacy and security of data, source of assets and identity of individuals and things. Algorithmic trust helps to ensure that organizations will not be exposed to the risk and costs of losing the trust of their customers, employees and partners.
Beyond silicon — For more than four decades, Moore’s Law—the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years—has guided the IT industry. As technology approaches the physical limits of silicon, new advanced materials are creating breakthrough opportunities to make technologies faster and smaller.