Five emerging trends slated to drive tech innovation

Gartner has identified five emerging trends that are predicted to drive technology innovation for the next decade. Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, described emerging technologies as disruptive by nature, noting that the competitive advantage they provide is not yet well known or proven in the market. The five emerging trends identified by Gartner include Digital Me, Composite Architectures, Formative AI, Algorithmic Trust and Beyond Silicon.

Digital Me

With technology becoming increasingly integrated, people are creating new opportunities for digital representations of themselves, such as digital passports and social distancing technologies. Digital twins of humans provide models of individuals that can represent people in the physical and digital space. Gartner predicts that the technologies to watch include social distancing technologies, health passports, digital twin of the person, citizen twin, multi-experience and 2-Way BMI (brain machine interface).

Composite Architectures

The composable enterprise is designed to respond to rapidly changing business needs with packaged business capabilities built on a flexible data fabric. A composable architecture is implemented with solutions composed of packaged business capabilities. Built-in intelligence is decentralised and extends outward to edge devices and the end user. Gartner advises that to become a more agile organisation, businesses should track composable enterprise, packaging business capabilities, data fabric, private 5G, embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and low-cost single-board computers at the edge.

Formative AI

Formative AI is a set of emerging AI and related technologies that can chance 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 to adapt over time. More advanced technologies can generate entirely novel models that are targeted to solve specific problems. Gartner advises that the technologies to watch include AI-assisted design, AI augmented development, ontologies and graphs, small data, composite AI, adaptive ML, self-supervised learning, generative AI and generative adversarial networks.

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 also helps prevent organisations from being exposed to the risk and costs of losing the trust of their customers, employees and partners. Emerging technologies tied to algorithmic trust include secure access service edge (SASE), differential privacy, authenticated provenance, bring your own identity, responsible AI and explainable AI.

Beyond Silicon

With technology approaching the physical limits of silicon, new advanced materials are creating breakthrough opportunities to make technologies faster and smaller. Critical technologies to be considered include DNA computing, biodegradable sensors and carbon-based transistors.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Feodora