1. Peak Google. This one will only appear in retrospect, but I think they hit a peak in the next 10 years and slowly relinquish dominance to a position more like Microsoft. They are no longer viewed through rose-colored glasses. Like Microsoft in the 90s.
2. AI/ML become more entrenched and we start to see "Standard Models" for niche ML tasks that can consistently outperform humans with almost no mistakes. We just had the headline about AI being better than humans at reading mammograms. We'll see models that fully solve problems one at a time until industries begin to look for that ML model rather than solve a problem with more labor.
3. Voice assistants become more ubiquitous, but also more literal. They no longer try to understand your intent, but rather perform rote tasks very efficiently and without cloud (aside from updates/backups/etc). Voice will affirm itself as a viable input mode but lag well behind current modes (keyboard/mouse/touchscreen).
4. Gesture detection continues to flail. Project Soli will create some amazing niche solutions and demos, but not go mainstream.
5. Eye/gaze tracking will find its way to end users and become useful for gaming and some other broad interactions. Users take to it fairly well.
6. A woman will become president of the US.
7. We see a global recession by 2022. It's moderate and causes no major shockwaves, but some 20th century industries are irreparably damaged.
It will accelerate the death of some declining industries like brick and mortar retail, coal extraction and a lot of logistics work (trucking, etc). They will become less relevant and/or automated. They won't die, but will reach new lows and never fully recover.
2. AI/ML become more entrenched and we start to see "Standard Models" for niche ML tasks that can consistently outperform humans with almost no mistakes. We just had the headline about AI being better than humans at reading mammograms. We'll see models that fully solve problems one at a time until industries begin to look for that ML model rather than solve a problem with more labor.
3. Voice assistants become more ubiquitous, but also more literal. They no longer try to understand your intent, but rather perform rote tasks very efficiently and without cloud (aside from updates/backups/etc). Voice will affirm itself as a viable input mode but lag well behind current modes (keyboard/mouse/touchscreen).
4. Gesture detection continues to flail. Project Soli will create some amazing niche solutions and demos, but not go mainstream.
5. Eye/gaze tracking will find its way to end users and become useful for gaming and some other broad interactions. Users take to it fairly well.
6. A woman will become president of the US.
7. We see a global recession by 2022. It's moderate and causes no major shockwaves, but some 20th century industries are irreparably damaged.