The wheels of innovation never stop turning, but keeping up can be a challenge. This year, we’ve seen a flurry of new technologies that are reshaping our world.
A handful of trends stand out as having the potential to be particularly transformative. Agentic AI, which combines the flexibility and generality of foundation AI models with the ability to act in the world, has rapidly become a key focus for experimentation. While quantitative metrics like patents and equity investment levels remain low compared with other emerging trends, it has the potential to significantly alter how we work.
Other trends that deserve your attention include generative AI, which uses sophisticated neural networks to produce human-like text, images and music. Generative AI is already reshaping creative industries at breakneck speed, helping designers and artists to quickly visualise ideas and overcome creative block. Meanwhile, it’s enabling marketing departments to personalise content at scale and automating the creation of product imagery.
Finally, tech tools that enable diseases to be detected earlier in their progression are gaining prominence as one of the most significant innovations in health tech. For example, if pancreatic cancer is caught before it spreads to the lungs or ovaries, it has a 99% five-year survival rate; however, it’s often difficult to identify early on.
Other promising trends include mass-personalisation and micro-moments, where companies tailor their products and services to meet the exact needs of individual customers at exactly the right moment. And 5G, which promises to be 100 times faster than 4G and offer ultra-low latency, is paving the way for a range of future tech applications including smart cities and industrial IoT.
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