Is this the year 'weaponised' AI bots do battle? (32)

Is this the year 'weaponised' AI bots do battle?

Technology of Business has garnered opinions from dozens of companies on what they think will be the dominant global tech trends in 2018. Artificial intelligence (AI) dominates the landscape, closely followed, as ever, by cyber-security. But is AI an enemy or an ally? Whether helping to identify diseases and develop new drugs, or powering driverless cars and air traffic management systems, the consensus is that AI will start to deliver in 2018, justifying last year's sometimes hysterical hype. It will make its presence felt almost everywhere

• AI can sift through vast amounts of digital data, learn and improve, spot patterns we can't hope to see, and hopefully make sensible decisions based on those insights. 
• "AI-powered chatbots will continue to get better at conveying information that can help consumers make better, more informed purchase decisions," says Luka Crnkovic-Friis, chief executive of Peltarion, a Swedish AI specialist.
• Customer experience firm Servion predicts that by 2020, 95% of all customer interactions will involve voice-powered AI, and that 2018 will be the year this really takes off.
• "Advances in speech recognition, biometric identification, and neurolinguistics will also mean that as we interact with businesses and brands via voice, our experiences will become increasingly conversational and human-like," says Servion's Shashi Nirale.
• In the workplace, these digital assistants - think of IBM's Watson - will give employees "more immediate access to data" that will lead to "a reduction in repetitive or administrative tasks in their roles", say Javier Diez-Aguirre, vice president of corporate marketing at office equipment maker Ricoh Europe.
• J. Walker Smith, executive chairman of Kantar Futures, agrees, saying that "learning emotional empathy is the final barrier to AI's full-scale market growth".
• Robots to 'take 800 million jobs by 2030'