From password-free email accounts to medicine made from DNA: IBM reveals its five predictions for our world in 2018
In five years, IBM predicts cancer will be individually treated at a DNA level
Buying local will overtake online shopping as same-day delivery improves
'Smart' classrooms will identify dyslexia and other disorders immediately
Passwords will be replaced with devices that learn to identify people
Governments will also be able to use data in real-time to help develop cities
In the very near future there will be machines that act just like humans, doctors will be able to eradicate cancers using your DNA and the password will finally die a death.
That’s according to predictions from tech experts at IBM.
The firm’s annual 5 in 5 report, which looks ahead at technology trends has, this year, focused on the development of smarter computers, phones and other machines.
It predicts that ‘everything will learn’ from the data we store online, what websites we visit, where we go and how we act - and this information will be used for good, and not just for advertising purposes.
The report then breaks down the predictions into five categories and predicts that each of them will happen by 2018.
For example, in five years, IBM predicts ‘security is going to become more agile’.
Rather than having passwords for different devices, sites and sevices, all of these applications will be able to talk to each other to give a ‘360-degree view of a person’s data and movements.’ This means these devices will just know who someone is, without that person ever having to identify themselves.
This so-called ‘digital guardian’ will be trained to focus on a person and learn how they behave to then be able to identify any unusual or suspicious activity; making identity theft a thing of the past.
Elsewhere, IBM claims the classroom of the future will be able learn about each student over the course of their education to help them master the skills they need to meet individual goals.
It will be powered by a system of sophisticated computers that study data about students stored in the cloud and will be able to immediately identify learning disorders, such as dyslexia, discover if any students are at risk from failing, or even bullying, and will suggest measures to help these students solve these problems.
One of the more surprising IBM 5 in 5 predictions is that the high-street will bounce back and beat online shopping.
According to the report, ‘buying local will become du jour once again.'
Retailers will be able to combine digital products and services with physical stores meaning shoppers can physically, or virtually touch and try on clothes before ordering them to arrive in minutes.
Services including Shutl are already making one-hour delivery a possibility, and IBM expects this to become even more popular.
In medical terms, advancements in DNA research will help doctors understand how a tumour, for example, will uniquely affect each patient.
Smart analysis will then be able to offer medications or treatments that can best attack that particular type of cancer in that particular individual, while reducing the time it takes to find the right treatment for a patient‘from weeks and months to days and minutes’.
The final prediction made by IBM is about smarter cities. The firm believes that in five years governments and councils will be able to understand, in real-time, how billions of events occur within a city or town.
Computers will learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do, and how they move from place to place and use this information to help develop transport routes, for example, or improve schools.
'We know more now than any other generation at any time has known.
'And yet, we struggle to keep up with this flood of increasingly complex information, let alone make sense of the meaning that is inherent in the massive amounts of data we are acquiring at ever faster rates,' said Dr. Dario Gil, Director, Cognitive Experience Lab, IBM.
'By creating technology that is explicitly designed to learn and enhance our cognition we will usher in a new era of progress for both individuals and for society at large.'
IBM believes that these changes will be fuelled by 'a new era in computing’ that will lead to 'breakthroughs that will amplify human abilities, assist us in making good choices, look out for us and help us navigate our world in powerful new ways.'
