IBM Predicts Five Innovations Coming In The Following Five Years - Printer Friendly version without Comments

Appeared on: Tuesday, December 17, 2013
IBM Predicts Five Innovations Coming In The Following Five Years

Today IBM unveiled the eighth annual "IBM 5 in 5" - a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.

This year's IBM 5 in 5 explores the idea that everything will learn - driven by a new era of cognitive systems where machines will learn, reason and engage with us in a more natural and personalized way.

The IBM 5 in 5 is based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM's Research labs around the world.

IBM predicts that the classroom of the future will give educators the tools to learn about every student, providing them with a tailored curriculum from kindergarten to high school and on to employment. In the next five years the classroom will learn about each student using longitudinal data such as test scores, attendance and student's behavior on e-learning platforms, not just aptitude tests. Analytics delivered over the cloud will provide decision support to teachers so they can predict students who are most at risk, their roadblocks, and then suggest measures to help students conquer their challenges based on their individual learning style.

In a research project with Gwinnett County Public Schools, the 14th largest school district in the US, IBM will leverage big data analytics and learning technologies for population analysis of longitudinal student records. The project aims to identify similarities of learning, predict performance and learning needs, then align specific content and successful teaching techniques to improve outcomes for each of the district's 170,000 students and ultimately increase the district's graduation rate.

Online stores currently have an advantage in their ability to learn from the choices we make on the web.

In five years, IBM predicts that new innovations will make buying local du jour once again. Savvy retailers will use the immediacy of the store and proximity to customers to create experiences that cannot be replicated by online-only retail.

In five years, retailers could rely on Watson-like technologies to equip sales associates to be expert about every product in the store. IBM expects technologies such as augmented reality and the company's recently announced plan to open Watson as an app development platform, will provide shoppers with better in-store browsing and buying experiences.

As mobile devices supported by cloud computing enable individuals to share what makes them tick, their health or nutritional needs, virtual closets and social networks, retailers will soon be able to anticipate with incredible accuracy the products a shopper most wants and needs.

And given their proximity and multiple footprints, stores will be able to offer shoppers a variety of fast pick-up or delivery options, wherever the customer is.

In the newar future, IBM also sees doctors to routinely use your DNA to keep you well. Advances in big data analytics and emerging cloud-based cognitive systems coupled with breakthroughs in genomic research and testing could help doctors to accurately diagnose cancer and create personalized cancer treatment plans for millions of patients around the world. Smart machines will take the output of full genome sequencing and scour vast repositories of medical records and publications to learn and quickly provide specific and actionable insights on treatment options for oncologists.

IBM plans to develop systems that could deliver genomic insights and reduce the time it takes to find the right treatment for a patient from weeks and months to days and minutes. These systems are destined to get even smarter over time by learning about people, their genomic information and response to drugs - opening up the possibility to provide DNA-specific personalized treatment options for conditions such as stroke and heart disease.

Today we have multiple IDs and devices than ever before, yet security is highly fragmented, leaving us vulnerable. In five years, IBM says each of us could be protected with our own digital guardian that will become trained to focus on the people and items it is entrusted with, offering a new level of identity theft protection. Security will assimilate contextual, situational and historical data to verify a person?s identity on different devices.

Today, IBM scientists are using machine learning technologies to understand the behaviors of mobile devices on a network in order to assess potential risk. In the future, security is going to become more agile and contextual with a 360 degree of data, devices and applications, ready to spot deviations that could be precursors to an attack and a stolen identity.

By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 80 percent of urban humanity and by 2050, seven out of every 10 people will be a city dweller.

In five years, IBM says smarter cities understand in real time how billions of events occur as computers learn to understand what people need, what they like, what they do, and how they move from place to place.

Soon it will be possible for cities and their leaders to understand and digest new information freely provided by citizens, knowing which city resources are needed, where and when, so the city can dynamically optimize around the needs of the citizens.

Mobile devices and social engagement will enable citizens to strike up a relationship with their city leaders. This concept is already in motion, for example, in Brazil, IBM researchers are working on a crowdsourcing tool that allows users to report accessibility problems, via their mobile phones, to help people with disabilities better navigate challenges in urban streets.