IT will become seamlessly woven into all facets of people's lives, with online and physical activities valued equally. In this "online-first society," people, companies and governments will realize the value in blending these activities to improve productivity, solve social problems, develop disruptive scientific solutions and maximize growth.

Competition will drive service providers to deliver tailored experiences based on each customer's context, time and location. This trend toward personalization will come into conflict with online user privacy and security concerns. Service providers will have to address these personal-ID issues to enable personalization while protecting users' privacy.

IT and society will come into conflict as the pace of technology adoption outruns efforts to solve issues that may arise from it. AI-related issues and growing online crime will endanger technological enhancements. Service providers will need to build trust by collaborating with governments to establish and implement new norms.

The continuing growth of AI has led to advancements in increased model size and performance. These innovations are being applied to commodity AI research. Technologies supporting new AI uses will emerge, including efforts to improve learning data preparation. AI will evolve from a purpose-built tool to a broader exploratory technology.

As AI dramatically increases hardware and network performance requirements, it is driving innovations in miniaturization, new materials and processing methods – and a move to purpose-built, software-specific hardware designs. In supporting these challenging innovations, cloud service providers will develop expertise and lead the way on best practices.

Competition among service providers will focus on delivering differentiated customer experiences through software. Manufacturers will rely on software to increase product value and accelerate deployment. Accordingly, companies will seek AI tools to increase productivity and new organizational structures to drive continuous improvement.

Data collection and analysis are essential for effective planning and decision-making in an increasingly data-driven society. As this trend accelerates, technologies that integrate data and perform cross-sectional analysis will improve, as will technological counter-measures to protect privacy.

IT-based simulation has become increasingly accurate, expanding its application in automobile design, drug development and other fields. AI will make it easier for simulations to mimic reality while helping reduce calculations. Finally, by supporting the discovery of new materials and proteins, AI will enable new paths in research and development.

Technologies that capture human work and automate those tasks are proven to increase productivity for remote workers. By enabling AI to learn as an apprentice does by observing a master – and eliminating the need for step-by-step programming – these technologies are bringing AI to new applications and automation opportunities.