The Gartner 2018 Hype Cycle takes on the workplace, as the analyst predicts speech recognition will reach the "Plateau of Productivity" within the next 2 years. In the meantime, 6 other technologies should hit mainstream business adoption in 2-5 years.
"The effects of speech recognition can be seen on a daily basis. Consumers and workers increasingly interact with applications without touching a keyboard," Gartner says. "Speech-to-text applications have proliferated due to the adoption of chatbots and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) by businesses, and consumer adoption of devices with speech interactions including smartphones, gaming consoles and specifically, VPA speakers."
The Hype Cycle lists 40 key technologies forecast to impact business performance in the digital workplace in the next 10 years. It classifies emerging technologies that "describe how we will work, the tools we will use, the skills we will develop, the places where we will work, and the workforce culture that we will develop."
First on the list of technologies set for mainstream adoption in 2-5 years are chatbots and virtual assistants (VAs). Such technologies represent a value-added implementation of speech recognition by listening and observing behaviours, building and maintaining data models, and predicting and recommending actiions. Gartner recommends businesses start adoptiong AI to interact with both customers and employees now, because conversational interfaces are increasingly becoming a standard in help desk and customer service situations.
According to the Gartner 2018 CIO survey 38% of organisations plan to implement or are actively experimenting with conversational interfaces (including chatbots). Customer service represents the main implementation of chatbots, but the technology can also find use in application interfaces, helping stimulate onboarding, training, productivity and efficiency in the workplace.
Augmented analytics and personal analytics are also set for the mainstream, being means to turn everyone into "citizen data scientists." Augmented analytics uses augmented machine learning to transform how data is developed, consumed and shared, and Gartner predicts citizen data scientists will produce more advanced analysis than data scientists by 2020.
Citizen data science enters the Hype Cycle in 2018. Gartner describes it as "the foundation of next-generation analytics," and will make data science and machine learning insights more accessible in organisations. Further boosting citizen data science is the increasing automation of data science tasks, bringing about more productivity and broader usage by citizen data scientists.
Adaptive learning platforms, a means to adjust the way instructional content is presented according to user preferences and responses, is on the way to the "Through of Disillusionment," before reaching the Plateau of Productivity in 2-5 years. The technology does support and supplement workplace learning, but is difficult to implement, and as such organisations need to find faculty champions, incentivise the faculty and make sure they have broad buy-in for such products.
