[ExI] Gartner's 2013 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps Out Evolving Relationship Between Humans and Machines

[Eugen Leitl]

https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2575515

STAMFORD, Conn., August 19, 2013 View All Press Releases

Gartner's 2013 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps Out Evolving
Relationship Between Humans and Machines

2013 Hype Cycle Special Report Evaluates the Maturity of More Than 1,900
Technologies

Gartner to Host Complimentary Webinar "Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle for
2013: Redefining the Relationship," August 21 at 10 a.m. EDT and 1 p.m. EDT

The evolving relationship between humans and machines is the key theme of
Gartner, Inc.'s "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013." Gartner has
chosen to feature the relationship between humans and machines due to the
increased hype around smart machines, cognitive computing and the Internet of
Things. Analysts believe that the relationship is being redefined through
emerging technologies, narrowing the divide between humans and machines. 

Gartner's 2013 Hype Cycle Special Report provides strategists and planners
with an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of
more than 2,000 technologies, grouped into 98 areas. New Hype Cycles this
year include content and social analytics, embedded software and systems,
consumer market research, open banking, banking operations innovation, and
information and communication technology (ICT) in Africa.

The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report is the longest-running annual
Hype Cycle, providing a cross-industry perspective on the technologies and
trends that senior executives, CIOs, strategists, innovators, business
developers and technology planners should consider in developing
emerging-technology portfolios. 

"It is the broadest aggregate Gartner Hype Cycle, featuring technologies that
are the focus of attention because of particularly high levels of hype, or
those that Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact," said
Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner fellow. 

"In making the overriding theme of this year's Hype Cycle the evolving
relationship between humans and machines, we encourage enterprises to look
beyond the narrow perspective that only sees a future in which machines and
computers replace humans. In fact, by observing how emerging technologies are
being used by early adopters, there are actually three main trends at work.
These are augmenting humans with technology — for example, an employee with a
wearable computing device; machines replacing humans — for example, a
cognitive virtual assistant acting as an automated customer representative;
and humans and machines working alongside each other — for example, a mobile
robot working with a warehouse employee to move many boxes." 

"Enterprises of the future will use a combination of these three trends to
improve productivity, transform citizen and customer experience, and to seek
competitive advantage," said Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner.
"These three major trends are made possible by three areas that facilitate
and support the relationship between human and machine. Machines are becoming
better at understanding humans and the environment — for example, recognizing
the emotion in a person's voice — and humans are becoming better at
understanding machines — for example, through the Internet of things. At the
same time, machines and humans are getting smarter by working together."

Figure 1. Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013 

Gartner Hype Cycles 2013

Source: Gartner August 2013

The 2013 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle highlights technologies that
support all six of these areas including:

1. Augmenting humans with technology

Technologies make it possible to augment human performance in physical,
emotional and cognitive areas. The main benefit to enterprises in augmenting
humans with technology is to create a more capable workforce. For example,
consider if all employees had access to wearable technology that could answer
any product or service question or pull up any enterprise data at will. The
ability to improve productivity, sell better or serve customer better will
increase significantly. Enterprises interested in these technologies should
look to bioacoustic sensing, quantified self, 3D bioprinting, brain-computer
interface, human augmentation, speech-to-speech translation, neurobusiness,
wearable user interfaces, augmented reality and gesture control. 

2. Machines replacing humans

There are clear opportunities for machines to replace humans: dangerous work,
simpler yet expensive-to-perform tasks and repetitive tasks. The main benefit
to having machines replace humans is improved productivity, less danger to
humans and sometimes better quality work or responses. For example, a highly
capable virtual customer service agent could field the many straightforward
questions from customers and replace much of the customer service agents'
"volume" work — with the most up-to-date information. Enterprises should look
to some of these representative technologies for sources of innovation on how
machines can take over human tasks: volumetric and holographic displays,
autonomous vehicles, mobile robots and virtual assistants. 

3. Humans and machines working alongside each other

Humans versus machines is not a binary decision, there are times when
machines working alongside humans is a better choice. A new generation of
robots is being built to work alongside humans. IBM's Watson does background
research for doctors, just like a research assistant, to ensure they account
for all the latest clinical, research and other information when making
diagnoses or suggesting treatments. The main benefits of having machines
working alongside humans are the ability to access the best of both worlds
(that is, productivity and speed from machines, emotional intelligence and
the ability to handle the unknown from humans). Technologies that represent
and support this trend include autonomous vehicles, mobile robots, natural
language question and answering, and virtual assistants. 

The three trends that will change the workforce and the everyday lives of
humans in the future are enabled by a set of technologies that help both
machine and humans better understand each other. The following three areas
are a necessary foundation for the synergistic relationships to evolve
between humans and machines: 

4. Machines better understanding humans and the environment

Machines and systems can only benefit from a better understanding of human
context, humans and human emotion. This understanding leads to simple
context-aware interactions, such as displaying an operational report for the
location closest to the user; to better understanding customers, such as
gauging consumer sentiment for a new product line by analyzing Facebook
postings; to complex dialoguing with customers, such as virtual assistants
using natural language question and answering to interact on customer
inquiries. The technologies on this year's Hype Cycle that represent these
capabilities include bioacoustic sensing, smart dust, quantified self, brain
computer interface, affective computing, biochips, 3D scanners,
natural-language question and answering (NLQA), content analytics, mobile
health monitoring, gesture control, activity streams, biometric
authentication methods, location intelligence and speech recognition.

5. Humans better understanding machines

As machines get smarter and start automating more human tasks, humans will
need to trust the machines and feel safe. The technologies that make up the
Internet of things will provide increased visibility into how machines are
operating and the environmental situation they are operating in. For example,
IBM's Watson provides "confidence" scores for the answers it provides to
humans while Baxter shows a confused facial expression on its screen when it
does not know what to do. MIT has also been working on Kismet, a robot that
senses social cues from visual and auditory sensors, and responds with facial
expressions that demonstrate understanding. These types of technology are
very important in allowing humans and machines to work together. The 2013
Hype Cycle features Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communication
services, mesh networks: sensor and activity streams.

6. Machines and humans becoming smarter

The surge in big data, analytics and cognitive computing approaches will
provide decision support and automation to humans, and awareness and
intelligence to machines. These technologies can be used to make both humans
and things smarter. NLQA technology can improve a virtual customer service
representative. NLQA can also be used by doctors to research huge amounts of
medical journals and clinical tests to help diagnose an ailment or choose a
suitable treatment plan. These supporting technologies are foundational for
both humans and machines as we move forward to a digital future and
enterprises should consider quantum computing, prescriptive analytics,
neurobusiness, NLQA, big data, complex event processing, in-memory database
management system (DBMS), cloud computing, in-memory analytics and predictive
analytics. 

Additional information is available in Gartner's "Hype Cycle for Emerging
Technologies, 2013" at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2571624. The Special
Report includes a video in which Ms. Fenn provides more details regarding
this year's Hype Cycles, as well as links to all of the Hype Cycle reports.
The Special Report can be found at
http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/hype-cycles/. 

Mr. LeHong and Ms. Fenn will provide additional analysis during the Gartner
webinar "Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle for 2013: Redefining the
Relationship" on August 21, at 10 a.m. EDT and 1 p.m. EDT. To register for
one of these complimentary webinars, please visit
http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&resId=2546719&ref=Webinar-Calendar.

 

Contacts

Janessa Rivera

Gartner

janessa.rivera at gartner.com

Rob van der Meulen

Gartner

rob.vandermeulen at gartner.com