Companies:

Amazon will come under attack by governments. It is using the brand to expand into more and more domains and leveraging AI expertise to win. People will start to see through the unfair advantage they have in an AI-driven digital world that is no longer flat.

Facebook will face more consequences of unwittingly becoming the platform used to hack democracy by an outsider.

Twitter will go more AI centric and might do a comeback.

Space X will start launching its own low orbit satellites and get into ISP business.

Governments : 

The US will give away more power and dominance to China on the world stage. Some people with influence will start to debate seriously whether China’s model of governance is better than democracy itself for the new world.

Governments all around the world will realize that data is the new uranium and AI the tool to harness that power.

Some governments will realize that AI in combination with drones and robots will make nuclear as a source of military power obsolete.

Disruptions:

Commercial intercity space travel will start to become the serious idea, and some airlines will realize it will disrupt, private and first class to start with.

Some major parcel delivery companies might realize that hyperloop might end up disrupting high-value package transport even before starting to disrupt passenger travel severely.

New disruptive companies will come up in healthcare that will look at health and cure from a new paradigm. A Subscription to heath rather than subscription to medicine.

2018 will be year 1 of fully autonomous cars taking over manual driving over next 20 years. (Taking into account the production capacity vs. time to replace existing cars)

2018 – Possibly one country would realize that there are tremendous value and opportunity in becoming the “Switzerland” of data and pave the path to becoming a prosperous “Digital Switzerland.”

Management :

More and more people who require strategic thinking and decision making skills will realize that software like Facebook are programming their mind for a short-term focus and dopamine high and they are using the same brain ineffectively to make long-term strategic decisions. So they will begin using tools to warn and reduce usage of social media.

AR – coming back :

Augmented reality will start to take off when more and more people realize that there is nothing called base reality and in fact all realities are virtual and constructs of our minds.

In fact, I am convinced that AR would be the bridge step of integrating AI and humans.

By the time it comes to the stage of full integration, there may be new technologies that will give full Brian – AI integration without physical connections to the brain. Sticking a small sticker on the forehead or even hidden away in the hair will be enough.

2018 could be the year 1 for AR to become the tool for real-time integration of AI to human brain via the visual interface.

Wide adoption will happen in about seven years when the AR interface will become invisible and get into a contact lens making it less prone to social stigmatization.

Other predictions:

We might see the exit of Tim cook before the end of 2018
We will see the bitcoin bubble burst this year.

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