• “By 2021, a disruptive tidal wave will begin,” Brian Hopkins, VP at Forrester, in the report. “Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs, with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services.”
• AI will eliminate 6 percent of jobs in five years – Across all businesses, there will be a greater than 300% increase in investment in artificial intelligence

• In banking, AI and machine-learning techniques will be used to model current real-time transactions, as well as predictive models of transactions to prevent frauds

• By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with humans

• By 2021 AR will be commonplace, while VR will remain niche. Tightly blended physical and digital experiences will be the norm by 2021

• By 2021, IoT will drive new levels of customer insight and engagement for some. Specialised IoT software will be readily available from vendors, and they will expand their core software to incorporate IoT

• Another key technology disruptor will by hybrid wireless. The Forrester report states that 5G will be rolling out by 2021, creating a high bandwidth cellular backbone to support IoT devices. In addition, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will expand their capabilities to support IoT devices

• It’s predicted that by 2021, intelligent agents and related robots will have eliminated a net 6% of jobs. AI within intelligent agents will evolve significantly beyond today’s relatively simple machine learning and natural language processing (NLP).

Looking at the effects of the emerging technologies identified in the report, the company says they are “poised to unleash another cycle of raised consumer expectations, changing behaviours, and disruption”. The stakes for CIOs are high, where a wrong investment could result in a company going out of business, but a savvy investment could give an organisation a significant competitive advantage