It’s now generally accepted that artificial intelligence (AI) has graduated from an emerging technology to a mainstream tool. This technology has been tried and proven and is delivering value in a range of use cases across a wide variety of industries – but what’s the future of AI in enterprise applications?
The following industry thought leaders share their insights on the status of AI in 2021 and trends that will set the direction for AI advancements in the next few years.
AI Will Become Cheaper and More Accessible
“Software vendors and AI providers such as Google and AWS will continue to strip the complexities out of operationalizing AI by using low-code techniques. In 2021, the use of broadly applicable and high-value use cases like AI-enabled document processing will become widespread.” Michael Beckely, CTO and Co-Founder of Appian
AI Expands from “General Purpose” to Niche Uses
“While AI investment continues to grow in the enterprise, businesses are reevaluating their tech stacks to accommodate niche AI, rather than ‘general purpose’ black boxes that claim to do everything. Niche, perfected use cases that solve specific problems are going to take budget priority, rather than automation which promises to do everything.” Viral Bajaria, CTO and co-founder of 6sense
“With the confluence of computational power, internet-scale data and modern machine learning algorithms, we have broken remarkable new ground with AI over the past few years. In the coming years, we will enter an expansionary era, where a long tail of commercial use cases will be prototyped, packaged and productionized — either to enhance existing products and services or to create entirely new ones.” Dave Costenaro, Chief Data Officer at Capacity
AI Enables Connected Virtual Experiences
“Connected virtual experiences will be transformed in the coming year. Holography and volumetric technologies will take the main stage, growing from background ideas and experiments to powerhouse platforms, generating real content and services, through which ISVs can position themselves to lead this evolution. Utilizing neuro-adaptive AI technologies, the automation of volumetric content will eventually lead to positioning holograms as the new form of visual media. Applications will be both business- and consumer-driven, and will transform daily communications, development platforms, and B2B infrastructures using our preferred personal devices.” Taylor Scott, Founder and CTO, IKIN
Disaster Prediction
“AI remains supreme in trending technologies, as will machine learning and big data analysis. In 2021, there will be a demand for AI-based algorithms to predict the spread of infections and model potential reactive scenarios, much like the global pandemic of 2020.” Otakar Nieder, Senior Director, BISim
Will You Be a Part of the Future of AI?
Although AI’s use is now more widespread and accepted, the technology is still at the beginning of its lifecycle.
Gartner ranks “AI engineering” among its top strategic tech trends for 2021, as organizations seek to overcome challenges, including maintaining, scaling and governing these projects so that they can deliver the full value that enterprises seek. AI engineering brings AI into the DevOps process and enables combining multiple AI-powered solutions. Gartner adds that organizations are also demanding more transparency from AI solutions, looking for outputs that can be explained and that comply with company, industry, and regulatory requirements.
AI’s potential as well as market demands for new features and capabilities are creating opportunities for software developers and ISVs – and the opportunity has not passed you by.
“While AI software is always in development, we won’t see exponential AI expansion for another five years,” Nieder says. “Instead, we will see gradual evolution in solving complex problems, but dramatic development solutions won’t be expected until 2025.”
Where do you see yourself in the next four or five years? 
