AI, Blockchain, and the Future of IT in 2020

Northwestern MSIT Part-Time student John Kuk, CEO and Founder of the startup Eopsin, looks forward to what he thinks will be the biggest IT trends in the new year.

MSIT Part-Time student John Kuk looks ahead to what IT trends he thinks will take priority in 2020.

By John Kuk, CEO and Founder of Eopsin, a startup that builds and matches technology teams with opportunities.

It's officially 2020, and with it comes a host of articles looking forward to the coming year. My time in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) program has helped me be able to understand business and technology trends in a new way, so I wanted to leverage those skills to try and look ahead at what is in store for the IT field in 2020. 

As I think about where IT is today and where it is going, I see the new year being about elaborations on technology and concepts that already exist in the world. Specifically, I think we're going to see major evolutions in artificial intelligence and blockchain.

There was a lot of talk about AI and its potential impact on society at the end of 2019 with the release of "Terminator: Dark Fate." The movie — which came out 35 years after the original "Terminator" movie — depicts a smart computer that is able to build an army of killer robots aimed at destroying humanity. The movie may have been entertaining for many, but I don't think we have to worry about killer robots overtaking us anytime soon.

What I think we will see in 2020 and the more immediate future is a world where AI is used much more as a service, rather than a science-fiction type robot. Just like almost everyone has a computer and cell phone available to them, I don't think it will be long before almost everyone has some sort of AI application in their lives. This application could be implanted anywhere, like a cell phone for example, and begin to learn about the world around it. This application could learn your patterns, and as you go through the day, it could try and bring convenience to your life. If you form a habit of doing your most important work from 10 a.m. to noon every day for example, it could learn to automatically block time on your calendar and ignore all calls during that time. 

When I was growing up, television was a relatively new and evolving technology; it was something my parents never dreamed of. My generation grew up with television, and it just became second nature to us. The same thing has happened with the millennial generation and the Internet. My daughter is 12, and she's been exposed to smartphones and tablets for virtually her entire life. If she has children, they may have AI as their common technology. It could become second nature for her children to interact with humans and AI naturally, while the experience for her — and certainly for me — could be completely different.

The reality is that AI is still maturing, but I would not be surprised to one day see stuffed animals produced to include AI. Picture a young girl's teddy bear that is implanted with an AI component. It would learn as the child learns. It would begin to know who her friends are and build a natural language that becomes a source of data and information. Ten years later, it could go back and tell the girl who her friends were when she was 5. It would be like a diary almost come to life. That may sound far fetched, but I don't think it's too far away.  

Similarly, I predict that video games will begin to incorporate much more AI into standard gameplay. Video games have become more cloud-based, and with that came an explosion of collaboration. I think we'll see some type of collaborative project that incorporates cameras that can perform facial recognition to see what an individual is doing while playing. Depending on facial expressions or challenges in the game, the game could incorporate AI to adapt and adjust to make challenges easier or harder reactively in real-time. These games could also provide custom content and potentially bring in other players to collaborate and co-create experiences. 

People think of AI as robots, but that's simply not true. These types of automated AI actions will become more and more prevalent in 2020.

Just as AI will become more prevalent in the new year, I think blockchain will also become a more accepted and practiced technological tool. There is still a lot of confusion about blockchain from people outside of the tech space (to learn more about blockchain, here is a great resource), but let me just say that its potential is vast. I think we'll see people and organizations invest in blockchain much the same way they invest in startups and businesses.

For example, the world of healthcare could use blockchain as a way to seamlessly connect or share necessary patient information across multiple providers and facilities in a way that hasn't been done before. 

The true potential for blockchain that I see, though, is the ability to create transactions and relationships between businesses that previously haven't interacted with one another. Take banking and healthcare, for example. These are two industries that are not routinely associated with one another, but it seems plausible that the two could leverage blockchain to have a more open exchange with one another. 

This is where innovation happens, and that's what excites me about blockchain's potential. Now, more than ever, people are open to using technology to influence new actions and behaviors. New technologies open our eyes to new possibilities.

I see these opportunities thanks in large part to my experience in Northwestern's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) part-time program option. MSIT won't necessarily give you the skills needed to be an expert in AI, but it does give you the mental awareness and understanding to think through technology as an engineer while also considering business needs. I received my MBA before coming to MSIT, and that experience was very business heavy with only a smattering of technology. MSIT has a richness to it because there is a robust mixture of business and technology.

The faculty brings an incredible wealth of experience to the classroom, and the relationships I've been able to build with my classmates have made me a better person, as well as a better IT professional. My fellow students have taught me about blockchain and AI through their own perspectives and experiences, and that knowledge and perspective have strengthened my own understanding of the topics. 

I'm looking forward to the next year and the next decade, and thanks to the people in MSIT, I realize that anything is possible.

John Kuk is the CEO and Founder of Eopsin, a startup that builds and matches technology teams with opportunities. He is also part of IncBuilders, whose goal is to connect startup communities with one another. Kuk also works with Bank of America as part of its Global Markets Risk Core team.

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