How AI will change your life this year, from medical advancements to using your face as a credit card

The mass distribution of internet-connected devices together with advances in cloud computing and software algorithms mean AI is ready to hit the mainstream like never before in 2018. Here are eight ways how it will happen

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Advances in AI could mean faces will be used instead of credit cards in the future. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:18am, 9 Jan 2018Updated: 8:03pm, 9 Jan 2018

You’ve heard of artificial intelligence – everyone from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t stop talking about it in 2017. But this year, AI will affect your life in tangible ways.

“I believe 2018 is the year that this will start to become mainstream, to begin to impact many aspects of our lives in a truly ubiquitous and meaningful way,” says Ralph Haupter, president of Microsoft Asia.

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The idea that computers have some amount of “intelligence” is not new, says Haupter, pointing as far back as 1950 when computer pioneer Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. “So it has taken nearly 70 years for the right combination of factors to come together to move AI from concept to an increasingly ubiquitous reality.”

Those factors are the mass distribution and use of internet-connected devices, which generate massive quantities of data, and cloud computing and software algorithms that can recognise patterns within data, Haupter says.

Ralph Haupter, president of Microsoft Asia, says 2018 is the year that AI will go mainstream. Photo: Dickson Lee

The development of artificial intelligence will be the story of the coming generations, not just the coming year. But as 2018 gets underway, here are eight ways AI will begin to touch your life.

1. Everybody will have a virtual assistant, and they’re going to be pretty smart