Dec 28, 2016 07:00 AM EST By Erwin Castro, UniversityHerald Reporter

It's hard to imagine the growing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in business. In a recent forecast for 2017 and beyond, research firm IDC said that the world will expect something new and big in the coming years. AI is about to get bigger, more affordable, more capable, and more importantly, easier to use.

Check the top AI predictions for 2016:

Voice Assistant tools will get bigger next year
In a recent survey of corporate executives, majority numbers of respondents said AI-powered software like the popular Apple's Siri and the amazing Amazon.com's Alexa is the most used type of AI-powered tools in today's workplace. Many of these AI-powered tools still leave something to be desired in terms of work accuracy, something that a human can't really match.

AI-powered software will take a huge role in next year's business environment
It's not a science fiction movie or story, but it's happening, AI is now taking its new role in the modern business. According to the latest research from Gartner, the AI-powered software will write as much as 20% of business content in a mere two years' time, with areas like shareholder reports, legal documents, market reports, press releases, articles and white papers to be the most likely hit.

AI-powered bots will power around 85% of customer service interactions
Goodbye to customer support services and call centers, and say hello to the new customer service representative- the AI-powered bots. According to recent research works conducted by US-based research firm Gartner, AI bots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020. Given Microsoft, Facebook, and other major messaging platforms have already seen significant adoption of AI bots on their web-based customer service apps, this shouldn't necessarily come as a huge surprise to anyone, it's already expected. AI can help reduce wait times for many types of customer engagements, which will benefit both businesses and customers.

AI to enter the world of autonomous driving and finally take full control of the vehicle
According to a recent study made by IT consultancy firm McKinsey&Company, the impact of self-driving cars will be tremendous, saving an estimated 300,000 lives per decade by reducing fatal traffic accidents. This also means that self-driving effort like that of Uber will finally mark the start of a new era in transportation, according to Gizmodo.

Robots will be smarter than humans
According to Alphabet's Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, robots will be smarter than humans 2029. The Google engineer doesn't see this as being a negative or some sort of life threatening scenario for humans, but just a bold predictions about our futures. Whether Kurzweil's bold prediction is the result of some mind-boggling Matrix-like things coming to reality isn't immediately clear, but some tech pundits and leading IT experts in the AI field believe that major changes to our social fabric are just a few years away.

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