As the AI era continues to unfold, the idea of a future driven by Artificial Intelligence can evoke mixed emotions. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates referred to AI as the "holy grail"  in computer science. On the other hand, and taking a far more apocalyptic perspective, Tesla CEO Elon Musk likened the development of artificial intelligence technologies to "summoning the demon ."
Regardless of our feelings on the matter, artificial intelligence is set to play an increasingly prominent role in our day-to-day lives. Let's examine 9 statistics that speak to how artificial intelligence is set to become one of the most important technology trends of our lifetimes.
In a survey of corporate executives, 32% of respondents said  voice recognition software like Apple 's Siri, Alphabet 's(NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Assistant, and Amazon.com 's(NASDAQ: AMZN) Alexa is the most used type of AI tech in their workplace. Many of these voice-powered AIs still leave something to be desired in terms of accuracy, and it was surprising that voice assistants outnumbered big data in overall popularity with businesses.
Bye bye, call centers and wait times. According to researcher Gartner , AI bots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020 . Given Facebook and other messaging platforms have already seen significant adoption of customer service bots on their chat apps, this shouldn't necessarily come as a huge surprise. Since this use of AI can help reduce wait times for many types of interactions , this trend sounds like a win for businesses and customers alike.
Also from Gartner , digital customer assistants will be able to "mimic human conversations, with both listening and speaking, a sense of history, in-the-moment context, timing and tone, and the ability to respond, add to and continue with a thought or purpose at multiple occasions and places over time." Said another way, digital assistants will know and interact with you like a friend does today, or at least they'll try to.
These 4 tech giants already have significant cloud computing businesses, a trend researcher IDC sees as likely to continue. By the start of the next decade, Amazon.com, Alphabet, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft will control the majority of the market for AI software applications.
According to a study from leading consultancy McKinsey , the impact of self-driving cars will be tremendous, saving an estimated 300,000 lives per decade by reducing fatal traffic accidents. This is expected to save $190 billion in annual critical care and triage costs.
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