Artificial Intelligence is expanding and IT industry is aiming to reap the maximum benefits. 

Certainly, the year 2020 is not exactly what anyone expected. The COVID 19 and the ensued economic crisis has changed the landscape of the organizations working. While many enterprises had to retract their hands from major projects with heavy investments, the other big organizations had to halt their operations to balance out the budget in economic crisis. The home became an office, thus pushing organizations to promote teamwork when employees work remotely. Many organizations like Apple, Amazon and Reliance saw the past seven months as an opportunity for a lucrative business. And other organizations like Twitter and Microsoft weighed the option of making remote work, a permanent norm in the company. Undoubtedly, there has been little impact on the functioning of IT companies, with the unprecedented COVID 19 situation. But a major shift has been observed in the digital transformation amongst the industry. 

Technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Cybersecurity, which were still in the evolving stage, over the past few years, have become the savior of IT organizations in this pandemic. AI-subsets like cloud computing and cybersecurity enhanced the working of IT organizations. Moreover, the adoption of AI in businesses and enterprises has caught momentum. Not only consumers but the vendors or providers of these services are at a huge advantage with these technologies. The technology is expanding and organizations are aiming to reap the maximum benefits. 

Daryl Plummer, renowned VP Analyst says, "Technologies are being stretched to their limits. Nontraditional approaches will enable the next rebound of innovation and efficiency."

The Gartner has predicted five new trends in IT that will shape the future in 2021. 

DNA Storage Becomes a Reality

DNA storage is an integrated information storage technology used for writing large amounts of digital transformation in DNA using an enzyme-driven, sustainable, low-cost approach. Due to its durability and density, the genetic material DNA has garnered the interest of industry leaders to be used as an alternative for digital transformation instead of silicon-based storage media. According to Harvard University, its four-letter nucleotide code has the potential for binary digital coding which is otherwise done by computers and other electronic devices to represent any letter, digit or another character. The Gartner report states that 30% of digital business will mandate DNA storage trials, addressing the exponential growth of data poised to overwhelm existing storage technology. This will be extremely crucial for not only storing the data but also for keeping it safe. The DNA storage will assist in storing the binary digital data in the double helix of DNA, thus transitioning the binary coding into coding that fits in the human DNA strand.

Farms and Factories Face Automation

The novel SARS CoV-2 pandemic has significantly contributed to the adoption of technologies across farmlands and manufacturing units. With its ability to emulate human behaviour, it has eliminated the requirement of physical presence by humans to monitor operations. Moreover, with its robustness and accuracy, factories and farms are already adopting it to monitor the field and working area, as well as picking, packing and distributing products. Additionally, it has tasked into finding the loophole between existing operations; and bridging the consistent gap between machines and humans. The Gartner report states that this automation trend will further pace up in the year 2021. By 2025, customers will be the first humans to touch more than 20% of the products and produce in the world. 

The report cites that, "COVID-19 has acted as an accelerator, driving the industry to find new and improved ways of getting food and products to consumers".

Record Work Conversation Drives Change

One of the major drawbacks of adopting technology is that it remains a threat to privacy over a certain extent. With digital transformation, the world has already witnessed incidences when people's privacy has been infringed. Be it in the form of facial recognition system to be deployed with draconian laws, or data getting leaked from application-based software that stores the information of patients in a healthcare set-up, the examples regarding the invasion of privacy are many. Human rights group have been extremely skeptical about this attribute of technology, and have warned big tech giants and countries to monitor its ethical use. 

The Gartner report cites that every piece of technology is now recording conversations, making privacy as an illusion. It has predicted that by the year 2025, 75% of conversations at work will be recorded and analyzed, enabling the discovery of added organizational value or risk. It emphasizes that the organizations need to be more cautious about the collection of data, its analysis and the usage of collected data to improve the employee experience. 

CIO's become Chief Operating Officers (COOs)

Though technology emulates human behaviour, it becomes imperative to monitor humans that are developing these technologies. It also becomes necessary that the successful deployment of these technologies in organizations must be monitored. In organizations, where the technology is still getting adopted, this job lies in the hand of Chief Information Officer, who also monitors the IT operations. In order to drive digital acceleration throughout organizations, the role of CIO will be altered to COO. The Gartner report states that "As a "COO by proxy," the CIO will take on the organization-wide role and begin to close the gaps between what the technology can do, what the business can do and what the business wants to do. "

The report estimates that by 2024, 25% of traditional large-operating enterprise CIO's will be held accountable for digital business operational results, effectively becoming COO by Proxy. 

Malicious Content Takes Over

Undoubtedly, an area which cannot be ignored while using internet and service networks is the malicious content that organizations and employees are subjected to daily. With the social media presence of almost every organization and online operations every day, this malicious content can become unnerving and a threat to the security of the organizations' system. Moreover, it can disrupt the employee-client relationship. To thwart the impact of malicious content, content moderation is a feasible option that can be deployed by organizations. The report predicts that by the year 2024, content moderation services for user-generated content will be surveyed as a top CEO priority by 30% of large organizations. 

Outlook

The year 2021 will see extensive reformation amongst the industry. With the changing geopolitical landscape, the fate of AI technology will be significantly altered. However, one of the major challenges that the organizations need to be looking out is to bridge the dearth of AI-talent. It is a known fact that the industry is facing a crisis of AI-handlers. The organizations need to be more enthusiastic in constantly training their employees about this evolving technology so that operations cannot be disrupted.