NISO Member News
Los Alamitos, CA. | January 18, 2023
The IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS) reveals its Technology Predictions Report for 2023, featuring the top 19 technological advancements and trends anticipated to shape the industry in 2023 and beyond. The annual report by IEEE CS, the world’s premier organization of computer professionals, provides a comprehensive analysis of each technology’s predicted success, the potential impact on humanity, predicted maturity, and predicted market adoption, and includes horizons for commercial adoption opportunities for academia, governments, professional organizations, and industry.
“The past year has continued the path of uncertainty in the global market and advancements in technology are required to rapidly adapt and respond,” said Nita Patel, IEEE CS president. “The 2023 Technology Predictions from the Computer Society provides a glimpse into the future and further helps our members and overall community plan for what’s coming next.”
For over a decade, IEEE CS has been recognized as both a pioneer and leader in providing annual tech predictions. Past predictions were featured in Computer magazine’s December 2019 issue, and new predictions will be featured in the upcoming July 2023 issue.
“This year we have aligned our predictions with IEEE’s mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity,” said Dejan Milojicic, former IEEE CS president (2014) and current Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs. “We made predictions for individual technologies as well as their impact on humanity. This approach informs industry and governments where it is best to invest. Our market adoption, maturity, and horizons analysis, additionally informs academia and professional organizations such as the IEEE Computer Society, where to focus.”
The top 19 technology trends predicted to reach adoption in 2023 are:
- Remote Healthcare & Wearables (B+): Remote healthcare with advanced wearables will enable patients to obtain remote medical assistance and physicians to perform procedures, consult with remote experts, and have access to vital health information
- Augmented Reality (B): Seamless integration between the real world and cyberspace will increasingly materialize.
- Software for the Edge2Cloud Continuum (B): This includes new software for the development and deployment of next-generation computing components, systems, and platforms that enable a transition to a compute continuum with strong capacities at the edge and far edge in an energy-efficient and trustworthy manner
- Open Hardware (B): From open system (OCP) to ISAs (RISC-V) and interconnects (CXL, UCIe) the open-source movement has expanded into hardware.
- AI-Assisted DevOps (B): The traditional DevOps approach will be improved to address the increasing complexity of software systems.
- 3D Printing in Personalized Healthcare (B-): 3D printing in healthcare will evolve towards customized additive manufacturing for individuals.
- Generative AI (B-): In the next few years generative AI will be used more and more, increasing effectiveness and enabling new services. It is also bound to raise ethical and societal issues. Expect strong impact on business (short term), education (long term), and society (medium to long term).
- IT for Sustainability (B-): Technology will evolve from sustainable IT to novel uses of IT for sustainability, clean energy, and a green economy.
- Autonomous Driving (B/C): Self-driving vehicles in controlled environments are starting to gain adoption at scale, backed by strong business cases.
- Digital Distributed Manufacturing (B/C): Digital Distributed Manufacturing will reduce energy and environmental footprints and increase the resilience of supply chains.
- Trusted Computing (B/C): There will be increased public awareness and attention to trusted/assured computation across all industry sectors. Governments will increase focus on legislative actions to ensure that public facing systems can be trusted.
- Huge Graph Neural Networks (B/C): Applications that use huge models, such as chatGPT, have demonstrated a real impact on a substantial set of problems. Graph Neural Networks can represent complex, “real-world” structures. We predict that huge GNN models will widely be used in machine learning.
- Adaptive, Generative Pharmaceuticals (C+): Advances in nanotechnology and AI could shorten the time to vaccine development and broaden their efficacy.
- Autonomous Robots & Brain-Machine I/F (C+): Pervasive uptake of robotic platforms will take place, including as extensions of the human body.
- Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) (C+): Advances in AI will lead to AGI systems that can understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can perform.
- Global Digitalization of Monetary Transactions (C+): Digital transformation of monetary transactions will open new disruptive opportunities in global markets.
- Space ITC (C): As more companies send technology to space, the barriers to entry are decreasing rapidly.
- Sustainable Space Manufacturing (C/D): Space manufacturing and recycling technologies and services will improve the sustainability, resilience, and cost of the space ecosystem.
- Disinformation Detection/Correction (C/D): Improving the reliability of the information in public health, politics, and science will improve public information required for sound decisions from personal to societal levels.
Each technology was graded (A-F), measuring the following: Predicted Technology Success in 2023; Potential for Impact on Humanity; Predicted Maturity in 2023; and Predicted Market Adoption in 2023. The intent was to present the impact on humanity as a function of technological advancement, also qualifying those by relative maturity, market adoption, and positioning in time-to-adoption.
At the close of 2023, the IEEE CS technical contributors for this report will review the accuracy of the 2023 predictions and determine how closely they match up to reality. Check back in December 2023 to access the official scorecard of this year’s forecast.
About This Organization
About the IEEE Computer Society
Through conferences, publications, and programs, the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS) sets the standard for the education and engagement that fuels global technological advancement. By bringing together engineers, scientists, researchers, and practitioners from all areas of computing and at every career phase, the IEEE CS enables new opportunities and empowers not only its members but also the greater industry. Visit computer.org for more information.