The current “Tech Trend Radar” from ERGO and Munich Re covers 44 trends in five topic areas, which we take a closer look at here on //next in a series. We started with our detailed analyses on “Wellbeing” and “Hyperconnectivity”, and now we turn to “Data & AI”: What is this trend field all about – and which individual trends are hidden behind it?
The “Tech Trends Radar 2022” (TTR2022) defines the trend field “Data & AI” as the "home for data-driven technologies and business solutions based on artificial intelligence" (AI). Key applications in this field include, for example
But what has been groundbreaking in this complex field in 2022? First and foremost, “multimodal AI” – a big step forward in making AI-calculated results more and more accurate. For Daniel Grothues from ERGO, one of the two project leaders behind this year's Radar, “AI democratisation” is one of the most significant milestones in recent AI history: “Basically, this is a new term for 'explainable AI' – i.e. the possibility of making AI altogether more accessible and much more widely usable (see below).” You can read a detailed interview with the two project leaders of TTR2022 on its origins as well as on what they see as the most important trends here.
... but still far from real intelligence!
Despite all the recent and ongoing progress in the field of “Data & AI”, it is important for the two experts to make it clear: It will be a long time before artificial intelligence – in this case, according to the TTR2022 definition, it would be “artificial general intelligence” (AGI, see below) – is able to compete with humans on a broad scale. We are talking decades here, if it ever gets that far. This is also the assessment of Mark Klein here on //next: even a four-year-old child is still far superior to even the most artificial artificial intelligence, the ERGO CDO was quoted back in 2020. Which is why the machine intelligence that prevails today refers to a “weak” AI that has been trained for narrowly defined tasks. In contrast to a strong AI, which actually imitates human intelligence. The latter is still dreams of the future – quite clearly!
Details on the twelve trends in the trend field “Data & AI” can be found below, but first let's remember: The study divides all trends into the four different maturity levels:
But which recommendation applies to what?
According to the “Tech Trend Radar 2022”, insurers should implement the following five trends:
Digital Twin: Twins resemble each other like one egg to the other. This also applies to so-called digital twins: virtual images of real objects. We have already described on //next why these representatives are so valuable in the industrial and manufacturing sectors or in urban planning and development: They make planning, testing and optimisation so much faster, more convenient and cheaper. According to the “Tech Trend Radar 2022”, the number of these digital twins will reach “hundreds of millions” in the medium term – a market penetration that should also be highly interesting for the insurance industry through cooperations and partnerships: "adopt!
... let's take a look at the trend field “Cyber & Crypto”: Which ten trends are hidden behind it – and which applications are already in use?
Text: Ingo Schenk
The German version of this article is here: Data & AI: So wird schwache KI immer stärker
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