Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels opined that the world is entering where data is abundant, access to it is almost instantaneous, and our ability to make sense of it in new and subtle ways is practically automatic. “2022 will be an exciting year for technology, with it pushing all of us, and our planet, forward in the process,” he added.
Below are his five tech predictions for 2022
Prediction one: AI-supported software development takes hold
Since the advent of the cloud, companies across the world bring new ideas to their customers at scale faster than ever. However, even with this acceleration in product delivery, people still spend a disproportional amount of time in one area of technology: software development.
Software development is a creative process, but one that has many repetitive tasks. In 2022, Machine learning (ML) will begin to play a key role in augmenting software developers’ workstreams, helping them create more secure and reliable code.
ML will free developers from the mundane parts of their jobs, such as code reviews and bug fixes—the undifferentiated heavy lifting of their world—and allow them to focus more on creating.
The same technology will help us write sophisticated systems faster than ever and in ways that open the door to a new class of developers. We will see generative AI techniques increasingly create movies, music, and literature.
Just as importantly, this technology will also start to play a role in detecting fake content, scams, and fraud. 2022 is the year where AI/ML takes on the heavy lifting in the lives of developers.
Prediction two: The everywhere cloud has an edge
The cloud has gone (almost) everywhere. In 2022 the cloud will become highly specialized at the edges of the network. To fully realize the benefits of the cloud in workshops and warehouses, in restaurants and retail stores, or out in remote locations, tailored solutions at the edge will be needed.
“What we will see in 2022, and even more so in the years to come, is the cloud accelerating beyond the traditional centralized infrastructure model and into unexpected environments where specialized technology is needed,” said Vogels.
The cloud will be in everything from trucks driving down the road, to the ships and planes that transport goods. The cloud will be globally distributed and connected to almost any digital device or system on Earth, and even in space.
Prediction three: The rise of smart spaces, especially in senior care
Over the next several years, smart spaces will come to life in several settings, but none with a higher impact than eldercare.
It will be a combination of the simple tasks—from dimming lights, locking doors, and switching off the oven if someone forgets—to the more contextual and proactive like asking questions when normal living patterns diverge and enacting common-sense solutions when necessary.
It will result in taking better care of people. In the case of an ageing population, it means creating a new class of homes so people can stay at home.
Prediction four: Sustainability gets its architecture
In 2022, developers will begin to make sustainability-conscious decisions about the systems and applications they are building. They will seek new approaches to cloud architectures that optimize for the needs of the planet as well as the needs of end-users.
Developers will take an active role in reducing the carbon footprints of their applications. This will happen in a variety of areas, like considering where they choose to run their applications to take advantage of green energy in the grid, considering the time needed to process a task or even specifying the chipset they use.
When operating at web-scale, small savings can scale out to have a large impact. We will also start to see developers further consider the power of switching off resources. “Always-on” is a mantra that many build to, but it comes with a cost.
“When considering the idle resources needed for an “always on” architecture, we may start to see a new mantra emerge that “the greenest energy is the energy we don’t use.” This doesn’t mean we don’t architect for high availability; it just means being more sustainability-conscious in our architectural decisions,” said Vogels.
Prediction five: A new wave of connectivity will bring about a new class of applications
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are set to bring affordable broadband to every corner of the planet. This will change the lives of billions of people as teachers, students, small businesses, and virtually anyone gets online.
Over the next five years, more than 20,000 satellites are going to fan out in LEO. He predicts this will bring a whole new class of applications that will benefit from it.
With ubiquitous connectivity, we start to unlock use cases that simply are not possible today. “Ubiquitous connectivity will take us from intelligent spaces to intelligent cities, intelligent countries, and finally, toward an intelligent world,” he concluded.
