As the end of the year looms over the horizon, it's time to take a look forward and mull over the next big thing in technology. Like any year before, 2017 will bring its own problems and solutions, shaping up both the way we use and think about technology. So without further ado, take a dive into the future and check out some of the most exciting tech trends to look forward to in 2017. With forecasts predicting its growth into a $30 billion market as early as 2020, much has been said about the bright future of virtual reality. Although the technology remained on the verge of mainstream culture throughout most of 2015, things finally started to pick up over the last 12 months – and it seems this time around VR might legitimately reach the masses next year.

In the retail insurance space, consumers are more connected than ever, via a multitude of devices and through multiple platforms. This has two consequences: first, consumers increasingly expect a much better, smarter service. "People are frustrated with a clunky process for buying insurance, and want an easier and quicker process through simple digital channels," says John Salmon, a technology partner at Hogan Lovells. Second, a larger proportion of consumers fall into Generation Y or the millennial generation: these individuals are less likely to own property or cars, are less attracted by life assurance and are looking for more tailored cover they can buy easily and quickly. They are attracted by the sharing economy.

On Tuesday, the US government continued a national conversation on the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce. The new White House report, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy, serves as a follow-up to its October report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, which looked at the role of government in the development and implementation of artificial intelligence. It's an effort by the US government to address the huge impact automation is currently having on jobs--which promises to be felt more deeply as artificial intelligence advances. The report explores the history and impact of automation on the economy, and looks at jobs that could be lost or gained from artificial intelligence. It also outlines three policy strategies meant to help prevent automation from taking jobs away from humans.

A Queensland startup has celebrated a new deal with a major European customer after it perfected new deep learning technology that recognises images beyond simple shape and texture matching. TrademarkVision's deal with the European Union Intellectual Property Office this month comes after a successful beta test that saw around 1,000 trademark image searches conducted each day. The EUIPO becomes the first governmental agency to take up the technology, although the terms of the contract were not disclosed. In the past year, the company has been working on deep learning technology to take its software to the next level of intelligence, and the move has borne fruit in a spectacular way with the EU deal. "We've focused on machine learning techniques so the system can recognise objects in trademarks and logos much like humans do. Despite the wide variety of ways humans pictorially depict objects in logos, deep learning has helped to solve this semantic challenge in a quick and robust way," said TrademarkVision founder and chief executive Sandra Mau.

Each of these trucks is the size of a small two-story house. None has a driver or anyone else on board. Mining company Rio Tinto has 73 of these titans hauling iron ore 24 hours a day at four mines in Australia's Mars-red northwest corner. At this one, known as West Angelas, the vehicles work alongside robotic rock drilling rigs. The company is also upgrading the locomotives that haul ore hundreds of miles to port--the upgrades will allow the trains to drive themselves, and be loaded and unloaded automatically.

Artificial intelligence is changing and improving the ways we manage our money. Research suggests Australians are ready to embrace fintech banking solutions, and the launch of three new London-based chatbot startups may be a sign the rest of the world is gearing up for a revolution too. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been rapidly progressing over the past two decades, with machines reaching and exceeding human performance on an increasing number of tasks. Just this week, the White House released a report entitled Preparing for the future of Artificial Intelligence, which describes the ways in which AI has and continues to yield new opportunities for progress in critical areas such as health, education, energy, and the environment. Another important area of business, ripe for disruption, is finance and banking.

At the Four Seasons hotel in South Korea, AlphaGO stunned grandmaster Lee Sodol at the complex and highly intuitive game of Go. Google's artificially intelligent system defeated the 18-time world champion in a string of games earlier this year. Backed by the company's superior machine-learning techniques, AlphaGo had processed thousands and thousands of Go moves from previous human-to-human games to develop its own ability to think strategically. The AlphaGo games, watched by millions of viewers on YouTube, revealed the ever-increasing power and progress of AI. This contest between man and machine was not the first of its kind.

Orange is a component based data mining and machine learning software suite written in the Python language. It is an Open source data visualization and analysis for novice and experts. Data mining can be done through visual programming or Python scripting. It has components for machine learning. There are add ons for bioinformatics and text mining.

On the west coast of Australia, Amanda Hodgson is launching drones out towards the Indian Ocean so that they can photograph the water from above. The photos are a way of locating dugongs, or sea cows, in the bay near Perth--part of an effort to prevent the extinction of these endangered marine mammals. The trouble is that Hodgson and her team don't have the time needed to examine all those aerial photos. There are too many of them--about 45,000--and spotting the dugongs is far too difficult for the untrained eye. Deep learning is remaking Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Advanced analytics and other emerging technologies are revolutionizing the way governments and public service agencies are trying to address citizen demands, helping to overcome persistent challenges such as regulatory compliance, outdated legacy IT infrastructures and organizational cultures, according to a new research report from Accenture. The report, Emerging Technologies in Public Service, examines the adoption of emerging technologies across agencies with the most direct interaction with citizens or the greatest responsibility for citizen-facing services: health and social services, policing/justice, revenue, border services, pension / social security and administration. As part of the report, Accenture surveyed nearly 800 public service technology professionals across nine countries to identify emerging technologies being implemented or piloted. These technologies include advanced analytics/ predictive modeling, the Internet of Things, intelligent process automation, video analytics, biometrics/ identity analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing/ generation. The survey found that while more than two-thirds (70 percent) of public sector agencies are evaluating the potential of emerging technologies, only a small percentage (25 percent) is moving beyond the pilot phase to full implementation.