Here's a scene from our digital future: You sit down to dinner at a restaurant where your server was selected by a "robo-boss" based on an optimized match of personality and interaction profile, and the angle at which he presents your plate, or how quickly he smiles can be evaluated for further review. Or, perhaps you walk into a store to try on clothes and ask the digital customer assistant embedded in the mirror to recommend an outfit in your size, in stock and on sale. Afterwards, you simply tell it to bill you from your mobile and skip the checkout line. These scenarios describe two predictions in what will be an algorithmic and smart machine driven world where people and machines must define harmonious relationships. In his session at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in Orlando, Daryl Plummer, vice president, distinguished analyst and Gartner Fellow, discussed how Gartner's Top Predictions begin to separate us from the mere notion of technology adoption and draw us more deeply into issues surrounding what it means to be human in a digital world.

Hacked data from more than 1.1m members of an'elite' dating site has been sold online, it has been claimed. The controversial site, BeautifulPeople.com, was hacked in November and details including sexual preferences, income, addresses and 15 million messages between users were stolen. Now it has been claimed by Forbes the data has been sold online to a mystery buyer. The controversial site, BeautifulPeople.com, was hacked in November and details including sexual preferences, income, addresses and 15 million messages between users were stolen. BeautifulPeople is the first community of its kind.

Business intelligence has gone from static reports that tell you what happened, to interactive dashboards where you can drill into information to try and understand why it happened. New big data sources, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices, are pushing businesses from those reactive analytics – whether you look back once a month to spot trends or once a day to check for problems – to proactive analytics that give you alerts and real-time dashboards. That makes better use of operational data, which is more useful while it's still current, before conditions change. "There's a demand for real-time dashboards," says Herain Oberoi from Microsoft's Cortana Analytics team. "A lot of businesses want to get the pulse of their business. But dashboards show things that have already happened."

It's technology available today already being applied to search engines. Leading visionaries in search technology, including Google's Beshad Behzadi in his keynote speech at the SMX West Keynote to Satya Nadella at Microsoft's Build conference, are articulating a vision of smarter and more capable personalized help that will drive efficiency, focus and ultimately, happiness. Nadella believes the next big bet for Microsoft is "conversation as a platform." This is a more intuitive and accessible canvass integrating into apps, as well as artificial intelligence (A.I.) and bots that can interact with other bots. While the devices and technology used to access search are evolving, search will still be an increasingly integral part of everyday life.

AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol, Go World Champion, may make us humans feel uneasy when confronted with such intellect, but should we instead be embracing artificial intelligence (AI)? Optimists see AI to be the saviour of customer experience in the financial services industry. Siri and Cortana are now at the frontline of providing information services, before we would of had to manually type into a search engine or call up a customer service team to find the answer. This seems just the beginning of AI enhancing customer experience, and its influence in the financial services sector is growing. The financial services sector has been excited with news of BBVA working on their virtual banking assistant Lola, RBS investing into a robo-advisory recording system and Mitsubishi UFJ challenging Lola with their humanoid virtual assistant Nao. All have promised a more efficient and reliable experience for the customer.

Except, as it turns out, a big chunk of its users may not be single after all. That's according to research firm GlobalWebIndex (GWI), which released some figures on Tinder from its latest survey of more than 47,000 internet users around the world that suggest the app has a wider demographic. In fact, the research claims that 30% of Tinder users surveyed are married, while another 12% are in a relationship. Tinder may also be a digital stomping ground for married men, judging by GWI's claim that 62% of its users are male and 38% female. The research also shows, unsurprisingly, that Tinder's users are a relatively young crowd, with 38% aged between 16 and 24, and 45% between 25 and 34.

By 2020, we will all have an Invisible Friend. Whether we call it Siri, Alexa, OK Google, or a chatbot, we are entering a world where an intelligence assistant recognizes our "intent." This could spawn a massive consumer behavior shift, as AI-influenced bots would mean far fewer Google searches by humans. This invisible friend would learn from its mistakes, maintain context, and continue to expand into new areas of expertise through judicious use of Knowledge Management (see below landscape). Although 2020 is our destination, now is a time of heightened activity among the companies that provide the elements of Intelligent Assistance.

Mainland Chinese start-up Horizon Robotics, founded by the former head of online search giant Baidu's Institute of Deep Learning, claims it is on pace to bring chips with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) technology to market. "General processors are too slow for AI functions. A dedicated chip will dramatically increase the speed of these functions," Yu Kai, the founder and chief executive of Horizon Robotics told the South China Morning Post. Founded in Beijing in July, Horizon Robotics is developing chips and software that attempt to mimic how the human brain solves abstract tasks, such as voice and image recognition, that are difficult for regular computer programmes. It also makes sensors for smart devices.

New information pushed FinTech company models built on Hadoop, Spark and Equipment Understanding are rapidly emerging and disrupting prosperity administration. Here is my new submitting from disruptivedigital.wordpress.com about 1 these use case… Robo-Advisors. We are in the early levels of a generational shift in prosperity administration, in particular "plain vanilla" investing for the mass affluent and millennial phase.

Customers are becoming "impatient narcissists," according to Rick Davidson, president and CEO of the consultancy Cimphoni. "They want what they want, and they want it now," he said during this presentation on cognitive computing for the enterprise at the recent Fusion CEO-CIO Symposium in Madison, Wis. Today's technology-connected customers care about wait times, ease of use and responsiveness. The deeper the technology is integrated into their lives, the more they'll expect from the companies they do business with, Davidson warned. CIOs should begin to consider the machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) investments they'll likely have to make to meet evolving customer expectations.