CB Insights AI tool predicts next big thing in tech - TechRepublic

Is 2016 the year of AI? Big data? The answer, said CB Insights, may lie in media coverage. Whereas traditionally, many predictors relied on tracking investments in different areas or talking to specialists to uncover hot areas in tech, CB Insights' new tool called Trends now analyzes media reporting on different topics to uncover the next big thing. According to CB Insights, "When aggregated and analyzed, news media offers a powerful real-time method to discover, predict and plot the arc of rising expectations and excitement (and potential eventual disappointment) for emerging technologies." Compared to analysts, who may vary widely on predictions (on the drone market, for example, experts have cited market value from 1.27 all the way to 10 billion by 2020) media trends seem to be a more accurate way to gauge enthusiasm in an area.