But those are just the broad strokes. Again this year my colleagues and I spun our Roledexes looking for the smartest and best-placed people we know to offer their predictions. We asked startup founders, Big Tech execs, VCs, scholars, and other experts to speculate on the coming year within their field of interest. Altogether, we collected more than 40 predictions about 2022. Together, they offer a smart composite look at the things we're likely to be talking about by this time next year.

"What good is an ML model if it isn't fast? Having machine learning in a company's portfolio used to be an investor magnet. Now, the market is bullish on MLaaS, with a new breed of companies offering machine learning services (libraries/APIs/frameworks) to help other companies get their job done better and faster. According to PwC, AI's potential global economic impact will be worth $15.7 trillion by 2030. And, as interests slowly shift towards MLOps, it is possible that these companies, which promise to scale and accelerate ML deployment, might grab a bigger piece of the pie. Last week, OctoML raised $28 million. The Seattle-based startup offers a machine learning acceleration platform built on top of the open-source Apache TVM compiler framework project. The $28 million Series B funding brings the company's total funding to $47 million. For OctoML's CEO, Luis Ceze, there is still a significant gap between building a model and making it production-ready. Between rapidly evolving ML models, wrote Ceze in a blog post, ML frameworks and a Cambrian explosion of hardware backends makes ML deployment challenging. "It is not easy to make sure your model runs fast enough and to benchmark it across different deployment hardware.

At CES 2020 in Las Vegas, TechRepublic's Bill Detwiler spoke with CNET and CBS News' Dan Patterson about the various technologies featured at the electronics show. The following is an edited transcript of the interview. Now with CNET and CBS News, to talk a little bit about the tech we've seen this week. Dan, you cover a lot of privacy and security, and it's always an important issue, especially at CES, as we talk about technology blending into everyday objects. What have you seen here at the show that brings to light those issues of data privacy, data security? Dan Patterson: Well, what's really interesting to watch is this evolution of CES itself.

The smartphone will still be our central tech device by the end of next year, but as augmented reality and wearables progress, we'll sense more and more that a new paradigm in personal computing is around the corner. That will be helped along by enabling technologies such as 5G networks, which will be stretching far and wide by the end of 2020. And, artificial intelligence will become infused in all kinds of products, allowing gadgets and services to subtly begin to anticipate our wants. These tectonic shifts are already creating opportunity and chances for innovation. Venture capital investments on startup companies are on pace to reach $100 billion in 2018, far exceeding 2017's $82 billion in investments.

If you work in logistics and haven't been keeping up with the latest in genome science, you could be missing out on an important shift in your industry. That's according to the new 2017 Tech Trends Report, which for 10 years has been tracking the big changes in technology and analyzing how they will affect different industries. The data is meant to keep entrepreneurs and business owners informed about impending disruptions in their industries, as well as competitive threats and opportunities. This year's report, compiled by Amy Webb's Future Today Institute, is especially dense. In 2016, we saw major advances in automation, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, robotics, and autonomous vehicles -- to name just a few -- that have gone mainstream.

China's technology sector dominated headlines in 2016 both in the Middle Kingdom and abroad, ranging from coverage of Uber's merger with Chinese rival Didi Chuxing to the newly popular bike-sharing apps. Just a few years after China's tech scene emerged, the conversation has shifted from questioning if Chinese firms can innovate to how Western firms can mimic the success of Chinese mobile apps, such as WeChat. As the year comes to a close, analysts and VCs are now shifting focus to new emerging trends and companies. China's consumers have skipped many stages in their technological progression, bypassing aging Western technology in favor of new trends, said Jeremy Peruski, from ICR, a consulting firm. "I really do believe that China is becoming a global hub when looking at global technology and they historically have led with creating financial products," Peruski said.

BlackBerry has announced the opening of its $100 million innovation centre aimed at developing software for autonomous and connected vehicles, a move that will also see the company more than double staff at its Ottawa, Ontario headquarters where the centre is located. The BlackBerry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre, launched on Monday by BlackBerry CEO John Chen and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is part of the company's strategy to make itself a player in the autonomous vehicles industry before it gains mainstream appeal. The 5 biggest tech trends of 2016: ZDNet editors sound off Five ways to make your digital strategy a success in 2017 Inside Amazon's clickworker platform: How half a million people are being paid pennies to train AI Inside Amazon's clickworker platform: How half a million people are being paid pennies to train AI "50 percent of all cars will connect to the cloud by 2020 ... in the coming hyper-connected world, cars will soon carry one of the highest concentrations of Internet of Things edge nodes and sensors, generating a vast amount of valuable and actionable data," the company said in an announcement. "Anticipating this shift, BlackBerry is investing in key technologies and building a product portfolio that will provide the embedded intelligence that powers the core electronics of connected and autonomous cars." As part of the initiative, BlackBerry QNX will be recruiting local software engineers to work on ongoing and emerging engineering projects for autonomous and connected vehicles both independently and in partnership with public and private sector organisations.

Google's new Waymo self-driving car company showed the first images of its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivan that will begin testing on public streets in 2017. In a Medium post on Sunday, John Krafcik, CEO at Waymo, said production of the self-driving hybrid minivan began in October and has been tested in a limited fashion at Fiat Chrysler's Chelsea Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan, and its Arizona Proving Grounds in Yucca, Arizona. Krafcik showed images of the hybrid minivan with a suite of updated sensors, an all-new computer, and other major system updates. The 5 biggest tech trends of 2016: ZDNet editors sound off Five ways to make your digital strategy a success in 2017 Inside Amazon's clickworker platform: How half a million people are being paid pennies to train AI Inside Amazon's clickworker platform: How half a million people are being paid pennies to train AI "Getting from program kickoff to production and full vehicle assembly in half a year is a testament to the strong teamwork and collaboration between FCA and Waymo engineers," Krafcik wrote. Earlier this month, Google's self-driving car project launched as an independent business, called Waymo, under Alphabet, Google's parent company.

If you work in logistics and haven't been keeping up with the latest in genome science, you could be missing out on an important shift in your industry. That's according to the new 2017 Tech Trends Report, which for 10 years has been tracking the big changes in technology, and analyzing how they will affect different industries. The data is meant to keep entrepreneurs and business owners informed about impending disruptions in their industries, as well as competitive threats and opportunities. This year's report, compiled by Amy Webb's Future Today Institute, is especially dense. In 2016, we saw major advances in automation, artificial intelligence, mixed reality, robotics, and autonomous vehicles--to name just a few--that have gone mainstream.

It seems only yesterday that we were lying on our friend's sofa vowing to abstain from all alcohol for the entirety of 2016 before being coerced into a pub trip by our pesky co-workers the first Friday back in the office. Yes, the start of the year seems no time ago at all, but 2016 is nearly over. There are under 9 weeks left of the year and this, coupled with the arrival of the colder weather, has got us feeling all nostalgic. Let's recap some of the biggest tech innovations of 2016 and our predictions for the tech world in 2017. Well Pokémon Go launched in July and thanks to the enormous number of nostalgic noughties kids roaming the streets with little to do, it took off at an astonishing rate.