A colony of single-celled organisms can function as a biological computer to crunch a series of historical data points and forecast the future. An experiment that replaced each node in a neural network with a tiny organism showed that the waxing and waning size of the colony could accurately forecast the next step in time series data, such as the size of daily fishing catches of certain species in Japanese waters.

Sports analytics is one of the biggest sectors booming in the sports world. Though sports have captured the attention of the public and investors alike, analytics is a behind-the-scenes industry that combines the latest in machine-learning algorithms and data crunching. Some programs, like those that rely on AI, are designed to make predictions by studying huge amounts of historical data. Others, such as analytics software, are designed to make immediate conclusions from live data points. Teams rely on sports analytics to make leaner decisions related to recruitment, training regimens, and more.

If you work at IBM or a company equipped with their artificially intelligent employee retention software, your planned two-week's notice may already be old news. According to a recent panel discussion with IBM's CEO, Ginni Rometty, at a Work Talent and Human Resources Summit in New York, the company's'predictive attrition' software is now 95 percent accurate in determining when an employee is ready to quit. Using their predicative software, Rometty says that IBM has been able to preempt employees on the cusp of quitting, bolstering their retention rates, which has reportedly saved them $300 million. Human resources may need a new name as a host of new software has begun to disrupt jobs and efficiency. Among the many AI-powered tools being developed by IBM for human resources is'predictive attrition.'

In the world of science and technology, it is being said that we are at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The first that lasted from 1760 to 1840 brought in the age of mechanised production. It was the result of new materials like iron and steel, which combined with new energy resources of coal and steam, led to'mass production', and a factory system with division of labour. The second industrial revolution from 1870 to the early part of 20th century was the result of electricity, and the internal combustion engine. Both powered industrial machines and made transport possible.

The way that we look at the world is changing in 2018. Big data is a term you're already familiar with, but the tactics that will be leveraged this year will totally blow-up the status-quo. This new breed of tech falls under the category of big data analysis. It's how we interact with the petabytes of data that's been collected since the dawn of the digital age. Just indexing this information would crush the computers of the last decade.