Trends change faster than ever and within minutes or hours, something can go viral. This is especially true for the food and consumer goods industries, where social media popularity can realistically translate into higher sales or controversy, as seen late last year with Popeyes Chicken Sandwich and a Peloton bike advertisement. Signals Analytics, an AI-powered platform, helps companies in the food and pharmaceutical industries identify trends and capitalize on troves of previously untapped data streams. Frances Zelazny, Signals Analytics chief marketing officer and head of strategy spoke to TechRepublic about the food trends in 2020 and what people may be eating in six months based on their research. "We are focused on external data, so you should think about social media posts, product reviews, commentary on news websites, patent filings, research papers, conference agendas and other data sources. Think about what it would be like if you could have access to all that data and could use that data in order to make decisions. Most companies use two or three external data sources," Zelazny said.

Dr. Goertzel has published 20 scientific books and 140 scientific research papers and is the leading architect and designer of the OpenCog system and associated design for human-level general intelli… (show all) Dr. Goertzel has published 20 scientific books and 140 scientific research papers and is the leading architect and designer of the OpenCog system and associated design for human-level general intelligence. Goertzel co-authored "Artificial General Intelligence," published in 2002 by Springer Publishing. He is also the chair of the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) conference series, advisor to Singularity University and former Director of Research of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (formerly the Singularity Institute). He also served as Chief Scientist Officer for Hanson Robotics until early 2019.

Just about everyone agrees cybersecurity will be paramount in 2020, and governments and regulatory bodies are already taking action. While GDPR allows citizens in Europe to manage their digital footprint and data, the EU's Cybersecurity Act provides strong support for member nations to alert one another and act against bad actors. Still, cybersecurity is a difficult line of work. It's dynamic, and IT pros often feel harrowed by the amount of ground they're expected to cover. Instead of seeing what new cybersecurity trends will develop in 2020, we thought we'd ask the experts.

These six enterprise tech trends defined 2019As we kick off another year, ZDNet's global team of editors has put together a list of five tech trends that will have a significant impact on the enterprise in 2020. The effects could be negative or positive, but will undoubtedly be substantial. Our panel of editors includes -- TechRepublic's Bill Detwiler, Larry Dignan, Chris Duckett, and Steve Ranger. Take a look back at best of the decade: ZDNet's top enterprise CEOs of the 2010s The PC was supposed to die a decade ago. Instead, this happened A decade of malware: Top botnets of the 2010s A decade of hacking: The most notable cyber-security events of the 2010s Device of the decade: Why did it take nine years for the iPad to get its own operating system?

The United States has been slow to adopt artificial intelligence technology, but according to a new study from IBM, this could change rapidly in 2020. IBM's General Manager for Data and Artificial Intelligence, Beth Smith, joins The Final Round to discuss the results of the company's study.

Over the last several months, I've been focusing on the planning, execution and post-event activities for the recently concluded HR Technology Conference, which, by all accounts, was our largest and most successful event ever. It's only in the last week or two that I've had a chance to reflect on the conference--and on the year overall--thinking about the technologies and trends that have mattered the most in 2019 and speculating on what might dominate the conversations in 2020. Here's my semi-scientific look at what was important to the HR-tech community this year, and what we will probably spend more time on in 2020. AI in HR tech was probably the No. 1 tech topic and trend in 2019. There were about 500 exhibitors at HR Tech, and I bet easily over 100 of them are developing, deploying, or at least discussing, how AI is driving their technology offerings.