If you can't see the YouTube player above, try watching here instead. Baidu has released its annual ranking of the hottest search terms in technology for 2019. Artificial intelligence (AI) garnered more searches than any other tech phrase. "AI is going to open a new chapter of the society of the world that people try to understand ourselves better, rather than the outside world," said Alibaba founder Jack Ma in a discussion with Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in August. China issued a plan for next-generation AI in 2017, pledging to turn the industry into a new growth engine.

Cybersecurity will become even more of a strategic priority for companies as the cost, sophistication, and lethality of breaches continue to rise. The advent of emerging and fused technologies 5G, IoT (and Industrial IoT) will pose significant operational and regulatory challenges. Companies and agencies will look to automation and orchestration technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, and other analytic tools to mitigate gaps on ubiquitous platforms. Threat actors, especially state-sponsored, and criminal enterprises will take advantage of the expanding cyber-attack surface by sing their resources to employ more sophisticated means for discovering target vulnerabilities, automating their phishing attacks, and finding new deceptive paths for infiltrating malware. For CISOs, enterprise tools such as predictive analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence will be more readily adapted to expand the effectiveness of mitigation and analysis of threats.

Research groups at KAIST, the University of Cambridge, Japan's National Institute for Information and Communications Technology, and Google DeepMind argue that our understanding of how humans make intelligent decisions has now reached a critical point in which robot intelligence can be significantly enhanced by mimicking strategies that the human brain uses when we make decisions in our everyday lives. In our rapidly changing world, both humans and autonomous robots constantly need to learn and adapt to new environments. But the difference is that humans are capable of making decisions according to the unique situations, whereas robots still rely on predetermined data to make decisions. Despite the rapid progress being made in strengthening the physical capability of robots, their central control systems, which govern how robots decide what to do at any one time, are still inferior to those of humans. In particular, they often rely on pre-programmed instructions to direct their behavior, and lack the hallmark of human behavior, that is, the flexibility and capacity to quickly learn and adapt.

The government and the police are discussing the idea of developing a computer system that can predict street crime by utilizing big data and artificial intelligence. They hope such a system will be able to show them where and how to take greater measures to prevent crime. Street crime prediction "has already achieved results in Europe and the United States," said Mami Kajita, who established the data-analysis company Singular Perturbations Inc. last year in hopes of developing a Japanese version of the methods used in the United States. In some parts of America, the police have ramped up patrols in areas where AI-based systems predicted crime was more likely to happen, achieving a reduction of 20 percent on average, Kajita said. A more cautionary tale comes from China, where the government is racing ahead to use big data and facial recognition technology to surveil the population.

History doesn't exactly repeat itself, but it does run in cycles. One of the most robust theories of such cycles was articulated by economic historian Carlota Perez, in her influential book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Edward Elgar, 2002). It suggests that humanity can get through the current period of upheaval and economic malaise and enter a new "golden age" of broad economic growth, if the world's key decision makers act in concert to help foster one. This may seem far-fetched, but it's happened four times before. We are in the midst of the fifth great surge (as Perez calls them) of technological and economic change since the Industrial Revolution. The last one, the age of oil, automobiles, and mass production, lasted most of the 20th century and still shapes many people's attitudes. Our current surge started around 1970 and has rolled out information and communications technology around the world: It is the age of the computer and the Internet (see Exhibit 1). Each of these surges follows the same broad pattern. First, there is a wave of major new technologies, leading to dramatic changes in industrial production and daily life. For about 20 to 30 years, in a period that Perez calls installation, these technologies are funded largely by speculative investment chasing rapid returns. This age of widening wealth disparity leads to a bubble, which bursts in spectacular fashion, and is followed by a crisis period that Perez calls the turning point. This phase of economic and social turbulence has varied in length from two years to 17. Many efforts to get back to normal are made, usually involving the regulation of financial excesses or the stimulation of production and employment.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which manufacturers Kawasaki motorcycles, heavy equipment, aerospace and defense machines, has reported that it will begin developing motorcycles that can speak directly to the rider through the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), which includes AI (Artificial Intelligence). Using "Emotion Generation Engine" and "Natural Language Dialogue System," the motorcycle will be able to directly communicate with the rider via voice. This will allow the motorcycle to understand the owner's riding style, and update its suspension and engine settings to accommodate the owner's riding style. The system, currently under development by cocoro SB Corp., will allow the motorcycle to communicate with the rider by recognizing emotion in the sound of the rider's voice. "Accessing Kawasaki's bank of analytical chassis and performance data, the system will be able to offer the rider pertinent hints for enhanced riding enjoyment, or relay information as the situation dictates. Through advanced electronic management technology, having the system update machine settings based on the rider's experience, skill and riding style will also be possible," Kawasaki says.