Interest in miniature radar systems has grown dramatically in recent years as they enable rich interaction and health monitoring in everyday settings. By 2025, industrial radar applications are anticipated to encompass 10 million devices, whereas the consumer market will reach a substantial 250 million. The applications are diverse--for example, Google's Pixel phones incorporated radar for gesture control, while small radar sensors are being deployed in homes to monitor elderly residents' movements and detect falls, offering more privacy than camera-based solutions. However, conventional radar architectures rely on complex RF front ends with power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, and phase-locked loops, collectively consuming hundreds of milliwatts of power. This makes radar sensing impractical for battery-powered or self-powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices and wearables.

I was challenged by the editors here at Work: Reimagined to imagine what a corporation might look like in 2050. My immediate response was to think'that's a long ways off.' But on the other hand, it does take an incredibly long time to make foundational changes in society, except when major disruptions occur, as with the rise of the Internet over the past few decades, or the Black Death, when over 100 million people died, leading to the shifts in power that ultimately sparked the Renaissance. So I am resorting to a futurist sleight-of-hand to get to an answer in several steps. I can't just scramble to the roof of the house to see out over the horizon: First, I have to build a ladder to climb up to the roof.

As techniques in Machine Learning begin to prove themselves, we're beginning to see every major technology player make key strategic bets in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Google is uniquely positioning itself as an "AI-first company" – organizing every product team to embody a data-centric approach. Facebook is training every single developer in the field of Machine Learning enabling adoption at scale. Amazon has been rolling out product after product with a heavy focus on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Augmented Reality. Microsoft is focusing on building its Azure cloud services, which is central to leveraging and democratizing Artificial Intelligence at its core.

Upwork just released our quarterly list of the 20 fastest-growing skills in the U.S. freelance market. This list is a snapshot of what companies most value and need in their freelancers, and it reflects the top tech and business trends of today. But I've been thinking about the future of work as well as the present day. I just returned from the World Economic Forum meeting in China, where I caught a glimpse of the kinds of technologies that will shape our world in five to ten years. Chief among those are virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and robotics.