Technology of Business has garnered opinions from dozens of companies on what they think will be the dominant global tech trends in 2018. Artificial intelligence (AI) dominates the landscape, closely followed, as ever, by cyber-security. But is AI an enemy or an ally? Whether helping to identify diseases and develop new drugs, or powering driverless cars and air traffic management systems, the consensus is that AI will start to deliver in 2018, justifying last year's sometimes hysterical hype. It will make its presence felt almost everywhere.

Technology of Business has garnered opinions from dozens of companies on what they think will be the dominant global tech trends in 2018. Artificial intelligence (AI) dominates the landscape, closely followed, as ever, by cyber-security. But is AI an enemy or an ally? Whether helping to identify diseases and develop new drugs, or powering driverless cars and air traffic management systems, the consensus is that AI will start to deliver in 2018, justifying last year's sometimes hysterical hype. It will make its presence felt almost everywhere.

That's because many online-only banks and others are investing in automated assistants that improve customer interactions by predicting why customers are contacting the bank and resolving the issue quickly, according to Servion Global Solutions. "Our philosophy is that a customer has a reason for making contact with his bank and over a period of time, as the interaction history builds up, the bank should be able to predict why the customer is calling, regardless of the channel being used," says Ashish Koul, Servion senior vice president and general manager. "Instead of letting the customer go into [interactive voice response] mumbo jumbo of pressing 1 for this and pressing 2 for that … you have a virtual assistant, which is intelligent, powered by analytics and can either solve the problem or connect the customer to the most qualified human when that interaction requires it." Servion predicts AI will support 95 percent of customer interactions with banks by 2025. The company's ServIntuit platform provides the context of previous customer interactions across channels to make the virtual assistant more intelligent, the company says.