A 2019 survey by PWC showed that over 90% of consumers aged between 18–64 years had sought knowledge about voice technology, while over 70% had used it at least once. This massive wave of consumers adopting voice technology for home improvement and ease-of-usage has ushered in a new age for voice assistance. The new consumer trend has also had a positive impact on the business world. The voice assistant market that was worth USD 11 billion in 2019 is now expected to grow by 17% by 2025. As a result, every year more companies are exploring AI-based voice technologies and finding ways to implement voice assistants both internally and externally for cost savings, automation, business intelligence (BI), and better customer experience.

Voice Assistant Technology had a market of its own even before the pandemic hit. Covid-19 and the fear that comes with it have just acted as a catalyst in the adaptation process and radically reshaped consumers' choices. If we go back to 2019, we see that home and voice-connected devices were moving towards becoming consumers' commerce command focus. The trend revolves around millennials who own six devices run on voice assistants except for their phones, and over 31% seem to have made purchases using these devices. With these numbers, we can deduce that the world was already moving towards a more Voice technology and AI-led market before'Global Pandemic' shook our lives.

Artificial Intelligence has played an increasingly important role within the pharmaceutical space especially with recent restrictions due to COVID-19. The drug development process can be lengthy and costly but many companies have begun implementing AI into their clinical trials to speed up patient on-site visits, test efficacy and bring more drugs to market. As we discussed previously, AI has played an important role in the discovery process. Now let's take a look at AI in clinical trials… PRNewswire reports the global virtual clinical trials market size is expected to reach 11.5 billion USD by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate of 5.7% from 2021 to 2028 according to Grand View Research, Inc. The growth in the virtual clinical trial space is directly related to the need for an increase in patient diversity and an increase in the number of decentralized/virtual trials due to the impact of COVID-19.

I have a vision that voice assistants are evolving so quickly they are going to connect us to more than just hailing a cab or ordering some food. Do you have the same vision? In February I wrote a blog discussing how many of us hate, literally hate, the concept of Big Brother hovering over our lives and listening to our every word. Oh, how times have changed in a half a year. Now we have become a society that talks less about who's listening and instead about how fast we can order something with our voice and using voice assistants.

In this modern era where everything is moving towards digitization, edge computing has left no stone unturned in making its way into businesses and industries. Its popularity is growing due to the huge computing demands of cloud users and massive data explosion through IoT. Business associates are finding it the best way to streamline IoT traffic and facilitate real-time, local data analysis. IIoT has paved way to move data processing closer to its source, which involves actual industrial machines. A survey says that edge computing will reach peak productivity in the very near future. The growing innovations in AI and IoT indicate that edge computing is likely to gain maturity as well.

Last week, when asking for a cup of yogurt, my three-year-old son called me Alexa. It's a funny, modern problem to have your child mistake you for a disembodied A.I. voice--in this case, the one powering Amazon's Echo family of devices. But it's also a good example of what it's like living in a home powered by a smart speaker. Too busy to lift a remote, we bark commands into the void expecting something to respond. Using a voice assistant to run your home feels beamed-in-from-Star Trek cool, making mundane actions magical.