2018 was the year of artificial intelligence. Growing numbers of businesses embraced the technology in its many forms, and customers and the wider public began to get to grips with the realities of what it meant for their lives.

If AI was a fad, 2019 would be the year that the hype began to fade. But it’s not: it’s a game-changing technology, and it is only set to evolve and develop as the year progresses. So what lies in store? In this issue of Verdict AI, we find out.

We hear from experts across the full AI spectrum to bring you three separate collections of predictions for the coming year. Covering business operations, AI development and wider society, we find out how those in the know expect the technology’s creation, use and impact to evolve – with some fascinating insights along the way.

Automation, unsurprisingly, is set to be a significant topic for 2019, with the predicted shift in job roles beginning to appear.

There are many perspectives in this complex issue, but few rival those of world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In this issue we hear from the legend himself to find out what he expects from the technology in the coming years, and what it was like to be beaten by AI.

The issue of ethics is also hugely important to AI, and is only set to be more so as the year progresses. We approach this thorny topic from a number of angles, including how social enterprise Digital Anthropology is handling the topic.

Plus, we also take a look at the role AI is playing in healthcare and retail, find out how Brexit is impacting the AI industry in the UK and look at how the employment market in AI is evolving.

Read on for all this, and more, in issue seven of Verdict AI.

Lucy Ingham 

Editor