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Every year, Gartner identifies 25 key emerging technologies to watch in its Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies study. In the 2023 report, unsurprisingly, generative AI topped the hype cycle. 

To put together the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies the research firm identifies key insights about more than 2,000 technologies and applied frameworks that it profiles each year. 

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All of the emerging technologies chosen are projected to reach transformational benefit within two to 10 years. Gartner projected that generative AI will reach transformational benefit and plateau within two to five years, as seen by the graph below. (Gartner defines  transformational benefit as a technology enabling "new ways of doing business across industries that will result in major shifts in industry dynamics." )

Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2023

Gartner

Research and awareness of generative AI skyrocketed after the launch of ChatGPT in November. As a result, many valuable and transformative breakthroughs for generative AI applications have been made, earning the technology its number-one spot. 

"The massive pretraining and scale of AI foundation models, viral adoption of conversational agents, and the proliferation of generative AI applications are heralding a new wave of workforce productivity and machine creativity," said Arun Chandrasekaran, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

Despite generative AI being the most popular subsection of AI, there are plenty of other emergent AI technologies within the AI umbrella that have the potential to cause significant societal change. 

Specifically, the report flags AI simulation, causal AI, federated machine learning, graph data science, neuro-symbolic AI, and reinforcement learning as emergent AI technologies to look out for. 

"In addition to generative AI, several other emerging AI techniques offer immense potential for enhancing digital customer experiences, making better business decisions, and building sustainable competitive differentiation," said Gartner in the report. 

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Gartner's 2022 hype cycle did not include the category of generative AI as a whole. Still, it did include other subsections, including casual AI, machine learning, generative design AI, foundation models, and digital humans. 

In addition to emergent AI, Gartner identified developer experience (DevX), pervasive cloud, human-centric privacy, and security as four emerging technology trend themes. 

Artificial Intelligence

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