Muscat: From AI to advanced 3D printing, new and updated technological trends have been the talk of the town this year, with some burning brighter than others. Here’s a glance at 3 of the most popular tech trends showing huge possibilities for changing how we imagine our workplaces.

AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS)

It seems artificial intelligence is everywhere, from AI chatbots to complex image and art generation systems. While a section of the population who subscribe to a more Luddite point of view is scared that “AI will take their jobs”, another section is quite excited about the futuristic possibility of AI being integrated into the workspace, thus making work more efficient and easier for organic employees. 

Although an emerging idea, from what the world has seen regarding the capability of AI as of now, its applications in the modern workspace can be in Chatbots, predictive analytics,

natural language processing, image recognition, and much more. Furthermore, it is a system that will be accessible to everyone through cloud computing, thus opening the possibilities of a more “global” office paradigm.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)

Having matured greatly over the past few years, VR and AR as technology will continue to advance, especially with the onset of what many are calling the “metaverse”. In fact, Microsoft and Nvidia are already developing metaverse platforms for collaborating on digital projects. And although, AR and VR technology have been associated mostly with gaming, entertainment, and so on, the metaverse is showing promising possibilities of making a complete overhaul of the workplace. Bernard Marr, of Forbes, says, “One area to watch is the work environment in the metaverse — in 2023, I predict that we’ll have more immersive meeting environments where we can talk, brainstorm, and co-create together.”

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software technology that makes it easy to build, deploy, and manage software robots that emulate human actions interacting with digital systems and software. Just like people, software robots can do things like understand what’s on a screen, complete the right keystrokes, navigate systems, identify and extract data, and perform a wide range of defined actions more swiftly and with more efficiency. 

Since it enables the automation of repetitive and rule-based tasks, there is a strong chance that the RPA will soon become indispensable in the sectors of data entry, invoicing, HR onboarding, financial reporting, and so on. RPA is noninvasive and can be rapidly implemented to accelerate digital transformation, and furthermore,  increases employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity by removing mundane tasks from their workdays.