With the world continuing to scratch only the surface of what is possible in the digital era, information and communication technology giant Intel is, this year, narrowing its focus to four key areas it believes will play a critical role in society in future.

Intel’s 2017 focus areas include computing breakthroughs in the interlinked fifth-generation (5G) technology, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and autonomous driving realms.

“We are living in a world of change; it is no longer business as usual,” said Intel South Africa country leader Videsha Proothveerajh earlier this month, noting that Intel was moving through its own corporate transformation.

At the very minimum, technology will disrupt 40% of businesses in the top 200 companies, 50% of the workplace in 2020 will comprise the so-called Millennial generation and 70% of 2 000 CEOs globally will centre their strategies on digital transformation.

Highlighting what was to be expected in future, during a media discussion at Intel’s Woodmead offices, in Sandton, she added that the traditional industrial innovation period of 100 years was shrinking as the pace of development accelerated.

Despite only embarking on the computer and modern communications era in the 1960s, the world is now on the verge of change again and this is “just the beginning”.

Entering the next innovation era, the “vortex of change” sees the “hunter becoming the hunted” amid a mass of disruption, with Intel aiming to mitigate the wave by moving to 5G, AI, VR and self-driving technologies.

Moving forward, Intel aims to connect 50-billion smart devices to the cloud to capture data, measure it in real time and be accessible from anywhere.

“In the next few years, 5G will fundamentally transform our lives; everything will be smarter and more connected,” Proothveerajh noted during her presentation, which also highlighted that the billions of Internet of Things- (IoT-) connected devices would generate zettabytes of data.

Intel is working to meet this future demand through field programmable gate arrays, software-defined data centres and smart devices.

In the field of AI, which is already embedded in applications such as talk-to-text, photo tagging, fraud detection, precision medicine and autonomous cars, Intel aims to unlock what it believes is “unprecedented value” for businesses and societies.

The company, which powers 97% of servers deployed to support machine learning workloads, has deployed a team of researchers and cultural anthropologists to unlock the societal benefits of creating machines with humanlike intelligence.

With the automotive and transport industries expected to be among the first to be significantly impacted on by the digital era and the IoT, Intel has developed a secure end-to-end platform to power autonomous driving, with investments focused on vehicles, communication networks and data centres.

“Intel collaborates with established and emerging players in the automotive industry to enable driver assistance systems and transition towards the fully autonomous vehicle,” she explained.

Intel expects global information technology revenue from the transportation sector to reach $325-billion in 2018.

In November, Intel Corporation CEO Brian Krzanich announced $250-million in additional investments over the next two years to make fully autonomous driving a reality.