I find it fascinating to reflect on how much gaming has played a seminal role in driving momentum and public uptake of key platforms such as desktop computing, the internet and mobile. And again, in more recent times, AlphaGo seems to have been a catalyst for an unprecedented explosion in public discourse, research and funding on AI / intelligent machines / bots. Is it a coincidence that the technology giants IBM (with Deep Blue and Watson), and Google (with AlphaGo) chose games to highlight their technologies?

Might the critical momentum for bots also arise from the gaming space? If so, maybe the major job market relating to bots will predominantly begin in the gaming, entertainment & leisure industry and steadily move into commercial enterprise and then eventually into government. Obviously this still doesn’t say what they will look like, but it might just give a hint where to look for emerging trends.

Whichever way it evolves, there is no doubt, that the rise of bots will drive us to re-imagine or re-invent many current things which we hold as fundamental, including operating systems, user-interfaces, apps, and search. And each innovation will be a define a new industry; and each new industry will spawn a new market leader. And all of this will result in a unimaginably rich new ecosystem comprising of thousands of new jobs.