Robot in board room? WEF survey says possible by 2025!

From the realms of science fictions, robots and artificial intelligence machines may find their way to the corporate board rooms in the next ten years, says a new worldwide survey conducted by WEF.
Besides, there is a high expectation that as many as 11 game-changing new technologies such as the first robotic pharmacist, 3D-printed car and implantable mobile phone can become a reality in 2015 itself.
"Nearly half of respondents expect the first AI machine to be on the board of directors of a business by 2025, while the first transplant of a 3D-printed liver is likely to become reality by 2024," found the survey of 800 executives by the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Future of Software and Society.

The survey, which aims to predict the dates when game-changing technologies become mainstream, said the "the world is about to enter a period of exponential change, with new technology promising to soon make real concepts that were firmly rooted in the realm of science fiction only a few years ago".
As per 90 per cent of survey respondents, in 2025 at least 10 per cent of people will be wearing clothes connected to the internet, 75 per cent believe the US will have its first robot pharmacist, 63 per cent think the world will have its first traffic-light-free city and 45 per cent believe an artificial intelligence machine will sit on a company's board of directors.

"We already feel like technology has changed our lives, but the results from this survey indicate that we are just at the beginning of a fundamental shift in society," World Economic Forum Director Derek O'Halloran said.

"Any one of these technologies by themselves would change our lives significantly. Taken together, they represent a fundamental re-write of what's possible and how we organise our society - raising deep economic, political and ethical questions which we must address together," O'Halloran added.
The report said that technology is becoming increasingly personal. Computers were first located in large rooms, then on desks and, following that, on people's laps. While technology can now be found in people's mobile phones in their pockets, it will soon be integrated directly into clothing and accessories.

In the survey, the tipping points, or "shifts", are grouped into six distinct megatrends. These are: people and the internet; computing, communications and storage everywhere; the internet of things; artificial intelligence and big data; the sharing economy and distributed trust; and the digitisation of matter.