Artificial Intelligence as a Disruptive Technology—A Systematic Literature Review

The greatest technological changes in our lives are predicted to be brought about by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Together with the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and several others, AI is considered to be the most disruptive technology, and has impacted numerous sectors, such as healthcare (medicine), business, agriculture, education, and urban development. The present research aims to achieve the following: identify how disruptive technologies have evolved over time and their current acceptation (1); extract the most prominent disruptive technologies, besides AI, that are in use today (2); and elaborate on the domains that were impacted by AI and how this occurred (3). Based on a sentiment analysis of the titles and abstracts, the results reveal that the majority of recent publications have a positive connotation with regard to the disruptive impact of edge technologies, and that the most prominent examples (the top five) are AI, the IoT, blockchain, 5G, and 3D printing. The disruptive effects of AI technology are still changing how people interact in the corporate, consumer, and professional sectors, while 5G and other mobile technologies will become highly disruptive and will genuinely revolutionize the landscape in all sectors in the upcoming years.