Drones is a great one! And since Erlang processes are super light-weight, I wonder whether at some point Erlang and Elixir could be utilised in tiny/micro drones?
From the horse’s mouth…
That made me chuckle, given I know something you don’t 
Some of my thoughts:
Quantum computing could be screaming out for Erlang - (even more) light-weight processes being able to communicate instantly through quantum entanglement?
I wonder if we’ll see more specialised hardware too - I mean, why not? Apple are reportedly working on new silicon for AI (cloud) servers and we already have @peerst making GRiSP for running the Erlang VM on bare-metal (which also supports Nerves, btw). Could we start seeing more specialised hardware for languages such as Elixir/Erlang? (Though you could also argue we already have specialised hardware - the more cpu cores the more suited they are! )
In other areas, I imagine Erlang/Elixir could see the same kind of performance gains we witnessed with Java, I guess it’s kinda inevitable. And programming will, perhaps also inevitably, become easier too - maybe through conscious decisions by the core teams of Erlang/Elixir to begin with, and then through various AI-type tools.
So many possibilities and so many different directions the Erlang/Elixir core teams could pursue. When I first got into Elixir I never expected it make strides in ML/AI - who knows which exciting paths they’ll take us down next…
