What was the stuff of esoteric academia, even science fiction, five years ago is in active development. It's moving faster than our ability to comprehend it, its use, risks and benefits.

Evangelists tout stuff as the next big thing when the real next big things aren't even being openly talked about.

There is some astonishing work going on, driven by the equivalent of men in sheds, the garagistes that gave England the technical dominance in Formula One that the incumbent leader, Ferrari, could do nothing about except hurl insults.

Tiny businesses are doing great things with microscopic resources in fields that they don't realise will be pivotal in the development of financial crime risk and compliance and other fields of endeavour. They are doing it in a parallel universe because RegTech thinking has, so far, been about running in the same direction as everyone else.

And they are rejecting the term "artificial intelligence" except as a marketing tag. They know that if this stuff is to work, it needs the backing of "Actual Intelligence."

What organisations are buying now is simple, even simplistic: spreadsheets on steroids. There is differentiation in quality but very little conceptual differentiation.

It's the work in risk identification and investigations that are moving beyond obviously measurable data that's exciting. RegTech 2.0.

I'd say it's on the horizon but if you look carefully, outside the blinkered approach of data-matching and pattern analysis, there are things that are far closer than the horizon.

At last, things are about to get exciting.