My Top 10 predictions for AI's impact in 2024

My Top 10 predictions for 2024

Apologies for the delay in getting these to you but during what should have been a seasonal break with the Danish in-laws, I spent far too much time working on a new book “Artificial Intelligence: A Guerilla Guide”.

Here are my Top 10 predictions for the year ahead in AI.

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window. Peter Drucker

1. AI gets personal for anyone with a mobile phone - 2024 will be the year of personalised, persistent tutoring for all with spaced repetition algorithms to aid retention and deep learning. The most effective e-learning courses and school curricular will have a post-course virtual mentor add-on. From your personal language tutor to professional career mentors, we’ll all have access to personalised training. Personalised AI also extends to users’ ability to create custom versions of their own media, from bedtime stories for the kids to adult entertainment, GenAI makes all of this possible and cheap.

2. Accelerating drug discovery - AI will aid discovery of a raft of new antibiotics and, coupled with synthetic biology, we can expect new cures for old diseases (or at least turning the main deadly diseases into chronic ones).

3. GPT-ed customer support - the beginning of the end of the user manual. Most major manufacturers will replace their manuals and probably their annoyingly useless chatbots with a GPT-powered chatbot.

4. Google will finally overtake OpenAI - caught asleep at the wheel and with its golden goose (ads) at risk, Google will update its Gemini ultra model to exploit that mountain of legit and also illegit (see Google settles lawsuit over tracking people in 'incognito mode'). Also Google will release a new version of Android and a series of phones that have AI on board and at their core.

5. Mass disinformation as AI is weaponised in electioneering - with 64 countries going to the polls (almost half of the world’s population including India, the US , the UK and EU) disinformation will be rife. Some countries will consider abandoning electronic voting due to the risk of AI driven hacking and bad actors.

6. AI goes mobile and is embedded in wearables - 2024 will be the year of on-device AI. First and foremost in mobile devices. In earbuds, think Joaquin Phoenix in the film Her; an always-on coach, friend, advisor, therapist. Opportunistic wearables that represent a solution looking for a problem (like the silly, $700 Humane pin) will struggle for traction but expect something useful from Jony Ive (Apple’s former design chief) and Sam Altman’s hardware tie-up. My money, though, is on Meta’s Ray-Bans. If they can work out how to turn the Oculus Quest into a pair of glasses (adjusted for eyesight, with frontal vision and surround sound) then it’ll have an instant market of millions.

7. Accelerated job losses as companies try and do more with less - companies that have been in a holding pattern with AI, will start to stop hiring for certain jobs that are better done by AI. Think paralegals, junior accounts, data analysts and offshored customer support staff. Some roles will transition to verifying the output of AI and guarding against embarrassing hallucinations (which will become less prevalent). I anticipate industrial unrest and unionised protests, similar to the Hollywood actors and writers strikes of 2023, as trades band together to try and stem the tide of AI-driven job losses.

8. Traditional media companies sell out to GenAi - OpenAi et al. stem the tide of criticism from the media that they’ve scraped their data, by ‘licensing’ the usage of traditional media data. Expect most major media players to agree deals in 2024. Traditional media companies like the New York Times will blossom as the lines between AI and human-generated content becomes blurred. People seek refuge in (and critically pay for) the content that lies behind the paywalls of trusted media providers.

9. The #AI backlash - People will become overwhelmed with the current and coming wave of unfettered AI deployments. Also with the perfection of deepfakes there will be a mini #AIbacklash and people will seek out more in-person events and analogue and retro activities and products.

10. Robots + GenAi = I, Robot - Robots become more lifelike and, with the addition of deep learning neural networks, learn quickly from doing. Amazon rolls out shelf-stacking robots in all of its warehouses.

Everything, everywhere all at once

Overall, I see 2024 as a year of consolidation as AI shifts down the hype curve to more usable applications. One thing we can be certain of is that the pace of development will only quicken as training AI becomes faster and cheaper. What drives this is the global race for dominance. Every national and tech superpower is vying for supremacy/survival and that means huge bets on the AI farm. So everything, everywhere all at once.

More freaky videos of robots getting scarily close to I, Robot

Elon Musk is doubling down on robots and released Optimus Gen 2, the latest bipedal Tesla robot. We’ve seen this before but watch the video from 1.14 minutes in. Give it a year, couple it with ChatGPT 7, and we’ll surely feel like we’ve all been hyperlooped into the film I, Robot.

and there’s more... Why you won’t always be able to get a job at McDonald’s.

That’s all for this week folks. Be human!