The Year of AI Everywhere: Predictions for Tech in 2024 and Beyond

As the world settles into the year 2024, it’s time to examine all the signs we’ve seen so far and try to connect the dots to see how changes in tech are going to reshape our lives. We’re on the cusp of huge shifts in not only our personal lives but also society as a whole — perhaps on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of computers or the advent of mobile Internet. 2024 will be a year of uncertainty and experimentation, but the precedents we set and the structures we create will have profound effects on the rest of our lives and on future generations.

Of course we’re talking about AI, which is already reconfigurating the very fundamentals of relationships between humans and machines. AI has the power to change how we obtain and examine all the information around us, and should already be making people question the authenticity any photo or video they see. At this point, “artificial intelligence” is still a bit of a misnomer — human oversight is still needed to make sure that everything is accurate and unbiased. Current AI tools can take a lot of the work out of gathering information and performing manual labour, and can even manipulate visual media in ways that most people don’t have the talent or skill to do themselves, but it is entirely limited by its inputs, ie the material that AI models are trained on today can and does perpetuate and amplify biases, and it can easily be used for malicious purposes.

Avoiding chaos and misinformation caused by AI will be a big theme in 2024, especially with national elections set to happen in many of the world’s major democracies this year. Targeted misinformation will be generated and spread quite rapidly, but not as easily disproved, making it hard for people to separate facts from fiction. We can expect to see a new generation of fact-checkers, though establishing who to trust will be a major challenge. Some companies will try to popularise digital watermarking tools or other deepfake detection methods but many of these will depend on people using AI in good faith and accepting when information is disproved, which is of course not always going to be the case.

AI will continue to determine how businesses evolve, which could affect hiring patterns but also drive innovation. Tech startup funding is flowing into new ideas that can harness AI, with new ideas emerging all the time and potential applications being explored in hundreds of industries and occupations. Several jobs or at least tasks such as manual photo manipulation, copywriting, and transcription have already been greatly sped up or rendered unnecessary by AI-enabled tools, and that will continue to spread to new use cases in 2024.

This new wave of AI capabilities will also have an impact on the devices, services and subscriptions we use. Already, we’re seeing “AI PC” used as a marketing term. This is the sort of marketing that happened around the time of the “multimedia PC” in the 1990s and later with Intel pushing its Centrino badge to encourage the adoption of Wi-Fi. In both cases, we saw major evolutions not only in terms of hardware but also usage patterns, for example laptops overtaking desktops, and the emergence of our always-connected lives and lifestyles. If the industry rallies around the term “AI PC” (and if manufacturers can present a consistent value proposition that’s more than just marketing hype), we’ll see a major upgrade and replacement cycle beginning in 2024.

In the short term, we could also see a new class divide emerge, between the haves and have-nots of AI capabilities. Will some people, industries and even countries use their resources to cement an early mover advantage and create standards or processes that favour them? Could those without such resources be excluded from activities or job opportunities, and even face limits on social mobility? Will economic disparities be widened on bridged by all these changes? How will we support those who are left behind, and how long will it take for this technology and access to trickle down to everyone?

With new expectations of what work entails come new infrastructure demands and new social architectures, in turn opening up new opportunities as people learn to use them and push their boundaries. Every major CPU manufacturer is pushing their own on-device AI capabilities, which put the power in each user’s hands rather than requiring information and instructions to be sent to huge remote datacentres. This is said to improve security since no one else has access to your data, and eliminate latency, ie the gap between request and result. That kind of security could make people comfortable with opening up access to more of their lives, and instant responses could make future AI assistants far more versatile and engaging. Companies could automate processes and people could turn ideas into products or tools regardless of technical skill level.    

The next step in all of this is of course regulatory scrutiny and new frameworks and regulations around AI and whatever it spawns. Criminals usually have the upper hand when new technology emerges and we’re already seeing some frightening applications of AI-enabled voice duplication and video manipulation tools. New types of scams are likely to be extremely convincing simply because people aren’t expecting such well-tailored manipulation tactics and hyper-realistic fabrications. We might have to get used to using new defense mechanisms such as asking someone about a specific, personal memory or even bringing back old counterespionage tricks like pass-phrases that only you and your contacts are privy to.

Many people are already dealing with huge changes to their workflow and device interaction experiences, and 2024 will be a defining year when it comes to AI influencing our decision making in all spheres of life. AI isn’t going away and cannot be ignored. Whether you’re trying to build entirely new billion-dollar industries or just looking for better music recommendations, 2024 will be the year in which people and systems either adapt or get left behind.