What are AI experts predicting 2024 will bring?
Unlike some technology fads in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) looks here to stay.
And while tech companies have long dabbled in AI, its meteoric rise truly took off in 2023, especially with ChatGPT birthing it into the public consciousness.
According to leading industry mavens, 2024 is slated to be a year defined by the rapid expansion of AI across multiple sectors.
Here is what they are expecting to happen next year.
Growth in the tech sector
AI dwarfs the impact of the internet and the smartphone, said the manager of the Polar Capital Global Technology Fund, Xuesong Zhao. One of these impacts is the potential to disrupt industries and bring “significant productivity gains.”
“The Team also believes the worst of the macro headwinds, as they relate to the technology sector, are likely behind us and the investment backdrop for growth technology in particular looks appealing.
“The sector tends to outperform the broader market in times of low economic growth and stable interest rates. The robust growth of the portfolio, and scarcity of growth elsewhere, should drive superior returns.
“The technology sector should continue to deliver strong growth in 2024 as AI moves from infancy to more widespread adoption,” Zhao added.
More cybercrime
Global head of threat analysis at Darktrace, Toby Lewis, believes there will be an increasing amount of criminal exploitation of AI tools.
He said: “Significant global events and trends will become a target for those looking to exploit and disrupt, while generative AI will open doors for more advanced multilingual attacks and climate ‘hacktivism’.
“This underscores the need for advanced, AI-driven cybersecurity solutions. As bad actors become smarter and more sophisticated, businesses need to be equipped with the tools to prevent and protect, and the public be increasingly wary of their data and the content they consume,” Lewis added.
AI in retail
AI is ushering in more personalised shopping experiences in 2024, said the chief of London-listed Eagle Eye Solutions Group, Tim Mason.
He said: “2024 will see consumers receiving personalised shopping promotions to our phones while we are in store, with retailers using AI to provide us with offers individually tailored based on the items we have in our baskets.
“As the retail sector shifts decisively towards true one-to-one personalisation, the era of generic offers and one-size-fits-all marketing approaches is rapidly becoming obsolete. Retail pioneers are leading this evolution, demonstrating its significant effects.”
The cost for businesses
AI needs to deliver on its hype next year, to justify the cost of investment and ongoing spend, according to the chief technology officer of Cisco UK & Ireland, Chintan Patel.
“AI comes with significant cost; not just in terms of implementing the right infrastructure, data governance and talent, but also in its basic operations and running costs.
“With OpenAI language models currently costing up to $0.12 per 1,000 tokens (equivalent to 750 words), expenses can add up quickly — especially when dealing with high volumes of output.
“For organisations that aren’t monitoring their APIs, unexpected cost overruns can significantly impact their bottom line. And that’s before you factor in increased electricity costs due to the higher energy requirements of generative AI tools.
“Controlling this shadow spend and realising true ROI will be a strategic business priority in 2024,” Patel added.
Quantum
Is quantum the new buzzword? Markus Pflitsch, founder of Terra Quantum, reckons it could be big next year.
He said: “2024 will be the year when people realise the potential of combining AI and quantum technologies. Classical AI has been a big theme in 2023 but it’s based on hard deterministic rules.
“When you partner AI with quantum, you open a new door towards more creative and potentially genuinely intelligent systems. That’s because the underlying physics is non-deterministic and non-causal on a single event basis. The combination of AI and quantum will be a very significant step.”