2023 was a year filled to the brim with AI, with tens of new developments sometimes coming out in even a single day. How can we discern which ones will truly matter in the decades to come? Here are three that I believe are truly consequential as we move into 2024 and beyond.
The Flywheel
For many who are new to the field, the sheer pace of new AI introductions can seem unbelievable. But there is a reason for this pace – a flywheel that came into place years ago, which is now spinning faster everyday. What caused the AI flywheel? It was the perfect storm of three developments
- Ubiquitous compute. With cloud services putting significant compute capacity at the hands of anyone with an email address, it is now trivial to build and create new AIs. Even laptop computers can be used to build powerful AIs and smartphones can run AI predictions for everything from facial recognition to avatar manipulation.
- Open Source. While open source software did not start with AI, many AI developments are open sourced (meaning that anyone can try out a new AI technique and build upon it).
- Data everywhere. Massive public datasets exist that can run on the available compute using the open source code.
What does this mean? It means that every time a new AI development comes out, a better version can arrive soon thereafter, which then gets further improvements. The flywheel spins faster and faster.
AI Literacy
AI literacy – the general and broad understanding of AI across all aspects of human life, was in development even before 2023. However, the arrival of ChatGPT and similar tools brought AI awareness to the mainstream. AI literacy went from being a nice-to-have to a necessity. 2023 was the year that the world realized that AI education was a requirement for everyone.
AI Regulation and Risks
With broad AI comes broad risks in everything from misinformation to AI-related privacy risks, failures, and mistakes. 2023 saw an increasing flow of regulation, from the United States AI Bill of Rights to the European Union’s progress on the AI Act. More examples of AI risk emerge daily – further driving home the need for regulation and oversight.
What about 2024?
All three of these areas saw dramatic growth in 2023, and their growth feeds on each other. For that reason, all three will likely continue to be large trends in 2024. In the next few weeks – I will build upon this article to predict what the key AI developments will be in 2024.
