© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
int(2)
Visualise Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an organism that leeches on the collective intelligence of humanity gathered over the past millennia. This is technology that is all-pervasive, and it will soon be all-prevalent.
There has never before been a technology this powerful — and it is getting more powerful with literally every passing second. This is why the past year has been unprecedented — never before has technology, and everything related to it, changed at such a fast pace that keeping tabs on where we are and where we are going next has become so hard.
Artificial Intelligence, which is learning its way into newer things, and telling us there are even better things to do and faster ways to do them, is squarely to blame. Other technologies where change is a constant but is incremental, such as smartphones and computers, seem to be laggards in the present situation.
The pace at which AI is changing a lot of what we do should not surprise us. So much accumulated learning over the many years of its development, and the sudden spurt in its own understanding of this learning, has given AI a god-like ability to plot a new trend line of where we should all be headed. This is certainly scary — because this is still a technology that we don’t fully understand, and are not sure we can fully control.
But our ability to harness this new power should become better in the coming year. So must our ability, and willingness, to rein in some of the darker aspects of AI — such as deep fakes, that make it hard to figure out what is true and what is not.
In a crucial election year in India and the United States, the world’s largest and oldest democracies, this will be in play to an unprecedented extent. Voters will have to watch every promise and every viral video clip and listen to every audio message with the scepticism that this might well be synthetic — not created by those whom they are actually seeing.
It is a concern that most voters in India don’t have the understanding that synthetic content is already infiltrating their lives. All this makes it imperative that 2024 is the year in which AI and its power are regulated to ensure that they do not get the ability to destroy what humans have built over centuries.
Keep this in mind as you read The Indian Express’s top tech predictions for the coming year (and indeed, later).
In fact, AI is already everywhere — like electricity. But in 2024, it will permeate our lives even more. The first signals of what this means came when Humane launched its AI Pin, which many believe could replace the smartphone. It was clearly a window into how this new technology can impact everything we do once it finds the right vehicles to carry it.
In 2024, AI will become an integral part of everything from smartphones to laptops. It is already available on these devices, but with limited functionalities. You will soon see models that can run AI on-device without access to the Internet, and with the ability to give answers, take on large-scale computing, and optimise functionalities in real time.
AI will also help connect the dots by personalising everything from websites to gadgets according to the specific needs of users — and modifying itself as it gets to learn more about this user.
Don’t be surprised if this layer of intelligence in our devices soon becomes even more important to users than the operating systems that bring in AI capabilities. Generative AI has the power to push the boring tech into the background as it converses with users on their needs, and executes exactly what they want.
However, this will also be the year when AI platforms start regulating themselves more, even blocking access to areas where they think it would be irresponsible to offer user access at the moment. In fact, responsible AI will become an integral part of all large AI platforms, even as a lot of smaller players continue to push the envelope in newer areas.
Over the past couple of years, India has made a strong push towards making tech products within the country, and not just assembling them here. This is now clearly bearing fruit as both the ecosystem and a product startup culture have begun to bloom across the country.
It is now almost impossible to buy a smartphone that is not assembled in India. In 2024, this will spread to other segments from audio to computers, as more companies avail the benefits of the government’s production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. The day when a high-end gadget is completely made in India with all components, including the elusive processor, sourced from within the country is not far.
Indian startups are also exploring new segments like high-end audio, where India has never been a player. This is a sign of things to come. A long-term effect will be lower price points for a lot of gadgets that are made in India, especially if the government decides to further incentivise local manufacturing.
The world has been moving towards green tech in a big way, especially with electric vehicles. But there is another green revolution happening, with tech companies making their entire product chain more sustainable by adopting green tech and recycled components.
All the big companies from Apple to Samsung and Lenovo now tout a green quotient in everything they do, and sustainability is a big part of product design from the stage of ideation onwards. Expect this to be the norm going forward — with companies that do not have a green patch on their products becoming the exception.
But there will be a price to pay for going green. This is often a more expensive proposition, even if your next smartphone has a significant percentage of components that are recycled.
A world without cookies is near. While it will mean a lot more privacy for users, it will come at a cost.
You will slowly stop seeing ads chasing you from your email to e-commerce sites and search engines, but you will also lose the convenience of personalisation across a lot of platforms that came because they knew your browsing patterns and likes.
As companies around the world prepare for this huge disruption in the way they have worked from almost the time the Internet was created, there will be some innovation to ensure they know something about you so that content and advertisement can still be tailored for the user. This could trigger new tech that gives the Internet its character for the coming decade.
But before that, there will be some mayhem across the tech world — ad revenues will plummet as more users go under a cloak of anonymity in 2024.
Call it augmented reality (AR) or extended reality (XR), but don’t call it Metaverse. As Metaverse ends up being more meta than verse, there is a pivot happening towards technologies that offer an easy-to-access-and-consume smart layer on top of our real worlds.
These technologies will manifest themselves via simple smart goggles or more expensive VR headsets, but they will all offer a more personal “techverse”, helping people to get a better understanding of the situation they are in. This is also going to usher in the next phase of social media, where you invite others to experience what you are experiencing at the moment, literally through your eyes.
But there is a lot of scope for companies present and new to offer knowledge as a layer for you in real-time — visualise meeting a person for the first time and getting their LinkedIn bio inside your smart glasses, or streaming your beach trip for your family back home via the same goggles. Reality is ready for its next extension.
Tomorrow: Sports in 2024
