One 1 hand we have "AI", promising chatbots that automate trival tasks, to the industry going back to old boring frameworks.<p>What are some tech society predictions you have?
I wouldn't be surprised if the first major acts of eco-terrorism (for lack of a better term) were to happen.<p>Peaceful protestors, as is tradition, were largely ignored. Acts of civil disobedience were ignored. Acts of obstruction are being frowned upon and the people involved are turned into villains by the media. There are people out there who went through all these efforts, faced rejection or deafening silence at each step of the way and are now out there further radicalizing themselves. Policymakers are still largely sleeping on the issue. This summer broke records and hit concerning extremes all over the globe. It feels like it's just a matter of time before something boils over.
Surely by definition you can't have a "reasonable" black swan prediction, because then it's a grey swan?<p>Black swans are what you can't predict with what you already know.
I predict death of tech firm investment in general. Startups are too volatile to deliver anything over a long period, and the dinosaurs are too fearful to deliver anything new and dying a slow grasping death. The future lies in open source, to which I'm seeing some monetization movements happening there, but I'm not sure how anyone can really bank on something free. Maybe you can. Maybe you invest in the payment brokers for sponsoring open source projects?
There’s a huge wave of startup failures coming, due to the overexuberance in 2021.<p>Basically, a large chunk of the unprofitable startups that raised in 2021 are going to fail at becoming profitable and be forced into fire sales or bankruptcy.<p>A recent example is Clutter, a moving company that raised $300m, who was forced into a fire sale for $30m.<p>These founders are going to learn the hard way one of the reasons why VC’s were willing to assign sky high valuations (bc they have downside protection)
Mine: In November 2023, a surprise AI model will be release that is 10x as powerful as GPT-4, and consumes 5x less resources.<p>One individual will be able to run a dozen in parallel, connected to the internet.<p>1 month later the first pixar scale movie is released, made from a guys basement.<p>Hollywood industry collapses
I've recently seen some interesting intersections between game theory twitter* and LLM advances so here's my prediction:<p>Zero-determinant strategies applied to call handling. You want to cancel your subscription for a crappy thing? Your conversational tactics and state of mind during the call can be mapped to a large matrix and solved for you not being able to cancel and not having any legal recourse and thinking the outcome was your own idea.<p>*(Edit: mostly no longer on twitter)
The beginnings of a consumer migration to a more private and less bot-riddled internet hosted by the individuals and built upon consumer-focused open source projects. Aimed at non-techies as a way to regain control over their digital life and privacy.
The EU or US will force some business changes on Google, Meta, Apple or Amazon in the name of anti-trust, privacy or consumer protection. Nothing existential, but someone's golden goose will loose some feathers.<p>ARM processors will become a common choice for Windows laptops and mini-PCs. AMD/Intel will occupy the high end and legacy spaces.<p>Smartphone makers will add LLM AI assistants to their latest phones to juice sales.<p>One of the full self driving companies will have a vehicle in a serious accident.
When I think of a black swan, I think of something that when said outloud sounds ludicrous with foresight and somewhat obvious/ reasonable in hindsight.<p>It's something that will likely get you laughed at by domain experts and the general public until it happens.<p>Using that as a framework, I'll predict something that I don't actually belive :D<p>> Aliens are real, they're here on earth and they've got extremely advanced tech. Some whistle-blower will blow the lid on the whole thing as part of a October surprise in 2024<p>That sounds like insane magical thinking and any reasonable person can easily discount it. But after it happened (by nature of it actually being real), it would have a rational explanation with telltale signs all along.
At least one of the “upper tier” tech firms will fall afoul of the new SEC reporting requirements around data breaches/compromises. Someone will lose their shirt over this.<p>Not 2023, but I expect in 2024 or 2025 the current decline in security service spending by companies to bite them in the arse. See the first prediction.
(non-English speaker so bear with me)<p>1. "Choose boring technology"<p>The new situation for tech investments will force a change in how startups choose their technologies. The number of "innovation tokens" will be limited, as the runway is shortened and they can't afford to spend time on immature technology or pretend they have to design a product for Google scale.<p>Startups will be forced to make safer choices. Example: If you are an average startup, you don't get to choose an esoteric programming language or create your own database server, unless that language or database is your actual product.<p>2. "Low/No code is still not ready, but many startups will fail because of it"<p>Due to #1 many managers and VCs will consider lowering costs by trying low/no code tools. They may get an initial MVP quickly, but will waste lots of time and money once they move outside the market fit for their chosen tool.<p>4. "AI is the new blockchain"<p>We will see an increase in startups using "AI" as a keyword for attracting VCs. Those that focus too much on AI will often fail to provide a decent product, while those that considers it another tool in the toolbox will have an advantage. Prices on graphics cards will still be high, as the AI startups will need a lot of processing power.<p>5. "Sh*itification of streaming services"<p>TV/Movies are too fragmented and it will start hurting the streaming services. Consumers will increasingly become periodic subscribers, where they subscribe for a period and then pause the subscription until the next season of a good show is released. This will cause panic in the boardrooms and they will make many bad decisions that makes the product worse.<p>We will look at the years prior to 2025 as the golden age of streaming, until the product eventually becomes so bad that piracy and bankruptcies forces a more distributed alternative where a tv series is not tightly coupled with a streaming service (it may take several years)<p>6. "Twitter / X will still be there"<p>I think that they will be profitable and still be a major source of traffic. Some of the changes may be reversed (such as the name change and re-hiring moderators), but I think many in tech are underestimating the advantage they have by their size. They can expand their product and increase their revenue enough to become profitable even if they don't conquer the world.
I'm expecting China to pull a rabbit out of the hat on AI & chips.<p>i.e. despite being behind and sanctioned they'll find a way to rapidly catch up and surpass the west
GCP shuts down.<p>Massive outages on AWS will force companies rethink their strategy.<p>China relationship causes massive rejection of made in china tech.
Not really tech, but tech business:<p>ARM's US listing will be aborted in favor of private sale to unreliable new owners, setting off an IP conflagration that no one can sort out, putting CHIP investments at risk and situating tech as ground zero for the economic & culture wars of the US 2024 election.
1) An overworked and indebted worker could intentionally disrupt a semiconductor fab causing significant delays in the production of graphics cards.<p>2) White separatists could take controll of a medium sized section of Northern Idaho and the standoff could turn into a stalemate.<p>3) Joe Biden could have a stoke yet still insist on running for a second term.<p>4) A sink hole caused by excessive pumping of ground water could cause a sink hole which at least temporarilly swallows a major river.