My Tech Predictions for 2024

1.#AI / #ML applications will gain traction in productivity - particularly #manufacturing productivity. Much of the focus to date has been on predictive failure/maintenance but the real action is around productivity and people will realise that AI is not a panacea to replace all humans from a process but rather a huge leap in #automation.

2. Following that theme we will see a renaissance in manufacturing, less labour-intensive processes can be onshored again creating high-quality jobs for a skilled workforce (like the #UK). It will be process/industry experts rather than pure software guys who are important in this phase...

3. #NFTs do have a part to play in our economy. But not for selling bored ape avatars. Fractional digital representation of physical assets is a super interesting way of creating liquidity.

4. Copyright and AI #LLMs are going to be a huge debate. The The New York Times just announced a lawsuit against OpenAI but that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Image synthesis models require a boatload of existing photographs to train AI image generators, such as #dalle, #midjourneyai, and Stable Diffusion AI Art Generator. To create #LAION5B, bots directed by AI researchers crawled billions of sources of photographs and artwork at sites such as Getty Images, Flickr and Pinterest - collecting millions of copyrighted images without gaining permission. People will start to realize that the gazillions of photographs they post on platforms like Facebook may be being used to create "AI images". When people start to see (incredibly similar) images of themselves in a variety of situations all hell will break loose.5. This is more hope than anything but... the #gamblingindustry in the UK really must be regulated. The latest ads (by gambling companies) claim that they are helping people gamble less. Yeah right. Like saying to the Alcoholic "By all means let us serve you 5 pints - then you can just just take a break". Total crap. Someone watching a #premierleague game will see gambling ads 2.75 times per broadcast minute; equivalent to once every 21s...