As always, we know we will be wrong, but it doesn’t stop us speculating! There might be fears of global recessions and doom and gloom, but the tech sector will keep innovating! Here are our top 5 guesses for 2023
1. Artificial Intelligence – What will we see this year? As the year closed out, many people astounded by ChatGPT and what they could ask it to do. One thing I couldn’t ask it was to make any tech predictions for this year, but I predict that either ChatGPT or similar tools will have no such constraints by the end of the year.
We have seen significant advances in the application of AI in many aspects of daily life – such as transport, drones, robotic home appliances (lawn mowers and vacuums etc) and even starting in retail commerce.
The next generation of these will be much more commonplace by the end of this year, and they will be widely accepted. The applications are broad, from travel to design, retail to financial.
2. Free Speech Online – the social challenges around social media have hit such a point that there has to be some technology that will limit issues such ‘trolling’, and influencing democracy. Clearly the ability to remain largely anonymous emboldens people, and the potential to harness AI bots to flood the internet with messages that unfairly influence outcomes such as elections or normalises abhorrent and anti-social behaviour has become so significant that there has to be a solution.
Legislation isn’t enough. We hope that if mankind could develop an effective Covid vaccination, it can also develop a solution to make the internet a safer place, even if that is limited to known safe-zones on the internet.
3. Things your grandparents would never comprehend – whether it is blockchain, NFTs, or the metaverse, the new inventions to secure IP and to exploit it in new engaging platforms will only accelerate. There has been a slowdown of tech IPO rollouts, but the developments and research will push on. What we might see this year is that the home for much of this innovation will be much more broad than Silicon Valley although that will remain relevant as the source of investment tech capital for the immediate future.
4. At home– we will see more options for universal device charging, better cameras, and audio/visual tools for working from home. There will be more wireless devices, from TVs with built in game controllers, to chargers, and more foldable/flexible screens like this example – https://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2023-samsung-display-to-show-off-display-that-folds-and-slides/
5. At work – this year has to be the year we see even more emphasis on cyber-security solutions. Attacks have become more sophisticated and more targetted. We hate to think what happens as the use of AI tools like ChatGPT make these more intelligent and more specific to the induvidual being targetted. Many of the protective tools that we will use every day by the end of the year probably don’t exist yet.