Hey, I’m Lindsay, the host of Make Sense w/ Lindsay T., Lady Engineer®, a weekly podcast where my guests and I simplify complex topics at the intersection of people & technology. We analyze whatever hot mess is in the news, evaluate trending innovations through a human-first lens, and take deep dives on a need-to-know basis.
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Crystal Ball, what does the future hold?
Do you want to know what I’m predicting for 2024 based on the 47+ recorded episodes of the Make Sense podcast over the past 12 months?
My three big predictions are about Artificial Intelligence (AI). The theme song is “Back to Life” by British R&B band Soul II Soul. Pop open the YouTube video or press play below.
Back to life, back to reality. Back to the here and now.
In 2023, the AI headline hype manipulated people’s base fears around job security and economic stability. Having been in the technology industry for 20 years, I can tell you innovations are rarely an impending doom. For instance, my first Virtual Reality project was in 2004 yet the technology has yet, in 2024, to find mainstream and widespread adoption.
This is all to say that I want to assuage your fears. There’s no Mac truck pummeling towards us. We have time to prepare. And, luckily, three things will happen this year that will slow the technology’s advancements and buy us time. With that extra time, I hope to shape a future where AI empowers us and our human experience more than it will replace us.
#1: Many Generative AI Startups Will Fold
After the hype in 2023, we’ll enter a period of disappointment. Several things will catch up with these companies:
- Competition amongst them in the market and for funding
- Our collective realization that results are still unpolished and unworkable for production
- Low (and risky!) returns for enterprise customers
- Increased market presence by the incumbents
Masha Bucher, Founder and General Partner at Day One Ventures first spoke about this in VentureBeat’s article “AI predictions for 2024: What top VCs think.” She pointed out the platform risk for many GenAI startups that are built on OpenAI. If you remember, 10+ years ago there were a ton of 3rd party Twitter apps that have since disappeared as Twitter changed its API terms and built (i.e. copied) the functionality of the most successful eco-system apps.
Platform Risk for generative AI startups means OpenAI can take a page from Twitter’s playbook.
On Make Sense, I continued this conversation with Charlie O’Donnell, Founder and General Partner of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Back in May 2023, he wrote an article on This is Going to Be Big titled, “Why AI Won’t Be the Investment Opportunity Everyone Thinks It Is.”
Watch this YouTube short below or visit here for the whole episode:
#2: Politicians Will Blame AI for Election Results
Only a month into 2024, fake Biden robocalls showed us the damage AI deepfakes can inflict. As Trump runs for re-election and the Israel-Hamas misinformation war rages on, we need to start stocking ammo.
Our world is already full of false digital information and deepfakes (video, audio, or pictures in which people appear to do or say things they didn’t.). It’s harder to assess the quality of information. Here are some tips for spotting deep fakes and AI-generated misinformation:
- Question the authenticity of any video that elicits strong emotional reactions
- Examine the source behind the video, not just the person who shared it
- Look for visual inconsistencies, such as changes in backgrounds, clothing or audio
- Analyze facial and body movements for unnatural patterns and unusual facial expressions
- Check for lip-syncing errors
- Listen for audio anomalies
Lastly, don’t be part of the spread of misinformation. If you have any doubts at all, don’t share it.
#3: One Major Copyright Case Against AI Will Change Its Trajectory
Authors vs. OpenAI and Google, Getty vs. Stability AI, and developers vs. GitHub. Courts will find at least one guilty, and that will cause chaos for enterprise adoption.
From the day ChatGPT exploded on the scene, Sheena Franklin asked, “How do they know all that? Where are they getting this from?”
It turns out she wasn’t the only one asking that question. By the Summer of 2023, copyright lawsuits against a myriad of AI companies emerged. Concurrently, the actors’ and writers’ strikes were reaching their peak. Both of these asked challenging questions. Sheena and I talked about this on her episode of Make Sense.
To catch you up:
- Sarah Silverman and novelists sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for ingesting their books
- Amazon, Airbnb, Ikea rush to Block ChatGPT from scraping
- Getty Images is suing the creators of AI art tool Stable Diffusion
Perhaps these court cases will give you confidence that AI adoption will slow, particularly in the enterprise. If companies don’t know where AI information is coming from, they can’t adequately defend themselves against copyright infringement suits in the future. It’s a full-stop on adoption and usage until AI creators are cleared of these accusations.
Buck the media hype cycle. Calm the fear-mongering. Laugh at the inanity of Tech CEO “hero culture.” Be the smartest person in your peer’s LinkedIn feed: