At the Mid-Way Point in the Year 2024, Wovenware Looks Back at the Predictions Made and New Trends Emerging
Along with technology companies everywhere, at the end of 2023 Wovenware took stock of the year about to end and looked ahead to 2024 and what we predicted it had in store for the technology industry.
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It’s hard to believe it, but we’ve hit the mid-year mark on the new year, so it’s a good time to revisit our predictions for 2024, to see how accurate we were, where we may have missed the mark, and what new twists and turns might still be taking shape.
Our prediction of the rise of generative AI (GenAI) comes as no surprise, as it takes hold across the globe. However, AI’s actual impact on tech spend has taken the industry by storm. According to a Washington Post article, “investments in AI represent some of the largest infusions of cash in a specific technology in Silicon Valley history.” And, Gartner forecasts that global spend on AI will surge to $297B by 2027, with more than 70 percent of independent software vendors embedding GenAI into their enterprise applications by 2026. According to Gartner, that figure was less than one percent in 2023.
The launch of increasingly new versions of ChatGPT, Google Bard Ai, and other generative AI solutions, as well as new players such as Mistral, are invigorating a competitive climate. As we said in December 2023, “the possibilities of AI will shift from exploration to full-blown adoption, reinvigorating the entire tech industry and ushering in a new period of digital transformation and innovation.” That is what we’re clearly seeing today, as companies across all sectors and of all sizes are deploying GenAI, which has become fully democratized.
In addition to the rise of AI, let’s look at what else may have changed in Wovenware’s 2024 tech predictions.
Data continues to get deliberate. Today, all companies espouse to be data-driven organizations, yet they still grapple with how to leverage data effectively. We proclaimed that in 2024 businesses would become even more intentional in how they collect and leverage data, but that intent is becoming more crystallized, as they see just how much, good data can inform the accuracy of AI. Yet mid-way through the year, we’re seeing that while organizations understand the value of data, they still struggle with how to leverage to gain greater insights, instead of just more data.
Is economic uncertainty still certain? As of June 2024, the overall economy is not seeing the weaknesses anticipated at the beginning of the year. Wall Street forecasts call for steady earnings growth through at least 2026; and the S&P 500 is edging higher, with strong first quarter earnings helping to ease fears of inflation and a possible delay to interest rate cuts. Yet despite this positive news, the tech industry continues to remain cautious, judiciously reining in spend. Every digital initiative they undertake is being vetted against its ability to increase profitability, reduce long-term costs and enable quick ROI.
Government is not quite there yet with AI governance. While the U.S. government is working aggressively to better understand AI, no formal policies around its safe and effective use have yet to be put into play. In early 2024, the Biden administration announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), comprised of leading AI companies, such as OpenAI, Alphabet’s Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, Intel, and more than 200 other organizations and individuals, who are working together to inform AI regulations. In the meantime, the EU has passed its own European Union AI act in the last few months. While sweeping federally-enacted U.S. AI regulations will most definitely be forthcoming, it may very well not happen in the next few month, as government works to sort out the complexity of it.
New tech zones continue to get hotter. With the U.S. government’s declaration of new tech hubs across the country in October 2023, new regions, including Puerto Rico, became designated tech centers of excellence. While we can only speak for Puerto Rico, as we move through 2024, we’re seeing interesting surging in bringing business to the island. As AI deployment continues to be the key tech focus for businesses everywhere, the challenge has been in finding the critical AI talent to help bring initiatives to fruition. Puerto Rico is becoming a prime source for AI talent, given the number of universities offering best-in-class technology programs, the rise of AI expertise on the island and the advantages of nearshoring to Puerto Rico.
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions especially about the future,” yet we still work hard to predict trends and challenges in order to be prepared. Grounded in data, historical perspectives and plain old hunches, trends such as the rise of GenAI, data analytics, AI regulation and regional tech zones begin to emerge, but it takes deep perspective. But wait, isn’t there an AI tool for that?
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