AI Predictions for 2024: A Glimpse into the Future

The year 2024 promises to be a pivotal year for Artificial Intelligence (AI), with advancements across various sectors and a growing focus on real-world applications. Here are some predictions taken from various sources including my own expressing a variety of opinions as to what we can expect in the near future. The predictions are grouped into six broad categories: Widespread Integration, Generative AI, Practical Applications and Explanability, Health Care, Legal and Ethical Considerations, and Emerging Trends, followed by a list of references to materials discussing various aspects of the topic. For those who may be less familiar with AI, I have also included under References a citation to a posting by Bill Gates that can be read as a general introduction.

Widespread Integration of AI:

AI will become increasingly ubiquitous, seamlessly integrated into homes, businesses, and everyday activities. This could range from personalized AI assistants to smart homes that anticipate your needs.
Over 60% of global consumers are expected to use AI daily, with a significant rise in user adoption for tasks like scheduling, information retrieval, and creative endeavors.

Generative AI Revolutionizes Industries:

The initial hype surrounding generative AI like text, image, and video creation will translate into tangible business results. Companies will utilize it for content marketing, product design, and personalized customer experiences.
Expect advancements in multimodal generative AI, allowing systems to process and generate across different formats like text, audio, and video, leading to richer and more immersive experiences.

Focus on Practical Applications and Explainability:

While cutting-edge research on novel AI architectures continues, there will be a greater emphasis on practical applications and explainability. Businesses and users will demand AI solutions that are not only effective but also transparent and understandable.
We may see the emergence of “hybrid AI” systems, combining traditional rule-based algorithms with machine learning models to improve interpretability and trust.

AI in Healthcare Takes Center Stage:

AI will play a crucial role in improving healthcare efficiency and accessibility. Expect applications like AI-powered diagnosis, personalized treatment plans, and virtual assistants for patients and medical professionals.
Advancements in medical imaging analysis and data integration using AI will contribute to early disease detection and personalized medicine.

5.. Legal, and Ethical Considerations Come to the Forefront:

As AI becomes more pervasive, concerns about bias, privacy, and security will intensify. Governments and organizations will implement regulations and ethical frameworks to ensure responsible and equitable deployment of AI.
Some predict that opensource AI models and increased transparency in development processes will contribute to building trust and fostering collaboration in the AI community. Forbes, on the other hand predicts that the best closed models will continue to meaningfully outperform the best open models in 2024 (and beyond).
Strategic investments from cloud providers into AI startups—and the associated accounting implications—will be challenged by regulators (Forbes).
The focus of law practice “will shift towards seamless human-AI collaboration, where lawyers leverage AI’s speed and New Specific Use-Case GPTs Will Emerge for Practice Areas” (Law 360 Pulse-Law Firms Lerner)
“New Specific Use-Case GPTs Will Emerge for Practice Areas. One-size-fits-all may not work with law firms using generative pre-trained transformers, or GPTs, which are the models that power generative AI tools. Lawyers might need AI tools that are built specifically for each practice area.” (Law 360 Pulse-Law Firms Lerner).
“In-House Teams Will Opt For Multi-Purpose AI Tools as a sort of counterpoint, instead of relying on tailor-made AI tools for each department, corporations might transcend traditional departmental boundaries in their approach to generative AI and data.” (Law 360 Pulse-Law Firms Lerner). “In 2024, enterprises might try to navigate the AI cycle by following a multidisciplinary approach to AI adoption. In other words, AI tools will be shared across departments.” (Law 360 Pulse-Law Firms Lerner)

At least one U.S. court will rule that generative AI models trained on the internet represent a violation of copyright. The issue will begin working its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court (Forbes).

In his “2023 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary,” Chief Justice John Roberts provides his reflections on the way AI will “transform” the work of the federal judiciary. While he doubts that AI will replace the work of human judges, he is confident that “judicial work…will be significantly affected by AI.”
An AI-powered election year should make everyone nervous (Vox Technology Estes)

Emerging Trends:

AI for Climate Change: We may see AI applications used for environmental monitoring, resource optimization, and disaster prediction to combat climate change.
AI in Robotics and Automation: Advances in AI will further enhance robotics capabilities, leading to greater automation in various industries.
Rise of Edge Computing: Processing data closer to the source will become crucial for real-time AI applications, requiring advancements in edge computing infrastructure.
A number of Fortune 500 companies will create a new C-suite position: Chief AI Officer (Forbes).
More AI wearables will be announced Coingeek News). “In 2024, we can expect the AI wearable trend to pick up steam, with more companies creating, improving, or releasing an AI wearable product. The next wave of AI wearables should be much better than the first since the companies releasing them will reap the benefits of taking a “wait and see” approach; they will know the pain points this class of products experiences and can take steps to overcome the problems that the earliest wearables had. If done correctly, this could potentially lead to breakthroughs in wearable technology and mass adoption in this sector”
Instant Videos (New York Times January 8, 2024). “Companies such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and the New York-based Runway are likely to deploy image generators that allow people to generate videos, too. These companies have already built prototypes of tools that can instantly create videos from short text prompts. Tech companies are likely to fold the powers of image and video generators into chatbots, making the chatbots more powerful.”
‘Multimodal’ Chatbots (New York Times January 8, 2024). A.I. companies are building “multimodal” systems, meaning the A.I. can handle multiple types of media. These systems learn skills by analyzing photos, text and potentially other kinds of media, including diagrams, charts, sounds and video, so they can then produce their own text, images and sounds. That isn’t all. Because the systems are also learning the relationships between different types of media, they will be able to understand one type of media and respond with another. In other words, someone may feed an image into chatbot and it will respond with text.”
Better ‘Reasoning’ (New York Times January 8, 2024). “The aim is to build systems that can carefully and logically solve a problem through a series of discrete steps, each one building on the next. That is how humans reason, at least in some cases.”
‘A.I. Agents’ (New York Times January 8, 2024). Researchers are essentially transforming chatbots into a new kind of autonomous system called an A.I. agent. That means the chatbots can use software apps, websites and other online tools, including spreadsheets, online calendars and travel sites. People could then offload tedious office work to chatbots. But these agents could also take away jobs entirely. In 2024, A.I. companies are set to unveil agents that are more reliable.”
AI technology in policing is expected to grow by 29% in 2024.

Remember, these are just predictions, and the future of AI remains uncertain. However, one thing is clear: AI is poised to play an increasingly transformative role in our lives in 2024 and beyond.

References:

The Age of AI has Begun. by Bill Gates, GatesNotes. March 21,2023.

The Definitive Guide to Artificial Intelligence Predictions for 2024.

How 2024 Will be AI’s Leap Forward.

10 AI Predictions for 2024.

AI Predictions for 2024.

8 Bold Legal Technology Predictions for 2024.

Essential AI in Criminal Justice Statistics in 2024

AI Laws Elections and Quantum: 10 Predictions for Data in 2024.

2024 Will Make AI a Factor in Elections

AI Judges Chief Justice Roberts Thinks Not.

3 Predictions for AI in Healthcare in 2024.