AI in 2024: What’s Next in Artificial Intelligence

2023 was a big, big year for artificial intelligence, but there’s so much more to come. With just a few weeks left of the year, these are my predictions for what’s coming in AI in 2024.

Top 10 Predictions

1. Superhuman Sales Assistants: By 2024, AI sales assistants will not just handle mundane tasks, like arranging meeting times for sales team members, but also outperform top human salespersons in terms of conversion and customer engagement.
2. AI Ethics & Governance: There will be calls for a “Hippocratic Oath” for AI developers. As AI assistants become more prevalent, the need for ethical guidelines and governance will increase. Companies failing to adhere to these will face severe backlash.
3. Deeply Personalized Conversations: AI will have the capability to understand user context to such a depth that conversations with bots will feel more personalized and insightful than talking to a close friend, raising concerns about privacy and over-reliance on technology.
4. Emotionally Intelligent Bots: Bots will detect and adapt to human emotions in real-time, shifting the conversation based on a user’s current emotional state. This will bring about debates on the genuine nature of empathy and if machines can eventually truly “care”.
5. Conversational Memory: Future AI assistants will remember past conversations with users and reference them for a richer conversational experience. This, however, will intensify concerns over data storage, privacy, and potential misuse of end-consumer’s data.
6. Human-AI Collaboration in Creative Fields: While AI will assist in various professional fields, by 2024, AI tools will actively co-write scripts, music, novels, and other creative content alongside humans, challenging our notions of creativity and, most importantly, originality.
7. Regulation and AI Rights: With the increasing sophistication of AI, there will be debates on whether highly advanced conversational agents deserve rights. Should there be limits to their “work hours”? Do they deserve “rest”? But seriously, how the end-user treats the AI will be compared to how they treat the company the AI represents. For example, if you discriminate against an AI, are you liable of discrimination in general?
8. Decentralization of AI Services: Instead of relying on big tech cloud data centers, AI services will be decentralized, running on distributed networks, perhaps leveraging blockchain technology. This can democratize AI’s benefits but also pose challenges in standardizing and regulating AI behaviors and the data exchange between AI and human.
9. AI Mainstream Industry Applications: By 2024, AI will permeate various industries in ways that were previously thought of as science fiction. Use cases will proliferate (see specifics by Industry below).
10. AI and Societal Evolution: As AI becomes intricately woven into our daily lives, it will influence not just industries, but the very fabric of society. Will we ever be able to live without AI, moving forward?

Industry Impacts and Use Cases

By 2024, AI’s pervasive influence will reshape industries, offering unprecedented efficiencies, personalized services, and innovative solutions:

Mental Health: AI conversational agents will act as first-line responders for those seeking mental health support, raising ethical debates on genuine empathy and human touch in therapy.

Education: Personalized, AI-driven learning experiences will challenge traditional educational structures and the role of human educators. AI will be more knowledgeable than most educators due to the ability to reference virtually all educational content.

Healthcare: AI will play a central role in diagnosing ailments, suggesting treatments, and assisting surgeries, prompting discussions about trust in machine-led medical care. Can AI cure cancer?

Entertainment: AI-assisted creation in movies, music, and art will redefine artistic originality and collaboration, and challenge originality.

Telecommunications: AI will optimize network traffic, predict outages, enhance customer service, and drive innovative service offerings, transforming how we connect and communicate.

Banking: Automated financial advisors, fraud detection, and hyper-personalized banking services will become the norm, though they might raise concerns about financial data privacy.

Insurance: AI will streamline claims processing, enhance risk assessment, and offer tailored policies, revolutionizing how we think about protection and coverage.

Manufacturing: Smart factories powered by AI will optimize production lines in real-time, predict equipment failures, and innovate product designs, leading to debates about workforce implications.

Hospitality: AI-driven concierge services, personalized guest experiences, and operational efficiencies will redefine the hospitality industry, potentially challenging the essence of human-hosted experiences.

Technology: AI will drive R&D, optimize software development cycles, and lead to breakthroughs in fields like quantum computing and material science.

Business Services: From HR to logistics, AI will automate and optimize business processes, leading to debates on job displacements and the evolving nature of work.

Retail: AI-powered virtual shopping assistants, supply chain optimization, and predictive inventory management will transform the retail landscape, raising questions about the future of brick-and-mortar stores and consumer data use.

Societal Changes

As AI becomes intricately woven into our daily lives, it will influence not just industries, but the very fabric of society. Here’s what this might look like:

Cultural Shifts: AI will drive new forms of art, music, and literature, possibly leading to an AI-influenced cultural renaissance. The line between human-created and AI-created content will blur, leading to debates on the essence of creativity and originality.

Urban Planning & Architecture: AI-driven design will reshape our cities, optimizing for efficiency, sustainability, and human-centric designs. With the rise of smart cities, urban spaces will adapt in real-time to the needs of their inhabitants.

Social Dynamics: As AI systems become a regular part of households (beyond voice assistants), families might find themselves bonding with or being influenced by machine entities, leading to discussions about the nature of relationships, upbringing, and human connection in the AI age.

Political Landscape: AI will have a say in policy modeling and prediction, perhaps even suggesting laws based on vast data analysis. The role of AI in democracies, especially in decision-making, will be a topic of heated debate.