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What about artificial intelligence use in 2024 – a number of forecasts

Generative AI means a major paradigm shift taking place. By 2025, 35% of enterprises worldwide will be using GenAI to co-develop digital products and services potentially doubling their revenue growth compared to their competitors. Implementation of skills development powered by GenAI and automation will enable organizations to drive $1 trillion in productivity gains worldwide by 2026, International Data Corporation (IDC) says in a forecast. Stanford University website asked seven scholars about their forecast for AI in 2024 and it includes both deepfakes and discussions about what do we really  want from AI.

A recent global C-suite survey suggests that much of the focus over the next 18–24 months will be on driving productivity improvements, especially in relation to the sales, IT, and finance functions IDC reports. 

“Indeed, over 50% of the respondents emphasized that productivity gains are the most important business outcome they are targeting for the next 18 months.”

“In 2024, GenAI tools will enable senior leaders to double the productive use of unstructured data by uncovering untapped insights and knowledge.” 

“For most organizations, it is easy to develop hundreds of productivity use cases around GenAI, but many are already questioning whether they are over-pivoting on cost reduction and not focusing enough on how GenAI can help them to grow their revenues,” says Jyoti Lalchandani, IDC’s group vice president and regional managing director. 

“We expect the emphasis on productivity gains to give way to revenue growth outcomes in the next 3–5 years, with sales, IT, finance, operations, and supply chain functions all reporting revenue growth expectations from GenAI. Providers must track this shift carefully with their core buyers to ensure that their GenAI solution offerings continue to align with the evolving business goals of their customers.”

A short version of the scholars predictions as presented at Stanford University’s website:

Workplace changes

Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, Stanford Digital Economy Lab; Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford HAI; Ralph Landau Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research:

I expect mass adoption by companies that will start delivering some of the productivity benefits that we’ve been hoping for for a long time. It’s going to affect knowledge workers, people who have been largely spared by a lot of the computer revolution in the past 30 years. Creative workers, lawyers, finance professors and more are going to see their jobs change quite a bit this year.

Deepfakes

James Landay, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan Professor, School of Engineering, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University; Vice-Director and Faculty Director of Research, Stanford HAI:

I expect to see big new multimodal models, particularly in video generation. Therefore we’ll also have to be more vigilant to serious deepfakes — we’ll see the spread of videos in which people “say” things that they never said. Consumers need to be aware of that, voters need to be aware of it. We’re also going to see legislation. The EU is getting into their final position for enacting widespread AI rules. There’s back and forth whether that will affect the big American tech companies and their models, but it will come down very soon in 2024. For the U.S., we’re probably not going to see major regulation. 

Processor capacity

Russ Altman, Kenneth Fong Professor and Professor of Bioengineering, of Genetics, of Medicine, of Biomedical Data Science, and Stanford HAI Senior Fellow:

I’m worried about a global shortage of availability of GPU processors—the special processors upon which lots of AI runs. The big companies (and more of them) are all trying to bring AI capabilities in-house, and there is a bit of a run on GPUs. There are a few companies that make these (NVIDIA is the major one), and they may be at capacity. This is a competitiveness thing for the companies but also for entire countries who don’t want to miss out on AI innovations.  

This will create a huge pressure not only for increased GPU production, but for innovators to come up with hardware solutions that are cheaper and easier to make and use. 

Multimedia

Peter Norvig, Distinguished Education Fellow at Stanford HAI:

I’m looking for two things. One of them is the rise of agents and being able to connect to other services to actually do things. 2023 was the year of being able to chat with an AI.

Multiple companies launched something, but the interaction was always you type something in and it types something back. In 2024, we’ll see the ability for agents to get stuff done for you. Make reservations, plan a trip, connect to other services.

Additionally, I think we’ll make steps towards multimedia. It will take more than just one year.

We’ve seen so far a big focus on language models and then image models. At some point, we’re going to have enough processing power to do videos as well. 

Policy

Fei-Fei Li, Sequoia Professor in the Computer Science Department and Co-Director of Stanford HAI:

AI policy will be worth watching in 2024. We saw the most progress in 2023 to date. 

I hope in 2024, we’ll see Congress act. They need to pass legislation like the CREATE AI Act, adhere to the elements called on by the new EO, and invest more in the public sector to ensure America’s leadership in creating AI technology steeped in the values we stand for. 

What do we want

Ge Wang, Associate Professor in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and Stanford HAI Senior Fellow:

One of my hopes for 2024 is that we can have the wherewithal to continue to ask the hard questions, the critical questions about what we want from artificial intelligence in our lives, in our communities, in education, in our society. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a year quite like this. More and more kinds of this generative AI technology are going to embed themselves and entrench into our work, play and communication. How does this year make us feel about ourselves? 

Regulation

Jennifer King, Stanford HAI Privacy and Data Policy Fellow:

Much of the focus on AI regulation in 2023 was on the AI Act across the pond in the EU. However, by mid 2024, two U.S. states — California and Colorado — will have adopted regulations addressing automated decisionmaking in the context of consumer privacy. While these regulations are limited to AI systems that are trained on or collect individuals’ personal information, both offer consumers the right to opt-out of the use of AI by systems that have significant impacts, such as in hiring or insurance. Companies are going to have to start thinking about what it means on the ground when customers exercise their rights, particularly en masse. What happens if you are a large company using AI to assist with your hiring process, and even hundreds of potential hires request an opt-out? Do humans have to review those resumes? Does it guarantee a different, or better, process than what the AI was delivering? We’re only just starting to grapple with these questions. 

 

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