Tech Trends to Watch in 2024
Quick notes on the most important technology trends I’m watching in 2024:
1. Generative AI Goes Multimodal
- Text-to-image was just the beginning
- Text-to-video becoming commercially viable (Runway, Gen-2, Pika)
- AI agents that can interact with software UI and APIs
- Business impact: Exponential productivity gains in creative fields
2. AI-Native Applications
- Moving beyond “AI features” to applications built entirely around AI capabilities
- Complete reimagining of workflows, not just automation
- Examples: Copilot for coding, Harvey for legal, Hippocratic AI for healthcare
- Business impact: Competitive advantage shifting to those who rebuild systems around AI
3. Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning
- Federated learning gaining traction for sensitive data
- Homomorphic encryption becoming commercially viable
- Regulations pushing companies toward privacy-first approaches
- Business impact: Unlocking value from data that was previously unusable due to privacy concerns
4. Digital Twins for Complex Systems
- Beyond manufacturing into healthcare, urban planning, climate modeling
- Real-time decision support for complex systems
- Examples: Digital twins of patients, energy grids, supply chains
- Business impact: Predictive capabilities for previously unpredictable systems
5. Climate Tech Acceleration
- Carbon capture reaching commercial viability
- Alternative proteins achieving cost parity with animal proteins
- Grid-scale energy storage breakthroughs
- Business impact: Massive capital flows into climate solutions as ROI becomes more apparent
These trends converge around a common theme: technologies that enable us to model, understand, and interact with complex systems at unprecedented scale and fidelity. The most valuable companies of the next decade will likely be those that leverage these technologies to solve previously intractable problems.
Will expand on each of these in future posts.