From bionic prosthetics to nuclear fusion: Here are LinkedIn’s 12 biggest tech predictions for 2024

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2023 was a rollercoaster ride for the world of technology.

Silicon Valley Bank’s sudden collapse made an already tough dealmaking environment even worse. And fervor around the future of a crypto industry came to an end with the downfall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. On the positive side, enthusiasm — and funding — for anything AI hit a pace that shocked even industry insiders.

What can we expect for the coming year?

Each year, LinkedIn News editors poll our community of Top Voices and experts across industries to share the Big Ideas that they believe will define the year ahead. Here are our predictions for technology in 2024:

Powering the AI boom will become as important as regulating it

As my colleague Marty McCarthy notes, the popularity of generative AI wasn’t the only thing to surge in 2023. Its energy use did, too, as people and businesses around the world rapidly began to experiment with the technology. To meet this demand, generative AI models will need to become larger and more sophisticated — and training these models will require immense computational and data processing power.?

Currently, about 1% to 1.5% of global electricity use is taken up by data centers, according to the International Energy Agency. In 2021 — before its popularity surged — AI already accounted for 10% to 15% of Google’s annual electricity use, while the tech giant’s data centers alone use roughly twice as much electricity as San Francisco.?

Forecasts on how much global energy will go toward fueling the AI era differ wildly, but a recent study by Alex De Vries, a data scientist and Ph.D. candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, found that the energy used to power AI is comparable to the energy consumption of the Netherlands.?

In 2024, watch conversations shift from how to regulate AI to how to power it in a way that doesn’t place added stress on existing energy infrastructure. 微软 (LinkedIn’s parent company) is reportedly considering nuclear power to satisfy its AI power needs.?

“To make AI more sustainable, we must invest in innovative power solutions and prioritize energy efficiency,” Craig Scroggie, CEO and managing director of data center operator NEXTDC, wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

ChatGPT's hype will fade, as a new generation of tailor-made bots rises up

If 2023 was a year of big, impressive, generalized AI chatbots, 2024 will be a year of the narrow and specialized, says Alex Kantrowitz, host of the Big Technology podcast and author of the book “Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever.”

OpenAI's ChatGPT demonstrated that computers can have intelligent conversations with people. Now, its success will trickle into more concrete use cases. Legal bots like Harvey will assist lawyers with discovery. Bots embedded in document storage platforms will allow workers to talk with their PDFs. For entertainment, a variety of specialized characters will help people eat, workout and laugh.??

Meta is betting big on the narrow by introducing 28 different special-purpose bots instead of one ChatGPT competitor. There’s Coco (for dancing), Max (for cooking), Victor (for training) and plenty more. These characters might soon speak — with voices — and take on discrete personalities. It’s a step forward from bots like ChatGPT, Alexa and Siri, whose quest to do everything makes them feel like nothing.

Open-source AI — the hottest movement in tech — will also push narrow use cases forward. Companies building with specialized, open-source models will deliver performance on par with the big bots using far fewer resources. As the technology goes, so do the applications.

Through this past year, groundbreaking bots like ChatGPT made clear science fiction’s AI dream had arrived. Next year, it’ll be everywhere in all manner of iterations.

(Editor's note: LinkedIn parent company Microsoft has a substantial investment in OpenAI.)

We'll enter the age of bionic prosthetics

The science fiction of the 1970s will become the nonfiction of the 2020s with the wide-scale use of bionic prosthetics, says Alec Ross, author of “The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future.”

Prosthetics have always been viewed as an almost sad replacement for lost limbs and in fact there is evidence that almost half of upper-limb prostheses have been discarded due to factors including excessive weight and poor functionality. That is about to change. Tomorrow’s prosthetics will be made of new materials including silicone and even spider silk that are lighter weight and astonishingly natural looking.

Developments at the intersection of biology, AI-powered software (anticipating and enabling movement) and hardware (including air muscles which distribute power through tubes holding highly concentrated pressurized air and ferrofluids fluids that facilitate humanlike movement) will combine to create replacement limbs that seem "bionic" with levels of agility and strength that may be well beyond that of the original limb made of old-fashioned flesh, blood, muscle and bone.

This, in turn, will unlock a new use case for implants – elective surgery to get a mechanical upgrade for people growing older who want to stay active or a professional athlete who is looking for an edge. Prosthetics will shift from being associated with disability to being seen as a tool to expand human capacity.

Coming to clinical trials: AI-powered "synthetic patients"

Rigorous clinical trials are crucial for evaluating new treatments but they have room for improvement. Recruiting patients is always a challenge, especially when trials have narrow health condition criteria. Historically, trials also underrepresent marginalized racial and ethnic groups. These gaps can lead to treatments and therapeutics that may not be effective for everyone.

In the future, we’ll see generative AI transform clinical trials by creating “synthetic patients,” says Lloyd Minor, dean of Stanford School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Stanford University.

Researchers will still recruit people for the treatment being studied, but the control arm — participants who receive a placebo or the current standard of care — will not be human. They will be virtual representations of humans, generated by an algorithm that has sifted through the medical records of a broad and diverse patient population.

As revolutionary as this seems, it is not as far off as you might think. Researchers have already created “historical” control arms for clinical trials, using records of patients not directly involved in the study.

And that may not be all. Researchers have begun exploring whether synthetic patients could be used for both arms of a trial. Using AI, they are testing computer models that simulate how a drug or treatment might interact with human biology in a treatment group. Penn State researchers tested out this approach last year with promising results: Their fully simulated trial of two Alzheimer’s disease drugs delivered outcomes that closely aligned with prior traditional clinical trials.

By ensuring more inclusive representation and eliminating barriers, AI could unlock a world of faster drug approvals, reduced trial costs, and crucially, therapies that benefit all.

We'll generate power from the comfort of our own...balconies

My own little power plant at home: What may sound like a wild dream from a bygone era could soon become the norm in Germany, my colleague Benjamin Freund writes. By generating electricity from sunlight via balcony power plants, tenants can produce their own climate-friendly energy.

Compared to large solar panel roof systems, the balcony power plant is easy for the layperson to set up and dismantle when moving, and it’s relatively inexpensive (starting at around 500 to 700 Euro). With the potential of covering some 10% to 20% of household electricity needs, residents can also limit their exposure to rising energy prices.

The benefits are particularly ripe for those working from home, says Hamburg-based HR consultant Daniela Schubert, who believes employers may even offer perks that support balcony power: "It is no longer necessarily the telephone bill that is lucrative, but from 2024, for example, a balcony solar system," they write on LinkedIn.

Some 230,000 balcony power plants are in operation in Germany, with further plans to ease barriers to entry — such as increasing the current 600-watt output limit to 800 watts, and eliminating registration requirements for smaller devices.

While a balcony boom is well underway in Germany, could the trend spread? The UK and much of continental Europe already allow plug-and-play solar devices. The U.S. may need more time, say experts, citing a lack of ample sunlight in some regions, pushback from utility companies and safety concerns.

The rubber will meet the road for autonomous vehicles

For most Americans, it was once a hypothetical: Given the choice, would you ride in a driverless "robotaxi" or a "regular" car helmed by a human? This past year, the theoretical turned visceral as driverless vehicles from companies like Google’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise became a highly visible presence in cities such as San Francisco and Phoenix, my colleague Andrew Murfett notes.

But just as riders started to dip their toes into driver-free waters, a handful of alarming incidents in California prompted Cruise to slam the brakes. The state suspended the firm’s permit to operate and Cruise pulled all of its vehicles off roads across the nation.

Now, 2024 is shaping into a make or break year for driverless vehicles. Companies that were hurtling toward expansion are watching the fallout from Cruise’s issues with alarm, according to The New York Times’ Tripp Mickle. “This is the central growing pain that comes with this driverless taxi push…. These cars may result in fewer accidents but — because they're so foreign — the margin for error at the moment is incredibly thin.”

Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, notes that although several hundred billion dollars have already poured into developing and testing driverless car technology, more needs to be done to expand safely and convince the public of its merits.

“It's an extremely complicated problem to solve,” he says. “The public demands a significant safety improvement over human drivers. So, 2024 needs to be about the companies slowly building confidence that they can roll out this technology safely. Hopefully, the industry’s lesson is that a gradual deployment is safer.”

An IPO boom will come for companies, whether they're ready to go public or not

2023 didn’t quite bring about the equity-market revival some had been hoping for, but analysts are nonetheless expecting a surge in initial public offerings next year.

What will make 2024 the year of the IPO? Necessity — startups are running out of money, my colleague Stephanie Forshee notes. According to Discovery Capital Management, some 1,200 private companies are expected to exhaust their financial reserves by the end of next year.

Unlike in years past, however, venture capital firms aren’t rushing to the rescue of buzzy startups. It’s “wishful thinking” to expect investors in the private market “to overpay for your stock” right now, says Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital.

Jeff Grabow, U.S. venture capital leader at EY, agrees. He notes that although the number of VC-backed startups is at an all-time high, “liquidity has lagged” since 2021. Investors who’ve had millions parked in startups “need to see their capital back,” he says.

This leaves many firms with limited options beyond going public — and with the additional pressure to time their IPOs before the uncertainties of the U.S. presidential election set in.?

The Federal Reserve may also play a role in the expected IPO boom. Signs that “the tightening cycle is ending” would remove “a layer of uncertainty around financing costs,” says Mark Schwartz, a managing director at EY Capital Advisors. In other words, if the Fed starts cutting rates in 2024, that’s likely to re-stimulate market activity, even for startups with lofty valuations.

Employers will combat job applicants' use of AI with...more AI

While people continue to worry that generative AI will someday replace them in the workforce, employers are already encountering overly embellished resumes and other recruiting headaches created by the technology.

"Generative AI has been used to create sophisticated fake resumes, cover letters, or even video interviews, making it challenging for employers to discern genuine applications from AI-generated ones," says Dan Schawbel, a New York Times bestselling author and the managing partner of Workplace Intelligence.

Expect employers to deploy AI to fight back, using techniques like reverse image search, voice analysis, behavioral analysis, and other detection tools to spot fakes, my colleague Andrew Seaman writes. Schawbel warns that employers would be wise to consider the ethical, legal and PR risks of using this kind of tech.

But even if employers can root out deceptive applications, the damage to AI-powered recruiting may already be done, depending on how these models are trained. That’s because embellished resumes may influence AI models to rank similar applicants favorably, creating systemic bias and harming truthful applicants.

"AI algorithms are only as unbiased as the data they are trained on, and if the training data is biased, it can perpetuate existing prejudices," says Schawbel.

In the meantime, Schawbel adds that employers and applicants should advocate for transparency with the use of AI during the hiring process.

Electric vehicles will power our houses, and change careers

Previous generations purchased their cars solely for transportation, but the next generation may depend on their cars to keep their lights on, notes my colleague Josh M. Carney . Thanks to bidirectional charging, the giant electric vehicle battery sitting in the driveway could also power a home in an emergency, or even feed power back to the grid to offset utility costs.

A growing number of Americans have access to such alternative or backup power sources. EVs including Ford’s F150 Lightning are equipped with the technology, and GM is making vehicle-to-home charging a standard feature for several 2024 models. Not every customer with access to the technology understands how to use it, however.

“Education is a massive part” of scaling this feature in the new year, says Darren Palmer, Ford’s VP of global EV programs, explaining the company plans to train 5,000 dealership employees? on bidirectional charging and its potential applications in 2024 — which he says will be essential for mass adoption.

As intelligent charging grows, the utilities and transportation sectors will have to work more closely, which “will allow for workers to transition across those two industries in both directions,” says Garrett Fitzgerald, a grid electrification strategist. Companies across both sectors are already planning to work together in early 2024 to scale charging services, notes Bill Crider, Ford’s head of global charging and energy services. “It’s really important from a broader industrial standpoint to be thinking about this collectively.”

Nuclear fusion will go from pipe dream to reality

Researchers across the globe have been racing to generate clean energy solutions to today’s climate crisis. One old idea is poised to gain significant momentum in 2024: nuclear fusion.

The idea: A pair of atoms are smashed together to form a single, heavier atom, releasing a huge amount of energy akin to the reaction that powers our sun. If successful, nuclear fusion could yield a seemingly limitless supply of carbon emission-free power.

The challenge? Nuclear fusion requires massive amounts of energy, making it hard to develop a stable system that can generate more power than what’s required to produce the reaction in the first place, a concept known as “net energy gain.”

But recent breakthroughs have transformed nuclear fusion from science fiction to near-reality. This summer, U.S. scientists at the National Ignition Facility achieved “net energy gain” for the second time in eight months. And the U.S. Department of Energy announced $46 million in funding to eight American firms developing pilot nuclear fusion plants.

“It has always been the holy grail. There's no waste. There's no radioactivity,” Samir Kaul of Khosla Ventures, which has made investments in two of the eight DOE grantees, told me.

Silicon Valley has caught on, with investment in the nascent technology surging over the past 20 years. And startup Helion Energy, which has backing from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, expects its seventh fusion prototype to start producing electricity sometime in 2024.

Australia will rise up as a global EV power player

The global race for EV dominance is well underway, with automakers in China, the U.S. and Japan playing lead roles. But behind the scenes, one nation is emerging as a critical player in the global quest to go electric: Australia, notes my colleague Brendan Wong .

In recent years, EV adoption has driven up demand for lithium, a critical component for batteries. And Australia has the second largest lithium ore reserves in the world. In 2022, Australian firms handled 43% of global lithium extraction, and production hit record highs in 2023.

“The energy transition globally is Australia’s to lose,” says Robyn Denholm, the Sydney-based chair of Tesla. “We have all the ingredients in Australia to actually enable the energy transition to happen — if you look at the minerals that go into batteries. We have lithium, copper, cobalt, we have all of the casings, which are aluminum.”

Australia is planning to double down on its efforts to refine lithium and minerals locally, which will allow Australian firms to charge a premium for its resources and compete with Chinese refineries for dominance in this space.

To fully realize its potential as an EV battery power player, though, Australia has work to do: It will need to address severe labor shortages in its mining and infrastructure sectors and find cost-efficient ways to build more refineries rapidly.

Quantum computing is at a tipping point – and we will start to see tangible benefits from the technology in 2024

Classical computers write code in binary signals of 1s or 0s and are measured in bits, but they struggle with highly complex tasks that require more processing power and time to execute.

Quantum computing can meaningfully speed up the process while using less energy, carrying out multiple computations in parallel using quantum bits, or qubits, which can operate in both 0s and 1s simultaneously.

IBM developed the first quantum computer in 2016, and the company says it will be able to create a chip that is 1,000 times stronger than that initial device by the end of 2023. But while experts agree that quantum hardware still has some ways to go, quantum algorithms have made remarkable progress thanks to GPUs – the same chips that are used to power AI.

GPUs have made what's known as simulation easier, and quantum sensors can now detect acceleration, rotation, electric and magnetic fields – which can be used in applications ranging from self-driving cars to medical systems, says Jesse Wodin, laboratory director at nonprofit scientific research institute SRI International.

In 2024, we can expect quantum computers, sensors and applications to increasingly move out of labs and be applied in compute-heavy fields ranging from drug discovery and energy to fraud detection and meteorology.

Check out the full list here for more Big Ideas.?

What other Big Ideas do you think will emerge in 2024? Share your thoughts by commenting on the newsletter or write your own post using #BigIdeas2024.

Here’s where we bring you up-to-speed with the latest advancements from the world of AI.

• ? 谷歌 just launched its new AI model. The tech giant on Wednesday made its biggest move so far to catch up with rivals in the AI race with the launch of Gemini, a large language model it bills as its “most capable” to date. Developed using its own AI chips, Gemini can process information from video, text, image and audio sources and is capable of complex reasoning and grasping nuance. The most advanced version, Gemini Ultra, is the first AI model to outperform human experts on certain tests, Google says. Its AI chatbot Bard is also powered by Gemini Pro, one of the AI system’s three tiers, in what the company describes as its “biggest upgrade” since launch.
• ?? Meta and IBM are leading a new AI Alliance. Meta and IBM are joining more than 40 businesses and organizations to establish an industry group known as the AI Alliance, which will be dedicated to open-source artificial intelligence work. The tech giants say sharing AI breakthroughs in public, and with the rest of the scientific community, will reduce the risk of the technology going wrong. Relatedly, Meta also just launched a new project called “Purple Llama” with open trust and safety tools aimed at helping developers build responsibly with open generative AI models.?
• ?? AMD 's new chip takes aim at Nvidia. Advanced Micro Devices introduced its new "accelerator chips," which it says will be able to run AI faster than competitors' offerings — even Nvidia's, which currently dominate the chip market. Meta, Oracle and LinkedIn parent Microsoft have already committed to using the AMD product, which CEO Lisa Su said Wednesday will be cheaper than Nvidia's, which can run about $40,000 per chip. Su projected the AI chip industry will balloon to more than $400 billion in the next four years — more than two-thirds the size of the entire chip industry last year. AMD's new chip has 2.4 times as much memory as Nvidia's H100, which is currently the top chip on the market.
• ?? 安永 's AI finds audit frauds. EY has seen some success in using AI as a tool for detecting fraud in audits after a recent test flagged suspicious activity at two out of 10 companies checked, which were subsequently confirmed to be frauds. But many firms remain skeptical about relying on AI for fraud detection, given the unique nature of most fraud schemes, per the Financial Times, and concerns around data privacy if confidential information is used to train fraud-detection AI. Meanwhile, consulting firms including KPMG, EY and PwC all say they are looking to leverage generative AI to help junior staffers swap out tedious tasks for "more meaningful work," Bloomberg reports.
• ?? Elon Musk’s AI startup is seeking to raise $1 billion. x.AI is looking to raise $1 billion from equity investors, according to a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, founded earlier this year to “understand the true nature of the universe,” has reportedly raised $135 million of that already. Last month, x.AI released a chatbot named Grok, which it claims stands apart from competitors as it can access real-time knowledge via X, the social media platform also owned by Musk that is currently witnessing an advertiser exodus following his recent comments.
• ??ChatGPT is Wikipedia's top article in 2023. Just how much has AI dominated the cultural zeitgeist in 2023? The page chronicling ChatGPT, the software that's driven its ubiquity in workplaces and classrooms globally, was Wikipedia's most popular "article" in 2023. The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation announced on Tuesday that OpenAI's virtual chatbot took the online encyclopedia's top spot for most page views this year, hitting 78 million views. The AI language model was a heavy clicker consistently through the year, with India's cricket world cup and the blockbuster film Oppenheimer featuring in the remainder of the top 10 list.

Catch up on the tech headlines you may have missed this week and what our members are saying about them on LinkedIn.

• ? New round of Spotify layoffs hits 17% of staff. The Stockholm-based company on Monday announced its third round of layoffs this year, saying that it would cut about 1,500 people, or 17% of its staff, across the company. Those leaving would receive about five months of severance pay. Spotify has invested further into podcasts and audiobooks but has yet to reap the rewards of its expansion. While the platform is the largest of its kind, it "has long struggled to be profitable because of the terms of licensing deals it has with record labels and music publishers," according to The New York Times.
• ?? 亚马逊 is cutting its seller fees to counter SHEIN . Starting in January, the retailer is cutting seller fees for clothing priced under $20, Bloomberg reports, in what it says could be a move against China's fast-fashion giant Shein. Shein shifted focus this past summer from its branded apparel to an Amazon-like online marketplace using third-party vendors to sell a vast variety of products. Amazon also plans to introduce a "low inventory-level fee" to encourage sellers to maintain higher inventories.
• ?? The 23andMe hack hit 6.9 million people. The breadth of biotech firm 23andMe's hack earlier this year is far more serious than the company's originally reported 14,000 customers. It turns out data belonging to 6.9 million clients was compromised: some 5.5 million who had the DNA Relatives feature enabled, along with another 1.4 million family tree profiles. Hackers used credential-stuffing tactics to get shared information about genetic relatives in those 14,000 accounts to access millions more, Bloomberg explains. 23andMe says it is informing those affected, and it is now requiring two-factor authentication to increase security.
• ?? 苹果 ’s iMessage may be able to dodge new EU rules. Apple's messaging service may escape new European Union antitrust rules — though only because officials feel it's not popular enough with business users to be regulated, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. The Digital Markets Act — which will go into full effect in March — makes it illegal for major tech firms to favor their own services over competitors' and blocks them from "combining personal data across their different services." If applied to iMessage, the DMA would force Apple to make the service work with rivals such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
• ????The STEM gender gap continues to persist. While women make up about half of the college-educated workforce in the U.S., only 34% work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers, Gallup found. And that gender gap is set to continue. A survey of Gen Zers, or those born after 1997, showed that about 63% of females are curious about a career in at least one STEM field, compared to a whopping 85% of males. The glaring divide could come down to confidence: 57% of female respondents said they don’t think they would be good at such a career, compared to 38% of males.

Here’s keeping tabs on key executives on the move and other big pivots in the tech industry. Please send me personnel moves within emerging tech.

• Twitch 's chief revenue officer, Walker Jacobs , is leaving the company at the end of the month, according to Business Insider. His departure follows the recent exits of Twitch's chief customer officer and chief content officer.
• Omidyar Network has pledged $30 million toward efforts to tackle the potential threats of AI right now, Axios reported.
• Sequoia Capital partner Luciana Lixandru is joining Stripe 's board with Michael Moritz exiting, according to The Information.
• 23andMe co-founder and former co-president Linda Avey has joined the AI-powered Human Immunome Project’s board.
• Ashan Willy has joined New Relic as CEO, he announced on LinkedIn. He previously served as CEO of Proofpoint .
• AI chip startup Rain AI ’s CEO Gordon Wilson has stepped down from his position at the company, and will transition to the role of an executive advisor, he posted on LinkedIn.
• Francois Ajenstat has joined digital analytics company Amplitude as chief product officer, where he'll lead its product management, design, growth and analytics globally. He was formerly at data visualization company Tableau .
• Anna Patterson is stepping down as managing partner of Gradient , the AI-focused VC group that she helped form within Alphabet Inc. in 2017.
• Mark Goldberg , a fintech partner at Index Ventures , is leaving the firm to start his own fund, The Information reported.

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