My take on tech trends from?2023

At the start of the year I like to reflect on what has happened in the previous year and how it will impact our future (last year’s blog is here).

Artificial Intelligence

There is only one real story in 2023 and that is the rapid increase in capability being driven by Generative AI and Large Language Models. In 2022 GAN was still the leading AI technology, but GenAI has captured the public imagination like nothing else before it.

GenAI is a game changer for so many applications and businesses; a change that is likely to have a bigger impact than other recent changes such as the introduction of the PC and the move to Smartphones, and maybe even the rise of the internet. This is due to the fundamental change that AI can generate. When the PC was introduced, we could do the things we did before in a better way. Smartphones took that further and introduced new things you could do with location awareness and sensors, but AI will allow us to fundamentally change the core methods of business and society.

We are still at the beginning of our AI journey, which in common with other technology changes, leads us to try and do the same things we did before, only better with the new technology (e.g. the many “AI Trip Planners” I get sent each month). Our challenge is to move through this stage as quickly as we can and start finding the new business opportunities, models, process, and products that leverage the fundamental technology we now have access to.

We need to do this at the same time as the technology keeps improving, a hard task for any business. Examples we are starting to see include the impact on robotics. Using generative techniques, it is becoming quicker and cheaper for robots to be trained to do complex tasks and to recognise and work around changes in the task environment. The robots we have seen in films may soon start to become a reality.

Self-Driving Vehicles

2023 was not a great year for self-driving vehicles and the tech is certainly in the Trough of Disillusionment. Cruise was a very public example of the risks and challenges of this technology, going mostly out of business as the year end after several public challenges to their technology.

There are still some success stories though, and like robotics, this is a technology that is likely to gain from advances in AI. Waymo, the Google/Alphabet owned business is getting strong reviews for its services in California and Texas.

Tesla are also starting to have unexpected consequences with their driver assistance. Robert Scoble has been tweeting (or X-ing) about how the large number of Teslas in San Francisco impacts normal traffic. In rainy conditions the Tesla Autopilot reduces the speed of the car to a safer speed for the conditions, and with so many Teslas on the road there, the whole traffic flow is slowed to safer speeds.

Web3 amp; Blockchain

Also in the trough of disillusionment is web 3, blockchain and NFT. There were no surprises when the hype bubble of NFT and Cryptocurrencies popped and values crashed last year, and this has harmed the impression of the technology. However, the underlying principals are solid, the technology is improving, and now that the speculators are staying away, major cryptocurrencies are stabilising and growing in a more controlled way.

I’ve written before, Blockchain and the technologies built on it should be a boring B2B tech that nobody outside really cares about, and as we get closer to that space we should start to see real business advantages being gained from how business in connected markets can operate. An obvious example would be my own industry of travel & tourism. Connecting to and contracting hotels, activity suppliers, transfer suppliers can be slow, complex, and difficult today where smart contracts, common standards, and confirmation of ownership with NFT would simplify the ability to work together and then get on with creating the perfect travel experiences for our customers.

I’d still like to see more interest in the privacy side of Web3 from the public. Google’s recent court case after being found to be tracking customers even when using Private-Mode in their Chrome browser shows how vulnerable we are to the large tech providers. While that has quietly been forgotten about in most circles, something will come-up that does finally spark the desire for change from the majority of web users, opening the door for Web3

Augmented, Mixed amp; Virtual Reality

2023 was not the year. Oculus continued to release better and better hardware, but the focus has really gone in the direction of gaming. However, the big change we had all expected did finally happen. For years there were rumours of Apple launching its own VR/AR headset and how that would do to this market what they did to the mobile phone market. Apple finally announced their Apple Vision Pro in June. This first device isn’t available until February 2024, and costing over $3000 it is not the device that will bring the experience to the mass market. However, it is a stake in the ground, Apple normally gets things right in a couple of iterations, so this could finally be the real start of this market. Referring to Robert Scoble again, this is a Tweet from June that may just be the story we will see :

One device that is gradually improving under the radar though is the Meta glasses they have built in conjunction with Ray Ban. These glasses have recently gained access to the AI models that Meta have, which even without screens are starting to provide new and useful experiences for the wearer. Maybe 2024 will be the year.

So what about 2024?

Reviewing the past is always easier than predicting the future, but here I go. 2024 will still be all about AI. The advances are coming so quickly and the capabilities for personal and business benefits are increasing almost weekly. This year we will start to see some AI Native businesses appear (not using AI to do things the old way). The hard part will be figuring out what these businesses are before they overtake what we have today.

Voice will become a trend again. Siri, Alexa etc are useful and frustrating in equal measure today, but OpenAI have shown how good voice can be today so the traditional players have to catch-up. I’d even expect this year’s Apple WWDC keynote to be about Siri and Voice.

Finally, I’d expect to see how these technologies combine and voice through wearables interacts with GenAI to open-up a whole new business direction where eventually web design, search marketing, and apps start to become secondary business behind voice lead search and integration.

If you like what we are doing with technology and travel in Musement and want to help us on our digital journey the come and join our team. The roles we have open are here on our careers site