Here we go again! For the sixth year in a row, we present Neural’s annual AI predictions. 2022 has been an incredible year for the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. From the AI developer who tried to convince the world one of Google’s chatbots had become sentient at the recent launch of OpenAI GPT chat, it was 12 months of nonstop drama and action. And we have every reason to believe that next year will be both bigger and weirder.
That’s why we reached out to three thought leaders whose companies are heavily invested in AI and the future. Without further ado, here are the predictions for AI in 2023:
First of all, Alexander Hagerup, co-founder and CEO of Vic.ai, told us we’d continue to see the “progression from humans using AI and ML software to augment their work, to humans relying on software to do the work for them themselves.” According to him, this will have a lot to do with generative AI for creatives — we’re pretty sure he’s talking about the ChatGPTs and DALL-Es of the AI world — as well as “the reliance on truly autonomous systems for finance and other -office functions.”
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He believes a looming recession could double that progress, as businesses may be forced to find ways to cut labor costs.
Subsequently, we have heard from Jonathan Taylor, Chief Technology Officer at Zoovu. It predicts a global disruption to the consumer shopper experience in 2023 thanks to “innovative zero-party solutions, leveraging advanced machine learning techniques and designed to interact directly and transparently with consumers.” I know that sounds like corporate jargon, but the fact of the matter is, sometimes marketing talk hits the mark.
Consumers are sick and tired of the traditional business interaction experience. We’ve been waiting since we were old enough to pay the bills. It’s a bold new world, and companies that know how to use machine learning to make us happy will be the cream that rises to the top in 2023 and beyond.
Taylor also predicts that Europe’s world-leading consumer protection and data privacy legislation will force companies large and small to “adopt these new approaches before legacy approaches become government-regulated or mandated by consumers.”
The writing is on the wall. As he states, “the only way to make these zero-party solutions truly scalable and as effective as the older privacy-invading alternatives is to use advanced machine learning and transfer learning techniques.”
Eventually we got in touch with Gabriel Mecklenburg, co-founder of Health zipper. He told us that the future of AI in 2023 is diversity. For the field to progress, especially when it comes to medicine, machine learning needs to work for everyone.
In his words, “AI is clearly the future of motion sensing for health and fitness, but it’s still extremely difficult to get it right. Many apps will work if you’re a white person with an average body and a late-model iPhone with a big screen. However, fair access means AI-powered care experiences need to work on low-end phones, for people of all shapes and colors, and in real-world environments.
Mecklenburg explained that more than one in five people suffer from musculoskeletal disorders such as neck, back and joint pain. According to him, “it is a global crisis with a serious human and economic toll”.
He believes that, with AI, medical professionals have what they need to help those people. “For example,” Mecklenburg says, “AI technology can now help identify and track many unique joints and landmarks on the body using just the phone’s camera.”
But, as mentioned above, this only matters if these tools work everyone. For Mecklenburg, “we need to ensure that AI is used to close the care gap, not widen it.”
From the editor of Neural:
It has been a privilege to curate and publish these predictions all these years. When we started more than half a decade ago, we made a conscious decision to highlight the voices of smaller companies. And, as longtime readers will recall, I even ventured a few predictions in 2019.
But, considering we’ve spent all of 2020 in a COVID lockdown, I’m reticent to tempt fate yet again. I won’t hazard any predictions for AI in 2023, except one: the human spirit will endure.
When we started predicting the future of AI here at Neural, a certain portion of the population found it smart to tell creatives to “learn to code.” At the time, it seemed that journalists and artists were on the verge of being replaced by machines.
And yet, six years later, we still have journalists and artists. That’s the problem with humans: we are never satisfied. Build an AI that understands us today and will be obsolete tomorrow.
The future is about finding ways to make AI work for us, not the other way around.