Bobbi is SVP, Software Engineering at Loopio. She is a technology leader with over 25 years of diverse experience in the industry.
It’s the start of 2024—a time to reflect on last year, make a few New Year’s resolutions and dive into 2024 with a dose of optimism.
It’s also time to review innovations and think more broadly about technology trends. With an early view into 2024, it’s clear that technology in 2024 will revolve around new advancements (and threats) from artificial intelligence (AI).
Here are four AI-driven trends that fast-growing companies should prepare for in the year ahead.
1. Technology will become more human.
We’re living in a time of rapid change where computers and software will soon become more human, gaining the ability to see and even hear with advanced speech recognition functionality. This will have a big impact on the way we interact with technology.
It’s not only the purely passive interaction of typing in a response, but for the first time in history, we’re grappling with the question: How do we design a system that can interpret, see pictures and writing and hear us?
GPT-4 released the revolutionary feature of interpreting images and written text. While this is entertaining and helpful, now is the time to start incorporating this development into how we think about software products and technology solutions. As always, small companies will embrace this trend quickly and we’ll soon see some innovative solutions centered around this trend.
2. Focus on security and protect against increasing threats.
2023 was the year when the world was transformed by AI—and companies were pushed to adopt AI technology as soon as possible.
The initial euphoria was later tempered by security concerns and potential risks. It didn’t take long for people to realize that this new exciting breakthrough comes with heightened security risks, which we’re now learning how to navigate.
Security threats are only going to increase as AI technology matures. Companies will become more cognizant of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with AI. We’ll start asking more questions about the fidelity of the data that training models use—and soon, even thinking beyond that, we’ll be asking about how ethical the collection of this data is.
With the heightened use of AI, social engineering attacks will continue to increase as they have over the years. As mentioned in a CrowdStrike report, 80% of security breaches result from compromised identity. This makes identity protection a critical aspect of cybersecurity and how companies protect against upcoming threats.
What does that mean for fast-growing companies in 2024? We’ll see more organizations focused on security and innovative solutions, and small companies will change the way they operate to ensure that their solutions are even more resilient as they appeal to growing customer demands around security.
The security posture for all tech companies will be tested, not only from big enterprises but also from your small commercial customer base.
3. More AI-augmented development will emerge.
This trend started in 2023 with the introduction of AI developer efficiency tools like Amazon CodeWhisperer and GitHub Copilot. In 2024, this trend is bound to accelerate further with even more variety and choices.
These tools will be quickly adopted by small companies as they allow them to produce more with fewer resources (and operate faster). These tools aid developers in generating more code, converting legacy code and producing unit and UI tests. GPT-4 has advanced capabilities to help developers generate code, but this will extend even further as some recent articles suggest developer productivity will increase exponentially, driven by this trend.
4. Extended reality will go mainstream.
We’ve been talking about virtual reality and augmented reality for years now. I thought this was the technology that would explode and transform our world, but the hardware aspect took longer to figure out than anticipated. But now, we’re seeing a breakthrough trend: Mixed reality, led famously by big brand names like Apple, entering the market to bring this technology mainstream.
What’s driven growth in this area? One of the big drivers in the maturity of this tech has been the gaming world. AI will help new game developers join this space as it’s still in its infancy, and it provides an opportunity for organizations that can tackle it the right way.
What comes next?
So, what’s next in the world of tech? The speed of AI innovation is accelerating and will continue to do so in the future. 2024 will be dominated by the four AI and security trends above (and more).
In light of all of these changes, professions are also quickly changing and adapting to this new reality. Engineers and IT professionals, in particular, will be at the center of all of these changes, constantly learning and unlearning at pace with new innovations.
What does that mean for you and your organization? More change at a more rapid pace. Staying current on new trends and technologies becomes a necessity and part of everyone’s job as the world around us changes.
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