Inspired by the Hard Fork podcast, I have decided to make my tech predictions for 2023. There was a lot that happened this year, especially the last few months of 2022, it was hard to narrow down which topics I wanted to talk about. Here we go!

ChatGPT

How can I not talk about this… it’s all anyone is talking about. ChatGPT, released by OpenAI at the end of November, is bound to cause issues for students K-12. I think in 2023 we are definitely going to see a lot of conversations from parents and educators around how students are going to use ChatGPT in classrooms and at home on homework assignments. A lot of students have already been using it to write papers and summarize books. But the concept of using the internet for homework help is not new. I remember in high school Cliff Notes was my lifeline in English classes– it summarized almost every book chapter by chapter within an in depth analysis. However, when everyone uses the same resource you get the same answers and English teachers have caught on pretty quickly. I think the same will happen with ChatGPT– students will use it, and will likely all ask it the same question. And let’s face it: if they are using ChatGPT for homework, they are likely not in the mood to be creative and will ALL ask the same query and will get the same answer from ChatGPT. I think this will be talked about, but won’t be the disruptor that we think it is.

Generative Art

We can’t talk about ChatGPT though without talking about the ethics of it. Based on user experience there are some guardrails already in place so that you can’t ask it to be racist or misogynistic, but there is not a way for ChatGPT to confirm whether the information it provides is factual. This can lead to a spread of misinformation which is already a rampant issue that we deal with in AI. There are so many ethical issues surrounding this new tech which leads me to my next prediction: We will see more and more artists opting out of training for models like DALL E 2 (which was released a month before ChatGPT and the hype around it was killed), but I think the anger around this will die down. I understand why artists are upset, but I think its the concept of the artistic process becoming automated and not so much copyright infringement that is causing an issue. Even if thousands of artists opted out of the training, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference for the models as they are trained on billions of pieces of data. I think in the future these generative models will become even more sophisticated and will require far less training data.

The Metaverse

Headsets and the virtual reality world will continue to be developed, but I don’t think this is the year that it will catch on. Don’t get me wrong, I think the technology is cool, but it’s just not… necessary. I think in order for the metaverse to become all that its proponents want it to be there needs to be something that the metaverse offers that I can’t find in real life. As of now there is nothing in the metaverse that I HAVE to see that will offset the price of the headsets. Also, my eyes already hurt just from staring at a laptop screen for too long, so I’m not particularly interested in putting on a headset and plugging myself into the wall. These are my opinions, but I think they are relatable– I actually don’t know anyone who uses virtual reality. Maybe once the world is inhabitable and I can’t go outside anymore to see people or go to work, I’ll think about joining the metaverse.

Tesla

Tesla spends virtually nothing on marketing, that has been all on Elon– Tesla is synonymous with him. So it’s no surprise that when he became involved in Twitter and brought his personal reputation down, the reputation of Tesla also suffered. I think that this year people will become more aware of the other companies that exist and are ramping up production of their electric vehicles. I have my eyes set on the Rivian/ Amazon electric delivery vans.

New Social Media

Last, but not least, I think we will see a change in our social media habits. There will definitely be a shift away from Twitter. I’m not sure whether or not Mastodon will be the new Twitter (I don’t even use Twitter anymore), but I think it’ll be healthy for people to get their news from somewhere else for a change. Also the Biden Administration is under pressure to put new restrictions on TikTok– already a few states have put restrictions on having TikTok on government devices. A ban of TikTok outright is highly unlikely, but I think we will see some changes in this area.

Conclusions

This has been a busy year for Tech and AI, I feel like ten years worth of development happened in the last few months of 2022. I am excited to see what 2023 holds and will try to not be insanely overwhelmed. Happy New Year!!!