AIWhat to Expect in AI in 2024
This past year marked major advances in generative AI as terms like ChatGPT and Bard become household names. Have we reached peak AI? Seven faculty and fellows at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) predict the biggest stories for next year in artificial intelligence.
This past year marked major advances in generative AI as terms like ChatGPT and Bard become household names. Companies sank major investment into AI startups (Microsoft’s $10 billion drop into OpenAI, Amazon’s $4 billion to Anthropic to name just two), while leading AI researchers and CEOs debated AGI’s likelihood in headlines. Meanwhile, policymakers started getting serious about AI regulation - the EU put forth the most comprehensive set of policies governing the technology yet, and the Biden Administration published a comprehensive Executive Order detailing 150 requirements for federal agencies.
Have we reached peak AI? No, say several Stanford scholars. Expect bigger and multimodal models, exciting new capabilities, and more conversations around how we want to use and regulate this technology.
Here are seven predictions from faculty and senior fellows at Stanford HAI.
White Collar Work Shifts
I expect mass adoption by companies that will start delivering some of the productivity benefits that we’ve been hoping for a long time. It’s going to affect knowledge workers, people who have been largely spared by a lot of the computer revolution in the past 30 years. Creative workers, lawyers, finance professors and more are going to see their jobs change quite a bit this year. If we embrace it, it should be making our jobs better and allow us to do new things we couldn’t have done before. Rarely will it completely automate any job — it’s mostly going to be augmenting and extending what we can do.
Erik Brynjolfsson, Director, Stanford Digital Economy Lab; Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford HAI; Ralph Landau Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Deepfake Proliferation
I expect to see big new multimodal models, particularly in video generation. Therefore we’ll also have to be more vigilant to serious deepfakes — we’ll see the spread of videos in which people “say” things that they never said. Consumers need to be aware of that, voters need to be aware of it. We’re also going to see legislation. The EU is getting into their final position for enacting widespread AI rules. There’s back and forth whether that will affect the big American tech companies and their models, but it will come down very soon in 2024. (Cont.)
