The generative AI genie is out of the bottle, promising massive economic growth. 2024 is the year it goes mainstream

Since bursting onto the public scene in 2022, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and technologies involving large language models have advanced with breathtaking speed, with implications equally fascinating and terrifying. But relative to what will unfold in 2024, what we saw in 2023 barely qualifies as a warmup. Trying to predict anything in such a fast-moving area is a mug’s game, but there are a few elements we can count on: The global generative AI market will grow robustly in the year ahead and into the early 2030s. Goldman Sachs analysts have estimated that the diffusion of AI technologies will increase global GDP by 7 percent over the next decade. 2024 will be the year when AI goes mainstream, and not just on our screens. AI systems are being embedded in the devices that define our everyday life. The result will be the arrival of the first “smartifacts”—devices with rudimentary intelligence having a greater ability to directly sense and interact with the physical world than they do now. This will begin with familiar objects—vehicles, appliances, personal electronics—but will also yield entirely new classes of devices, including dramatically more capable robots. Meanwhile, AI will also yield more prosaic surprises. Chatbots will become ubiquitous on our communications devices, displacing traditional search. Such surprises will include downsides as well. AI will play a major disruptive role in influencing public opinion and this year’s many elections around the world. Indeed, the disruptions have already begun; in September 2023, for instance, Microsoft researchers unearthed a network of Chinese-controlled social media accounts using AI to influence US voters.