The state of AI in our daily lives come 2030.

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This is the seventh of our new weekly strategic series of Top Ten Anticipations for 2025 – 2030. Topic number six, Energy: Hyperscalers as utility firms, can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/futurehorizonco_energy-hyperscalers-as-utility-firms-activity-7269257186189406208-V75T?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop​
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As we approach the end of 2024, Artificial Intelligence (AI) feels like Schrödinger's Cat: it’s simultaneously omnipresent and elusive.
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AI adorns every tech product and service, with fervent advocates heralding a future brimming with ingenious creativity and unparalleled efficiency.
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Yet, despite the billions poured into this hyped-up frenzy, few firms – whether global MNCs or fledgling startups – are reaping financial rewards.
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Between 2025 and 2030 the AI bubble will have burst, giving way to a more measured and nuanced appreciation of its true capabilities.
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Despite widespread adoption by individuals, many of AI's grand promises – such as automating tasks and acting as a sophisticated “Copilot” – go unrealised due to a trifecta of poor-quality data, high-profile litigations, and stringent regulations.
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Companies, struggling to integrate algorithms within their legacy IT frameworks, will face mounting pressure as numerous trials, pilots, and MVPs fail to yield sufficiently tangible business value.
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CEOs and business owners will grapple with the delicate balance of pioneering innovation while safeguarding their reputation, versus risking obsolescence by maintaining the status quo.
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From 2025 onwards, as the risks outweigh the benefits, financial constraints will tighten, and a wave of painful industry consolidation will ensue.
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These choppy waters will further concentrate power within Big Tech, though it might be a boon for lawyers.
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By 2030, AI usage will predominantly reside at the extremities: on endpoint devices like mobile phones, laptops, and wearables, as well as deep within the algorithms that truly run the show – and therein lie the challenges.
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AI models will opaquely make many practical decisions that affect our daily lives, determining outcomes such as speeding tickets, social media post appropriateness, or financial behaviours.
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When these decisions don’t favour us, challenging perceived biases or appealing for clemency due to mitigating circumstances will become increasingly difficult as the direct human control element continues to be stripped away.
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Nonetheless, AI will positively enhance decision-making in areas like transportation, where it optimises schedules and routes, and in defence and security, where full automation increasingly become the norm.
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In the health sector AI will monitor chronic conditions, continuously assessing vital signs and suggesting timely interventions.
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Whether these changes are for the better or worse, and if the trajectory continues, is ultimately in our hands.
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Next up in our strategic series of Top Ten Anticipations for 2025 – 2030 is titled "Your digital asset vault" - which we'll deliver in HORIZON next week.

Bias machines - at USD$2400 per year.

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As algorithms exert influence over more of daily life, we're increasingly paying the price - literally - for being told just what we want to hear.
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OpenAI is offering a new top-tier for its Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) services - ChatGPT Pro - which will cost USD$200 per month.
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This recurring chunk of change includes unlimited access to the smartest model (OpenAI o1), plus "o1-mini, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice".
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The company is targeting its new subscription at those using its models for more technical work, such as researchers and engineers - let's hope those hallucinations are limited.
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Note that roughly 75% of OpenAI’s business comes from consumer subscriptions rather than businesses, according to the CFO in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
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Gen AI models and services can do some great things, but like any developing tech they have limitations and shortcomings - so human intelligence still needs to be applied (often liberally).
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Earlier this year the Digital Consumer Trends UK 2024 from Deloitte found that Gen AI users are still largely uneducated about risks and flaws.
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36% of 2024 respondents who had used Gen AI agreed with the statement "Generative AI always produces factually accurate responses"; positively, this was down on the 2023 figure (43%).
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In addition, the same figure of 36% agreed with the statement "Generative AI responses are unbiased"; in 2023 this was also higher (at 38%).
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Those 2024 numbers are nevertheless worryingly high.
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The two questions to ask at the crux of this are - do the majority of people notice and, if not, do they actually care?
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Naturally, users must input the appropriate search term, query, or prompt to begin with.
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As individuals, it may not be so easy to be aware of this - as you are only exposed to the answers or outputs that you are requesting from a service.
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Taking a more subjective analysis however, we see that even the likes of Google search is providing biased and filtered search results.
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Google monitors what people click on when they enter a given search term - when they are satisfied, Google is more likely to promote that kind of search result for similar queries in the future; and repeat.
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In an effort to compete with the likes of OpenAI, Google has been morphing from a search engine to an answer engine - providing the information directly, rather than providing access to relevant sites.
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Google now pulls information from the web and shows it at the top of results to provide a quick answer, which it calls a "Featured Snippet".
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Humans are dramatically influenced by how we receive information, leading to confirmation bias - and algorithms are reinforcing these in users as they control what content we are presented with.
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Key takeaway: don't lazily acquiesce to "the machine knows best", and take any and all outputs with a pinch of salt.

The future of sport will be one increasingly infused with technology.

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This spans the full gamut, from competitors to supporters.
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MotoGP riders wear racing suits with embedded airbags to save them during a crash.
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Video Assistant Referees are, in theory, there to provide additional granularity of suspected foul-play - making infringement decisions more impartial.
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The next advance will start in January 2025, with the launch of TGL (Tomorrow's Golf League).
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What makes TGL unique is the digitally-enabled combination of top-tier athletes competing on a virtual 18-hole golf course (consisting of a randomised selection from 30 original holes).
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It starts in the virtual, and ends in the physical.
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Players hit from real grass tee boxes, fairway surfaces, rough and sand into a giant screen more than 20 times the size of a standard indoor golf simulator at 19.5 metres by 16.15 metres (see pic).
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For shots closer than approximately 45 metres, the tech-infused green includes jacks that change the slope to create a variety of play on every TGL hole.
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TGL is fronted by world-renowned players Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.
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Founded in August 2022, TGL is a 3-on-3 golf league that features six teams composed of four PGA TOUR golfers (so 24 pros in total).
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Competition will take place inside a custom-built venue in Florida USA, with games lasting two hours to ensure fast-paced competition.
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The new format builds in aspects from other sports such as a 40-second "shot clock" to add a further level of brinkmanship plus keep more casual fans engaged.
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All golfers will also wear microphones during matches to bring fans closer to the action, allowing them to better understand both strategies and also player personalities.
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In the season there will be 15 regular matches played at prime-time and broadcast via ESPN, with a best-of-three finals in late March.
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The organisers believe this futuristic format can reach a generation of golfers that don’t play (or watch) the sport in the same way as predecessors do.
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The short format makes it more accessible, it will be live at prime-time, and given that gaming is the largest form of entertainment this fusion of factors points to another way to broaden the appeal of golf.
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Purists may pout, and whether fans will enjoy watching the likes of Tiger hit a ball into a screen remains to be seen - but it's likely to prove lucrative regardless.

The future of deliveries: Q-commerce (Quick commerce).

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Q-commerce focuses on delivering goods to customers as quickly as possible, typically within an hour thanks to innovations in last-mile delivery.
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In some developed urban environments around the world, this can mean getting groceries delivered to your door in less than 30 mins.
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Much has changed since Domino's now-infamous 1980s marketing campaign which guaranteed pizza delivery in 30 minutes or less...but nearly destroyed the company’s reputation.
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Worldwide, 2024 Q-commerce revenue could top USD$170bn with a projected market volume of US$265.70bn by 2029 according to Statista.
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However, if you live in a remote area this sort of luxury may be the stuff of dreams; even getting post regularly delivered in a timely manner can be a challenge.
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Which is where autonomous drones are increasingly coming in.
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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are moving closer towards the mainstream in the timely delivery of goods.
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Previous post about drone deliveries at The Great Wall of China: https://lnkd.in/gsRfj2Kc​
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In 2023 Royal Mail partnered with Skyports Drone Services to launch the first UK commercial drone mail service servicing the isolated communities of the Orkney islands (see pic); this has now been extended out to 2026.
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The "I-Port" operation is a fully electric drone logistics project; it has already seen more than 500 successful flights carried out.
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There have, naturally, been setbacks - such as one craft experiencing a "controlled descent" into water; the drone deployed the in-built parachute after its system flagged a technical problem.
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Separately, there is also the Orkney CROFT project - a significant step forward in utilising cellular 5G and space technologies for drone deliveries in hard-to-reach areas.
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It's not only snail-mail statements and snacks being delivered by drone: trials are also underway to ferry medical lab specimens between hospitals.
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Delivery by drone can cut the transit time; speeding up the clinical decision-making and allowing for same-day diagnosis (or treatment).
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As important as impromptu additional ice for your downtown soirée might be, the future will likely see Q-commerce via autonomous drones have an even bigger positive impact for those living in harder-to-reach areas.

2024 word or phrase of the year: "Brain rot".

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Basically: spending too much time on devices looking at social media.
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This was the result announced in recent days by Oxford University Press following a public vote in which more than 37,000 people had their say.
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Brain rot is defined as the deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of online content considered to be trivial or unchallenging.
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The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.
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It's a clear symptom of the time we're living in - and what our future may hold if there is no change of course.
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This is especially true given the explosive rise of "slop" content generated by AI, explained here: https://lnkd.in/gA6TvzuR
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The term, however, is far from recent.
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The first recorded use of brain rot being written down dates from 1854, in the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
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Thoreau criticised society's tendency to devalue complex ideas and how this is part of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort.
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In the contemporary climate of over-simplification ("us" versus "them") and over-reliance on devices as they know best (such as blindly following turn-by-turn GPS directions), it's little wonder the term is so currently relevant.
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Brain rot is a close brethren of "doomscrolling", which you can learn more about here: https://lnkd.in/gCf2mbU3​
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Of course there is delicious irony about the fact that the medium for you reading about brain rot is itself a large part of online culture which, arguably, is part of the potential overconsumption of digital content.
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Perhaps now is the right time to log-off and physically go outside!