Future with AI: 7 Trends likely to catch-up in 2024?

From 18 June to 17 August 1956, for two months all that John McCarthy, 

 a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College wanted to do was discuss the idea of thinking machines with his fellow mates and organized a seminar for 10 people. The term Artificial Intelligence was introduced and an in-depth study was planned. 

 They discussed how machines can be used to work and speak like humans. There were discussions on programming and generalizations but little did the team know that less than a century away, their ideas would take a giant leap and transform the world as it is doing today.

 The way AI waves are taking shape, here are my thoughts on trends that will pick up shortly.

 Future Trend #1: Integration of AI tools

 There are hundreds of AI tools emerging day by day and for any business to function with AI-supported leads, a set of these tools are required to be used. Large organizations are able to integrate all they need into one modular structure but what about the individual small business owners or professionals? 

 AI is easy but learning and managing multiple tools is not. For instance, a creator like me would need Copyai for text, Dall-E for images, and inVideo for video editing - all part of the process of creation. Integration is what I aspire for. Tools like Guidde integrate some tasks such as screen recording, automatic highlights of interface components, creation of voice-over, etc. 

 Another interesting platform is Zapier which connects multiple tools to work together and automate tasks using triggers. It won't be long before these tools that it connects will have a rich set of AI apps.  The trend next is the integration of AI tools and this would be available not just to large enterprises but to individuals. 

Future Trend #2: Pay as You Go Model

 ChatGPT 4 requires you to make a fixed monthly payment but its developer module works on a pay-as-you-go model such that you start with a small amount like $10 and then continue using it and the system tracks your usage and bills you accordingly. This is similar to the payment offered by AWS to enterprises consuming their multiple. services.

This trend towards a flexible payment model is expected to grow. It can come in handy when multiple tools are integrated to offer a complete suit for a professional because the inclusion of multiple tools could mean additional costs. However, the question remains of whether this integration can handle a single billing system as the tools connected might not be from the same providers. How can integration work if simplification is desired in payment? Is AI able to handle it would cracking this code as the next best thing? 

Future Trend #3: Reskilling of workforce

 One or two courses in a year and you are ready to take up a new job to advance your career. This was history. No more will this model survive. With AI creating buzz every day and new products being launched in a minute, upgrading has to happen every day. 

 The new workforce would be required to always keep learning. Gone are the days when some people could work without exploring technology and stuck to manual ways. Those will not survive in the cutthroat business arena.

 While upskilling oneself will be the need of the hour for every individual. This might also give nightmares to organizations as they will also have to keep upgrading their workforce. Finding talent that understands the need to keep learning is still a rare occurrence which is why finding talent is becoming a big challenge. 

 In the middle of competition, upskilling then remains the only option to survive for organizations. Especially, for small and medium enterprises that already work on tight budgets, tight deadlines, and shrinking resources, this is a big challenge.

 To resolve this, we might see new tools and service models emerging. Or these organizations would hire trainable Bots instead of human resources and save on both time and cost. 

 People are afraid that they will lose their jobs. The hard truth - they will unless they adapt and are willing to become showrunners who don't just work but also know how to make bots work.

 Continuous learning becomes crucial as AI advancements occur rapidly. The workforce needs regular upskilling to stay relevant, presenting challenges and opportunities for businesses, especially SMEs. The potential rise of trainable bots as an alternative to human resources could be a solution for some businesses.

Future Trend #4: Remodeling of Learning and Development

 Since upskilling is the key to survival in the era of AI, organizations will have to change the way they manage Training programs. The one-time event organized quarterly would not suffice. They need to move from a traditional training model to a holistic learning and development model that allows for continuous learning and reinforcements to keep the resources growing.

 While AI is almost everywhere in the learning arena, it is still finding its space. L&D will be the new trend and AI might capture this arena too through new LMS structures. 

 I have explored LMS portals like Skillsoft, O'Reilly, ATD, LinkedIn Learning, Study.com, and Udemy. Each of them has unique features that do a good job of providing learning but there is a lot of scope for additional perks that AI can offer. Say, for instance, a bot can provide recommendations on the courses to attend, adjust the degree of difficulty progressively for tests based on learners understanding, etc.

 On ATD micro courses, I have seen this structure that allows you to choose the level of confidence in answering as well as the level of difficulty you want the content for. But it is still manual. AI has already captured a huge space in HR such as for resume sourcing, applicant tracking, onboarding, and so on. Perhaps, one of the next trends taking shape in the HR arena would be L&D. 

 The shift from traditional training to continuous learning and development models is necessary to keep pace with AI advancements. Learning Management Systems (LMS) are likely to be increasingly AI-driven, offering personalized learning experiences. 

 Future Trend #5: Progressive Responses

 My mom keeps saying,'How many times do I have to tell you the same thing?' Something similar is what I feel when I ask ChatGPT to write a post for me as it throws those jazzy marketing words with emojis that I don't want. And I have to give a feedback prompt to not use marketing jargon. After a few trials, I created a standard prompt with this caveat and saved it on my sticky notes so next time, I ask it to create a post, it should not give me marketing content.

 I just wished it already adjusted its model as per my preference and perhaps even allowed me to save a set of prompts I regularly use so I do not have to take support of my memory or a notepad externally.

 It's intelligent logically but not emotionally yet. And there is work to do. However, AI tools are expected to become more emotionally intelligent, adapting to user preferences and potentially offering features like saved prompts for personalized interactions. 

Future Trend #6: Voice AI Assistants 

 Alexa is an AI. And so is Siri. But when we speak to them, we do not get the same level of intelligent responses as a text-based AI like ChatBot would give. I only recently began to explore the arena of Voice-based AI models. Pretty promising is the field but it is not ripe yet. A major challenge is the differences in dialects, languages, and the use of slang or jargon that can confuse intelligent machines. 

 But in the near future, this space may grow and if AI can conquer this space, our lives would be so much cooler. We won't even have to type to get the AI to work for us but just talk like we normally do with our human assistants. And that will create the next level of assistance 

 Will it create a threat to employment? Most likely yes and create more. Fear that it is creating now. Perhaps in the next 7 years, AI will. Reach a stage of intelligence that will render many human service providers useless unless of course they make friends with AI and upskill themselves to deal with these challenges and provide more than an AI tool can give.

 Voice-based AI, despite challenges with dialects and languages, is anticipated to advance significantly, potentially changing the landscape of personal assistants and customer service. But please remember, I can still not ask AI to open my Gmail, copy content from 5 emails exchanged in a trail, and combine them to create a summary of all the conversations that happened around a project and then send the report to all those marked into and CC in all trail emails.

 Will AI be able to do this in the future? For now, only we can tackle this level of logical complication but we can definitely ask AI after we have all the trail messages put together to combine it all together. 

Future Trend #7: Growth of Visual Creation

Lastly, in the visual creation space, AI is still learning and has a long way to go. Most times the graphics and videos are not what we want them to be and cross-correction is needed several times until we find something not exact but a little close to our desired output.

 I have tried Dall-E and several other tools for image generation and commonly found the difficulty in these tools' incapability to keep the space minimal. If you do not specify, you will hardly see a whitepaper because the tool will put together visual representations of every sentence you wrote to describe the image. In my understanding, the contextual cues are not taken in combination but individually, and then the output is combined. 

 One tool that I found doing impressive work in the area of User Experience Design kept it simple but effective enough. The tool, app.uizard.io, requires you to only give a prompt about the kind of screens you want, and poof, and it gets your splash screen, home page, service page, product page…all ready within minutes for a mobile app. However, this is

 AI in visual creation still has room for improvement. Tools like app.uizard.io show potential in simplifying UX design processes, but challenges in contextual understanding and minimalism in design remain.

Disclaimer: The trends listed above are purely based on my observations. I could be wrong as I noted these only as a user and not the developer of AI. What do you think? What according to you will happen in the next wave of AI?

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