 |
SNS TOP 10 ANNUAL PREDICTIONS FOR 2024 By Mark Anderson As SNS members are aware, we have just released our predictions for 2024 at our virtual annual Predictions event; you can view a recording of that session in the coming week, as a benefit of membership. Because we'll be sharing the complete recorded event - together with discussions and Q&A - I am refraining from sending out a transcript or converting all of my thoughts on the economic, technological, and country landscapes upon which these Top 10 Predictions are based. Rather, in this issue I've outlined a greater number of predictions in all these areas, in the hopes that they are both clear and more numerous - and, therefore, of greater use to our members. As in 2023's Predictions recap, the idea here is to move from a detail-driven, very long conversation to getting the main points across and allowing enough intellectual breathing room for members to stop often, digest, make inner comments and arguments, compare with their own ideas of what's coming, and come to useful conclusions. Here are the landscapes, followed by the Top 10 Predictions for the year ahead.
THEME FOR 2024: Levels of Chaos, Levels of Play When we look at either geographic or technology landscapes this coming year, what we are really seeing is an intense competition between underdogs utilizing - and maximizing - chaos, in the hopes of bringing down established systems and players, amid a rapid acceleration in the intensity and effectiveness of the efforts of both sides. Let's start with countries:
Major Areas of Technical Contest
Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia - the list is both obvious and long. At the same time, one has to make a connection between China's SMIC and technology leaks from Taiwan's TSMC - illegal by Taiwanese law, but somehow likely enabled by cross investment. While TSMC fights for its supremacy by investing tens of billions in the US, the EU, and elsewhere, its leaders know that the mother ship will always be in Taiwan, leading to all kinds of very difficult questions for Inventing Nations regarding who to trust, who to buy from, and whether to disengage from TSMC as well as China. The above paragraph was so true a year ago that I have left it intact for 2024. Of course, the new landscape has been redefined by generative AI, for better and for worse. The irony here is that the old Chinese saw, promoted by Kai-Fu Lee, that having more people (and therefore more data) will win the AI race, turned out to be flat-out wrong. No surprise, except in Beijing. THE TOP 10 PREDICTIONS FOR 2024
I hope our members find these landscapes and predictions useful in the coming year, and that you, your families, and your companies benefit from their application.
Your comments are always welcome.
Mark Anderson
DISCLAIMER: NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE Information and material presented in the SNS Global Report should not be construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this publication constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by Strategic News Service or any third-party service provider to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments. This publication is not intended to be a solicitation, offering, or recommendation of any security, commodity, derivative, investment management service, or advisory service and is not commodity trading advice. Strategic News Service does not represent that the securities, products, or services discussed in this publication are suitable or appropriate for any or all investors.
We encourage you to forward your favorite issues of SNS to a friend(s) or colleague(s) 1 time per recipient, provided that you cc info@strategicnewsservice.com and that sharing does not result in the publication of the SNS Global Report or its contents in any form except as provided in the SNS Terms of Service (linked below). To arrange for a speech or consultation by Mark Anderson on subjects in technology and economics, or to schedule a strategic review of your company, email mark@stratnews.com. For inquiries about Partnership or Sponsorship Opportunities and/or SNS Events, please contact Berit Anderson, SNS COO, at berit@stratnews.com.
Results of the Top 10 Predictions for 2023
I am trying to recall a single original thing that Zuck, or the FB properties, did last year that was original. Copycat Google Glass? Copycat LLMs? I'm fresh out of ammo here, and so was Zuck. 10 pts.
At $50B + for the next six months, the US alone could easily see $100B or more spent on sports betting. It's hard to name something that generated more cash out of nowhere than the growth in sports betting. Derivatives of derivatives on this theme are actually threatening the dominion of Las Vegas - something that seemed impossible even just a year ago. 10 pts.
There is no question that this is the program; but one can ask whether it has been as successful as China had hoped, to date. One problem here is that as China's domestic economy continues its structural implosion, the Belt and Road colonialism push has started to run out of steam. This leaves us in a world where China continues to dream of, and push aggressively to use, these tools to outflank the Western financial system; they just aren't meeting their own expectations. This program is still intact, and it needs more and stronger opposition. 10 pts.
This is where I need to confess that my crypto-related call has now put this category into the same predictive purgatory as that of "Who will win the US presidential election?" for which my lifetime record is, predictably and exactly, zero. Despite the huge scandals regarding FTX and ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and his Chinese competitor, Binance ex-CEO Changpeng Zhao (perhaps the two biggest financial screwups of the year), crypto did amazingly well in 2023. With Bitcoin starting at $16,529 on December 31 of last year and climbing to $42,300 a year later, and with Ethereum going from $1,200 to $2,299 in the same timeframe, I would say this bet ended as badly as possible, with Marc being spot-on, and Mark blowing it as badly as possible. Mea culpa, Marc. 0 pts.
Anyone confused about this should check out: a) the UK's immigration doubling vs. what it was during the Brexit vote, which itself was a thinly veiled attempt to lessen it; and b) pictures of tens of thousands of economic emigrants camping along the US southern border, as each month leads to more illegal entries and Biden gets ready to hand over the presidency based solely on this issue. 10 pts.
To Jerome Powell: After you've killed the lion, you can stop pulling the trigger. And Let's Not Forget The Economic Costs of COVID - Including Long COVID. When Global Productivity Drops, Inflation Immediately Follows. 2023 can now be called "The Year of Jerome Powell," which itself would be a code phrase replacing "Nuclear Winter in Investment Land." The good news came very late, and very fast: inflation dropping precipitously, Powell announcing three rate cuts for next year, record highs in both stocks and bonds on the US markets, rents declining, jobs numbers strong, soft landing apparently achieved. Having killed the inflation beast during the first three quarters of the year, the Fed finally stopped pulling the trigger. Thank you. 10 pts.
It's time to move beyond NNs, and this is the year we will. Well, wasn't that an interesting GPT ride. Everyone is dating, few are getting married, and some are already headed for divorce. (See "Healthcare" above, under "Major Areas of Technical Contest.") VC investments in this tech already dropped by about one-half as they got beyond the sex appeal and found out that the "Things That Matter" category was, well, all that mattered. 10 pts.
Germany, once the most dependent EU country in regard to Russian gas, now is a world leader in renewables. Global political, technical, and economic movements have been emboldened, and they are showing results, thanks to Putin's disastrous folly. Putin is probably the most important player in getting renewables under way, and he should be remembered for it. But not in the way he hopes. 10 pts.
Now, even more so. When I wrote this a year ago, many countries and global firms were still trying to make the argument that since disengagement was hard, it was not worth doing. Well, those days are over, and nearly every such company - from Apple moving jobs to India to the US blocking Ford's Chinese battery factory in the US - is now getting the message and re-shoring, friend-shoring, or just pulling out of China, period. 10 pts.
The combination of new investigations and class-action lawsuits against the use of autonomous AI in cars is hard to keep up with, but there have been reversals everywhere, for exactly the reason above. GM's Cruise is no longer cruising, having pulled out of all five pilot cities; Waymo is in trouble on the truck front; Rivian is in even worse shape (for its own set of reasons); and the only place today where autonomy is getting any kind of play is in controlled "racetrack" settings such as ports, where the type of inputs can be - and is - under tight constraints. 10 pts.
[And, to complete the 2023 lineup:]
Perhaps Resonance theory, which predicted all of this, can be of some assistance. The Webb is just crossing its second birthday as I write this, and we are still finding old views challenged or discarded and new possibilities for cosmological scientific revolution becoming normalized. One scientist suggested that the prior standard theory would have failed in 14 out of 15 prior predictions. While it may or may not be that our Resonance theory ends up being a better fit, it is certainly true that Resonance has provided many more accurate predictions to date than the prior dogma. Hubble is getting a complete overhaul and will never again be considered the standard for distance calculations; rather, it will be one part of a larger, much more interesting, story. That worked.
Graded Accuracy on Past SNS Predictions 2006-2022 Average = 95.61% Est. 2023 Year Score = 90% Total Average Since 2005, Including 2023 Predictions = 95.29% [Math: (95.61 x 17 + 90)/18 = 95.29%]
Re: SNS: FAANG, LLMS, SNOOP DOGG, AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN MARKETING Berit [and Evan], This latest issue is, following the pattern Mark has started, thought-provoking and well written. It is nice to see you and Evan reaching the standard that Mark has set. That said, I have two bones to pick. 1. You wrote: "In December, I listened as Vinod Khosla, an investor in OpenAI, told an audience of tech execs that LLMs will eliminate 64% of jobs within the decade." I would respond that at best, that means 64% of EXISTING jobs. We already have jobs for generating AI prompts that did not exist before LLMs, and I suspect all sorts of new jobs will spring up. I do note that I am the self-designated optimist on this and several other email groups. 2. You wrote: "Forward-looking SMBs are replacing their longtime advertising agencies with LLMs, while large companies are using them to generate text and images, relying on humans primarily on the front and back ends of the equation for idea generation and review. "As long as the end goal of marketing and advertising is to convince humans - not machines - to buy things, this isn't going to end well. We can expect a flood of undependable content rife with errors and flat jokes over the next few years." I would say (a) all tools to date require humans to decide how to use them and whether the results of using the tool are acceptable. It strikes me that LLMs are NO different in this regard. And (b) you must have a much higher opinion of pre-LLM advertising than I do to think that the "flood" of "rife errors" and "flat jokes" will be worse than pre-LLMs. At the same time, you raise an intriguing point - maybe future advertising will not be to convince humans but to convince other AI. We are already seeing this in resume generation - the goal being more to get past the screening algorithms than to persuade the human at the other side of the screen. As always, thanks for all you and the rest of the crew do. I am proudly member 1312, so while not an absolute pioneer, one of the longer-term members. Rollie Cole Author, Wholesale Economic Development
Rollie, I love it, Rollie - the best part of writing in SNS is that folks like you reach out and we always have fascinating conversations about the world. I haven't even had a chance to read Berit's piece yet (you're fast!), but this makes me even more excited to see it. Thank you for your very kind words. I am looking forward to taking a look tomorrow and then jumping in further here. :) As for jobs being created by AI, you got me thinking. What kinds of jobs will good AI solutions generate? That will clearly be a big part of the future of employment. The possibilities seem myriad. What I am picturing at the moment is that each field will require, at least for a while, folks with advanced training in both the most appropriate AI tools for that field and a deep understanding of the field itself. Much like cybersec etc., it seems like these folks are going to have very, very big salaries for the next decade or so. AI/Automotive, AI/Pharma, AI/Cybersecurity, etc. feel like they may be the PhDs of the next era. Evan Anderson Evan, Thanks for your kind words. As for AI-created jobs, think about the "review" function. If we have more content to review (text, but also images, moving pictures, and sound), we could use more "reviewers." I do not want to underestimate clever programmers, but I think the ability to predict what text, image, video, or sound will be popular or not will lag the ability of computers to generate them. For example, more books require more book critics, more movies require more movie critics, more music require more music critics, etc. The key word is "curation." The more stuff to curate, the more need for curators. Indeed, Berit's comments about "influencers" strikes me as in support of this idea that we love humans helping us sort through the "stuff" being available to us. - Rollie Absolutely. And yet the idea of sitting in an office constantly reviewing machine-generated content makes me think more about the poor content managers at social-media sites than it does the glory days of editing. Maybe it is a new glory day, eventually. Perhaps a person in a comfy corner office will happily spend their days reading increasingly fantastic AI novels and picking the best ones. Seems eerie, to be sure, though. Mostly it's missing the other main character - the weird genius author sipping coffee across the desk. Does it all perhaps sound a bit too increasingly lonely? - Evan Not all curation need be anonymous; museum directors are often pillars of society, and influencers are "famous" online. In addition, I suspect an increasing role for "party planners" beyond weddings, and more social engagement professionals generally. But all predictions of the future are suspect (except perhaps Mark's < grin>). - Rollie It's interesting. I find that the more I interact with and use LLMs, the better I know what it is that makes me human. The words that I would choose and the ideas that I would champion are not the ideas and words that are spun out of an LLM. Even one trained on my voice. It's a hollow approximation at best. And not one that I would choose to represent me for anything beyond the surface-level transmission of basic facts.
Of course, that may change. At which point I will be able to spin out countless articles and arguments, which I will debate endlessly with Evan's AI-generated avatar and those of the entire SNS membership base. Berit
Berit, Superb analysis! Thank you. Pete Mackey, PhD Pete, Thank you! Curious how you're thinking about all of this as a strategic communications guy. Berit Anderson
The following is a text exchange between Berit Anderson and Renny Gleeson, Business Strategy / Brand Strategy / Innovation Strategy [Portland, OR]:
* October 20-23, Mark will be speaking on a variety of subjects, and hoping to see many of our members in person, at the FiRe 2024 conference at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California.
In between times, he will be comparing the relative virtues of his old Tundra 4WD truck with the German race car, in a foot of snow. No contest. Copyright 2024 Strategic News Service LLC "Strategic News Service," "SNS," "Future in Review," "FiRe," "INVNT/IP," and "SNS Project Inkwell" are all registered service marks of Strategic News Service LLC. ISSN 1093-8494 | |
