As 2024 Begins, Silicon Valley Wants You To Be Optimistic About AI

Well, it’s a new year, but the game in Silicon Valley remains very much the same. That game, in essence, involves doing anything and everything to convince you—the global consumer—that whatever hair-brained product Bay Area billionaires have cooked up is a must-have. Unfortunately, the tech industry has bet its money on a lot of stupid shit over the last several years—whether it’s that requires to generate or or or, more recently, a host of automated tools that you never asked for.

As you already know, AI is the hottest industry in tech right now, and, in 2024, that industry promises to continue churning out a host of new, sometimes useful, sometimes baffling, often deeply wasteful and stupid products. Whether its an ever over who can create the coolest chatbot or attempts to popularize music wholly by software, or a race and thus kill off yet another upwardly mobile middle class strata of work, the tech industry is sure to be blasting on all cylinders this year. Here’s a little look at what’s been happening so far.

2 / 10 , a marketplace of customizable versions of , is launching next week according to an email OpenAI sent to developers on Thursday, first reported by . The GPT Store is part of CEO Sam Altman’s plan to give everyone AI agents that are useful and is OpenAI’s vision for the future. —Maxwell Zeff 3 / 10 gained the ability to in September, allowing users to speak with generative AI.

Soon, ChatGPT could replace digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant altogether. —Maxwell Zeff 4 / 10 A says there’s a 5% chance that AI will become uncontrollable and . In the short term, researchers estimate AI will become significantly more advanced, able to create a Top 40 pop song and write an NYT bestseller before 2030.

So at least our AI overlords will entertain us before they kill us. —Maxwell Zeff 5 / 10 More people are making video games than ever before, but most games are still designed by teams of professionals. There’s a barrier of technical skills that keeps the average person from making their own game, but in 2024, that’s going to change.

AI is going to make game development so easy that you’ll be able to pump one out in half an hour and spend the rest of the afternoon playing it with your friends. There’s a flood coming, and in the next 12 months, an AI-driven indie game renaissance will turn the industry on its head. It’s going to fill the market with an unprecedented number of titles, eliminate thousands of jobs, create countless others, and change our relationship with video games forever.

—Thomas Germain 6 / 10 You can always expect that Samsung will do something to improve the camera algorithms. And with the loud and proud “Galaxy AI” promotion in this year’s Unpacked teaser imagery, it’s clear it’s coming for the new family of smartphones. It will be another year of Zoom, as Samsung is expected to debut its new capabilities on the .

Samsung is still in first place for the farthest-reaching optical zoom on a mainstream smartphone. The is sharper than its predecessor, so it’ll be interesting to see how the Galaxy S24 Ultra improves even further. That Ultra smartphone might also come in titanium, giving the an official competitor in the design game.

—Florence Ion 7 / 10 On Thursday, Google announced a new “Robot Constitution” that will govern the AI that runs its upcoming army of intelligent machines. Based on Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” these safety instructions are meant to steer the devices’ decision-making process. First among them: “A robot may not injure a human being.

” —Thomas Germain 8 / 10 Microsoft’s has PC makers dancing along to the siren song of big tech’s new big obsession. Along with the newly-announced , there’s one small tidbit of information that isn’t nearly as engrossing but could prove to be Microsoft and the largest PC maker’s push to redefine how folks use their PC with a brand new “Copilot key” on users’ keyboards. —Kyle Barr 9 / 10 Roku doesn’t want you to consider it the “budget” TV brand you find at all-you-can-shop brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart or Target.

The company wants a piece of that premium TV pie, even as it already reigns as the top TV streaming platform for the U. S. and Canada.

The company has its plans to expand its TV offerings by adding three new high-end options later this year. — Florence Ion 10 / 10.