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| We’re gearing up for a brand new year
of tech news - but this edition is a New Year’s
special, where some of our BBC experts make
their tech predictions for the year ahead. But,
of course, predictions are a fool’s errand - so
we’ve peppered in some bad ones from
years past for a bit of fun. We’ll be back to
normal service on Friday - until then,
get the latest news
here. | | | | |
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| The
year of Apple’s big gamble |
 |
| Why is
Apple taking such a big swing at an unproven
market? Credit:
EPA | |
 |
| Zoe
Kleinman, BBC Technology
editor | | |
If all goes to plan, then early 2024
should see the launch of Apple’s AR headset, the
Apple Vision Pro.
At $3,500, it’s
unlikely to be an instant best-seller – but you
should never underestimate the power of the
Apple marketing machine at full
throttle. |
I was one of the first people in the
world to try the
Vision Pro out at Apple HQ in June. I’d
travelled to California feeling puzzled. Why is
Apple going into AR, and why now? I couldn’t see
how it fitted with the firm’s current portfolio
of products.
The tightly-curated
demo was impressive, but also mundane. The tech
was slick, the latency non-existent, and the
content was… well, ordinary. I looked at photos,
had an avatar video chat with an Apple employee,
and received a fictional text from “my mum”.
Yes, I also walked with dinosaurs briefly – but
the focus was very much on the things I already
do on my phone.
And that was when
it hit me. I don’t think this product is
intended to sit alongside Apple’s other
products. It’s designed to eventually
replace one of them – the
iPhone. |
It will have to come down in price
and, I expect, become more like a pair of
glasses and less like a headset over
time.
Something will
eventually replace our beloved
smartphones. And it makes sense for that
something to be wearable.
And if
anyone has a history of orchestrating huge
cultural change when it comes to our
relationship with tech, it’s Apple. |
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| | |
| 1964 |
| Monkey butlers for all |
Trying to predict the future is “a
hazardous occupation”, said Arthur C Clarke, the
genius science fiction writer who did, in fact,
predict a great many things. But one of his most
famous misfires came in 1964, when he told the
BBC’s Horizon programme that genetic
bioengineering would lead to monkey
butlers.
“Of course, eventually
our super-chimpanzees would start forming trade
unions, and we’d be right back where we
started,” he
warned. | | |
| Actually smart assistants |
 |
| Google’s pouring AI into “Hey Google”
- about time. Credit:
Google | |
 |
| David
Molloy, BBC Tech
Decoded | | |
I’m taking a big swing: this is going
to be the year that we see AI get packed into a
virtual assistant that approaches the sci-fi
vision of the Star Trek ship’s
computer.
See, smart assistants – Alexa,
Google Assistant, Siri – never
achieved their full potential. They’re great for
asking a very limited set of stock questions,
like what the weather is today, but have always
struggled with understanding natural language
properly. But the new AI chatbots
can. |
There was a fair bit of outcry a few
weeks back when Google’s
impressive demo of its Gemini AI turned out to
be, well, a little faked. But it
demonstrated an assistant that could chat
conversationally and recognise objects. We have
the building blocks: machine vision, voice
recognition, and AIs that can access the
repository of human knowledge online. We
just need to bring it all together.
Some
companies know this. Google didn’t edit that
demo together accidentally, and it’s already
said it wants to put its chatbot into Google
Assistant. The Humane
AI Pin shares a similar vision – a
chest-worn AI-powered device that reminds me of
the Star Trek
combadge. |
| I don’t think Humane’s Pin is the
product I’m looking for – but something like it
could be, and end my Google Assistant’s eternal
answer of “I’m sorry, I don’t
understand”. |
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| | |
| 1979 |
| Those
poor men |
| It seems strange now, but there was a
time when almost all (male) office workers had
no idea how to type. With the advent of
computers, expecting them to learn seemed
impossible. So engineers devised the
“breakthrough” Micropad, a device which
converted handwriting into digital text;
and the Microtyper, invented by famous
film director and polymath Cy Endfield - a pad
with only four keys. See how it
worked
here. | | |
| Deepfake headaches |
 |
| Donald
Trump could very well be back in full force
soon. Credit:
Reuters | |
 |
| James
Clayton, North America tech
reporter | | |
The US election is likely to be a
rerun of 2020 - Trump vs Biden. But the social
media landscape has changed an awful lot:
Elon Musk owns what was Twitter, and Trump has
his own social media platform.
But
there’s been another development: deepfakes,
which have been around for years, have been
getting better and
better. |
Anyone can now make a fake AI
generated voice. The internet is littered with
these audio fakes - of Biden and Trump’s
borrowed voice saying things they clearly never
said.
In the run-up to the
election, doctored audio will go viral on
platforms that don’t have strong moderation.
It’ll sound something like: “NEW: Secret
recording shows what Biden really thinks about
xxxxxx”. It’s not hard to see how this kind of
content could get shared. |
Deepfake pictures and even videos
have also been around for a long time. But with
AI it’s been made far easier. Expect much, much
more or this in the run-up to the
election.
The other thing that I
predict is that these fakes will mainly
be rubbish. Most deepfakes are easy to
distinguish. They don’t look quite right, or
it’s not something a politicians would obviously
say, or the mouth doesn't move quite
right.
But there will be a few
instances, in the right context, where people
will be fooled - and those instances could be
incredibly damaging in days and weeks before the
vote. |
|
| | |
| 1965 |
| Behold, Tomorrow’s Girl |
This segment from Tomorrow’s World
imagined what “tomorrow’s girl” would look like.
It showed
off synthetic plastic clothing, and ordering
drinks to table by phone - not bad! But
unfortunately, it also showed off some dreadful,
dated 1960s attitudes, with host Raymond Baxter
commenting on the model’s “very encouraging”
appearance.  She, of course, didn’t get to
say a
word. | | | |
| A
huge year for crypto |
 |
| Bitcoin’s value shot up this year
despite some major headaches. Credit:
Reuters | |
 |
| Joe
Tidy, BBC Cyber
correspondent | | |
The cryptocurrency world is set for
another rollercoaster in 2024.
Last
year saw the titans of the crypto world fall, as
billionaire CEOs had run-ins with the law (or
were jailed) in the US. |
On paper it’s all been bad news.
But the
value of one Bitcoin - often seen as the
barometer for the health of the whole industry -
has gone from $16,000 this time last year to
more than $40,000.
The
ever-optimistic crypto bros are pumped – they
always are! But this time there are two big
events that could raise - or collapse - the
price again.
The Bitcoin
“halving” is
expected in May – an event that effects the
supply of new coins. And potential
changes in financial rules in the US
could mean big investors would be allowed to
pour money into the volatile asset for
clients. |
I’m not just interested because some
investors might get rich.
Bitcoin
and cryptocurrencies are a monstrously
influential side of tech. When hype builds
people always come up with new, exciting and
bonkers ideas for how to use the underlying
blockchain systems - remember
NFTs?
Also – entire
countries are affected, like El Salvador and the
Central African Republic which have both made
Bitcoin legal tender. What could that mean for
their citizens? |
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| | |
| 1966 |
| Robot
maids for all |
| It was all going to be so easy. By
the 1970s, we would all have our own robot
servant to free us from domestic drudgery - at
least, that’s what an episode of Tomorrow’s
World thought. Viewers were introduced to Able Mabel,
who could take care of everything at
home for the sum of £500 (more than
£10,000 in today's money). It didn’t
quite work out that way - and here we are
in 2023 folding our own laundry and doing our
own
ironing. | | | |
| A
divisive year ahead |
 |
| What
effect will Musk’s version of X have on the
election? Credit:
Getty | |
 |
| Marianna Spring,
Disinformation & Social Media
correspondent | | |
| I spend a lot of time
investigating everything bad on social media and
its real-world consequences. And the social
media terrain has shifted over the past year.
Elon Musk's takeover of X has sparked serious
concerns from policy makers and users about a
sharp rise in hate and disinformation,
especially during the Israel-Hamas War. Now,
“verified” ticks mean something different, our
home pages can feel topsy-turvy - and for a
reporter like me, there's a whole lot of trolls.
|
X has continued to say it is "focused
on creating a safe and inclusive environment"
while also "protecting freedom of expression”.
And it's not just X: I've investigated how
TikTok's ever-powerful algorithm has come under
scrutiny to for its ability to drive “frenzies”
connected to harmful behaviour offline. TikTok,
too, says it prioritises users’ safety over
profit.
So here are my
predictions: in the election year ahead, looming
fears about AI-generated deepfakes will divert
our eyes from the current artificial
intelligence problems. |
And algorithms which shape and
polarise voters’ perception of reality - what's
true or not - will come into sharp focus. In an
election context, they’ll push users who might
never have encountered harmful content before,
towards divisive and false
posts.
That will shape the
offline world too. I’ll be following this trend
– the way I have for a few years - on the BBC's
Americast programme where I
investigate the polarisation online with our
Undercover Voters. |
|
| | |
| 1966 |
| Nuclear war and
unemployment |
| If you think asking some 1960s
schoolchildren to imagine life in the year 2000
sounds cute and light-hearted - you’re
very wrong. Most of
them thought they’d be living in a nuclear
wasteland. But one girl stood out,
sounding like she’s chatting about the AI fears
of 2023. “Computers are taking over now,” she
muses. “There just won’t be enough jobs to go
around and the only jobs there will be will be
for people with high IQ who can work computers.
Other people just aren’t going to have
jobs." | | | |
|
|
| And
finally... |
Whoops. We’ve had some fun
here at bad predictions at others’ expense – so
now it’s my turn. Back in late 2021, I went on
BBC World Service radio for a tech
year-in-review and predicted that “2022 will be
the year when a major Western country cracks
down on [cryptocurrency]”.
Hooooo boy.
What actually happened was the US took
very little action on crypto markets until the
massive, unforeseen collapse of
FTX, which shattered the interest in
blockchain tech across the board, and it’s only after
that fiasco in 2023 that US regulators cracked
the whip. But hey, I’m sure AI
regulation will prevent any disasters in the new
hot thing this year. Right?
—
Dave | | | |
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Tuesday. |
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|
Thanks for reading, and happy New
Year. If you’ve got anything you think we should
follow closely in the year ahead, let me know
at tech.d...@bbc.com.
You can follow me on Threads. We will
be back to our usual format with the week’s top
news in our next edition on Friday. —
Dave
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Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2024 9:01
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Subject: Our experts’ tech predictions
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