Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2024?
As I'm looking at a crazy 12 months with economics, geo-politics and technology (gen-AI) really looking forward to see what 2024 has in store and would love to hear what others think we have in store.
Change has already started, but 2024 will make it more clear. Several societal pendulums are slowing, will reach apex, and reverse course.
* Optimism will regain footing
* Belief in positive application of technologies which shape earth and society, will increase
* Conversation and information flows will recenter on individual responsibilities in service to community
This has already started in tech, business, and culture. It's partly a response to the deflation of the 2022 growth bubble and to political instability. See American Dynamism and e/acc for narrow domain examples.
The elections will act as a forcing function, and muddy the waters a bit. However, the political world will then be a lagging indicator. People will refactor their world models regardless of who wins.
We are a caterpillar. It's going to be intense as we build the cocoon and transform over the next year or few. But then...
However - I do like your optimism. THere will be a lot of really amazing things to come out of the next ~12 months even.
Have you by chance watched the Tristan Haris and Aza Raskin on JRE (its the same talk, essentially, as given at summit) - I feel this one is a much better watch/listen than the summit one though.
its worth it several times
I hope I am wrong, but the establishment politicians see this danger. Tik Tok is a clear example - the anti Israel narrative, which was never tolerated in the mainstream press, is gaining more and more momentum. Congressional leaders, their financial backers, and Presidential candidates are all advocating some kind of ban or suppression of Tik Tok. And this is merely one example among so many divisive politics in the US.
I don’t think the younger generations will just roll over if you offer them cheap TVs, iPhones, or cheaper Big Macs. Something drastic has to happen.
That's actually why I think @caprock has it right. The younger generations are building on doors that Gen X opened for them in the workplace. They are the ones demanding climate solutions. They are making it clear they aren't going to limp along until retirement when they can finally get Medicare. The political left is likely going to go through a moment sometime in the next decade where we have a political crossroads much like what conservatives have undergone, but my guess is that we will be better for it politically and as a nation. I'm expecting a reinvigoration of American industry unlike anything in my lifetime, and we'll see real movement on the major political issues.
Open to different perspectives since the public conversation seems to shift toward generational differences, whereas I tend to stand firmly in the "eat the rich" camp and ignore any commentary on generations. I may need to start paying more attention to that.
But - that doesn't mean that behind the scenes there haven't been plenty of Gen X that demanded remote work, demanded better pay, wanted more women in tech, etc. From my perspective, I see Millenials et al capturing the benefits that we started pushing for when we entered the workforce in the 1990s and early 2000s.
I disagree in two ways. I think Apple and MS are even more user-hostile (MS is putting ads in their OS...), but the reason I don't want Google to lose (first) is because then Apple would become even more powerful than they already are. I see Apple as more evil than Google, and also much more competent; Google is evil but pretty dumb frequently, which is a better kind of evil. A world without Google is a world where everyone is basically forced into being an Apple customer and iPhone user, like it or not. An Apple monopoly would be a terrible thing to live under, and I have zero faith that regulating bodies would handle this.
I'm curious, why do you want them to lose given you aren't forced to use their services?
I feel that Nebula was supposed to fill this slot, but failed. The clunky UX being chief among my complaints about it, otherwise it just seems to generally lack in content variety and appears to have trouble attracting new creators. I want to like it, but I just can't find a good reason to.
2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34125628 (the rest copied from here)
2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746236
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25594068
2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21802596
2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18753859
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16007988
2017: none?
2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10809767
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8822723
2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994370
2013: none?
2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3395201
Do you think some sort of game will push it?
Think of examples like seeing the Grand Canyon for 1/10 the price if you’re disabled or elderly.
Or watching an official Taylor Swift concert like you’re actually there, for 1/2 price. No limits on ticket sales.
There will be a point at which the VR experience will be better than the “nosebleeds” (they may already be).
At that point this really expands the audience for live shows.
Webcam experiences (eg having a chat with a celebrity) are going to be in huge demand once VR gets good latency and resolution.
A couple years ago a friend was over from the UK who was a serious American Football fan. When I was a kid, we could get good seats in the Kingdome for maybe $20, and those were not the cheapest available. Now it's on the order of $250/ ticket, for nosebleed section. Anyway... so we go with our $250 / seat tickets, and the jerks behind us proceed to just be completely obnoxious the whole game. Crappy generic pilsner beers were $20/ can. Likely needed a second mortgage for a hot dog. Seat was barely wide enough for one cheek.
Last time I was at a concert (Fleetwood Mac of all things), a fight broke out in our row. Haven't been back to a major concert or sporting event because it's pretty much the same -- super high prices for limited accommodation.
So I share all that to say - I've come around to believing that my living room is a better place for most shows. VR + live shows would be amazing - feel like you are there, with none of the down side.
I see Vision Pro’s rise ramp looking much like Apple Watch’s did before Apple dialed in the Watch’s purpose, hardware, and pricing. You might remember Watch S0 units having obscene return rates. I was one of those who mocked the Watch. Now I wear one. Watch didn’t really kick in until Series 2.
- We will continue to see price gouging in utilities and rent, driven by corporate greed.
- Tesla will continue to dominate the electric car market, and Rivian will also make it.
- At least one major court case plays out over AI, and that completely changes the future of the technology. I personally suspect it'll be found that using copyrighted materials for LLMs is copyright infringement (in the OpenAI sense), but whatever happens, all hell is breaking out online
- Social media declines in popularity. I suspect this is already happening post pandemic, since places like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc are seeing a huge decline in activity and many people I used to know on these services have dropped them altogether.
- Reddit follows Twitter's lead, changes name and collapses in popularity. Spez seems to be following Musk's playbook.
- No replacement appears for Twitter. Instead, a small percentage of the existing Twitter base is divided across Mastodon, BlueSky and Threads, and much of the rest just stop using any of them.
- The economy gets split between companies that go full remote work forever and those that go back to the office. Many of the former complain how hard it is to find employees now.
- Layoffs continue in tech related industries, as the growth expected during the pandemic doesn't pan out.
- Streaming services collapse in popularity due to their move towards cable TV style setups (ads, content split across many platforms, etc). Piracy becomes a big thing again.
- Labour wins the UK general election. Considers possibility of reversing Brexit.
- The Nintendo Switch's successor is unveiled, but does worse than its predecessor at launch due to lack of an incentive to move to the new console (and people already having spent a ton on 2023/2024 Switch games)
- Antitrust cases start up against the iOS App Store and Google Play Store in more regions, as the companies are forced to open up those platforms.
- At least one more natural disaster becomes a huge international incident, and the severity gets tied to climate change.
- Renewable energy makes great strides (and becomes a larger contributor to the electrical grid worldwide), but it doesn't help enough to slow down climate change that much.
- The Russia/Ukraine conflict ends in a stalemate and peace agreement, as the Russian economy teeters on the brink of collapse.
- Civil war or conflict breaks out in at least one previously seemingly stable authoritarian country. Maybe Russia post Ukraine conflict?
Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanoes, Nick Cage movies, etc.
- [XYZ] this close to taking everyone's job
- Year of the Linux desktop
Same as every year.
- 1 stupidly simple app will be go from 0 to 100M users
- The top phone companies will all team up with 1 or more LLM's
- It will be increasingly tempting for relatives to chat with models of their dearly beloved departed. Oxford will create a word for this. OpenAI invests.
- Dropbox will get into the LLM game, personalized models based on your data
- YC will see a dip in applications. The team will react for the better. The next cohort will see a record high in applications
- 1 new essay from PG
- The seed investor to the "plastic killer" startup that launches in 2030, graduates from Ivy League
- Atleast 1 luxury brand will have a wearable AI/headgear
- Netflix approaches Sam Altman for a movie. He refuses the first two times.
- Dubai tried to bring the Las Vegas Sphere
- The next Google CEO in the making, takes a risk, swings for the fences, and wins. The board takes notice
- Meta offers Llama for businesses on Whatsapp
- Nvidia CEO has a crazy night. Is bailed out before the media finds out. Announces a large donation.
- Alexa tests their new LLM in the wild two months too early. Gets sued.
- Apple and a Japanese firm make a big announcement
- Hollywood agrees on a royalty model for generative ai. A former Justin TV exec leads as CEO.
- Doge and BTC hit all time highs
- X and Grok merge, ux merges more seamlessly.
- Elon Musk challenges 2 other companies to change their names for a billion dollars.
- HN will double it's infra to 2 servers running Arc
checks out
Here are mine:
* Apple rumoured to be working on sunglasses similar to Meta Ray-bans
* Regulation is passed specifically to limit what artificial partners can do. Possible limitations: alignment required, limits in ERP, limits on session time. Best bet is China.
* Stronger regulation is passed to limit unauthorised cloning of people’s voices in one of the major economies. This beyond current weak IP and privacy laws.
* AI becomes a scapegoat in several major elections.
What I got right last year:
- text and image generating AI is hugely disruptive to education and content generation
This was pretty obvious
- Inflation eases, stock market recovers
Less obvious at the time but still likely
- A Twitter alternative breaks through.
Who woulda thunk that it would be Meta with Threads
- One of the big tech companies joins the fediverse (Microsoft most likely)
Once again, Meta for the win with Threads joining the fediverse
Now, nobody look back at all the predictions I made that didn’t happen.
Also, fairly gutted that Reddit hobbling its API was my 2022 prediction. I’m clearly prognosticating too far into the future.
I'm patiently waiting for Barry-1 to push itself up into a higher orbit in that manner.
Here's the tracking page
https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/graph-orbit-data.php?CA...
You can use their data to watch for all sorts of things in orbit, like the International Space Station[1], weather satellites, etc.
[1] https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/graph-orbit-data.php?CA...
Not here anyway.
- Climate change aware relocations for the upper class.
- Over 50% of the world population will be able to vote in 2024. This leads to social turmoil.
- A promising new discovery could fix climate change. However, it will take years to make it viable.
- Credit cards will become widely accepted in Europe.
- First signs of a personal emission credit system. E.g. retailers need to show a "planet-impact" score for a product.
I'm sorry, what? Credit cards are available and accepted basically everywhere in Europe. I've been to 15+ European countries and never had a single issue paying with a credit card. Credit cards are also widely owned and issued all over Europe.
Why would you make this statement? What am I missing?
Vpay and Maestro cards will disappear in Europe and will be replaced by Mastercard Debit and Visa Debit. This forces merchants to also accept foreign creditcards.
https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/en/perspectives/en/20...
- Trump is convicted in at least one jurisdiction, though sentencing happens after the election. He refuses to drop out, but also refuses to debate.
- Core PCE stays around 2%, economy grows at about 2% in real terms. The overall economy is stable and growing and consumer sentiment turns positive again.
- Waymo has a publicized accident
- OpenAI releases their first open model
- Llama3 and Mistral become gpt4 competitive, but GPT5 is delayed for “safety reasons”
For fun I have copied over my predictions from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34128162
—————
- US barely avoids recession, slow growth for H1, back to normal H2. NBER announces no recession in 2022. (Correct, though a tad pessimistic)
- Inflation normalizes at 4%, Fed pivots despite prior denials. Market trades sideways to slightly higher by EOY 2023. (Market traded much higher by the end of the year, and the CPI is now in the 3s not 4)
- Robotaxis become common in 10 cities around the southwest between the top ~4 competitors, but revenues are lower than expected. (Robotaxi deployments contracted due to Cruise accident)
- Continued consolidation amongst the AV component suppliers
- DeSantis, Pence, Christie, Hutchinson, Hogan enter the Presidential race. DeSantis ends up being weaker than expected, and is in a close #2 with Trump by the end of the year against a split field. (No Hogan and Trump dominated by much more than I expected after it turns out DeSantis has no juice)
- Trump recovers in GOP primary polls after DOJ indictment (he did!)
- Biden announces re-election bid, met with token opposition from Nina Turner (not Turner but his opposition is still low key. Didn’t expect RFK Jr)
- McCarthy narrowly wins speakership, House investigations end up a dud. (Happened, didn’t expect him to get axed so quickly though)
- Another fusion breakthrough (higher Q than expected) EOY 2023 (nothing huge)
- Tech job market normalizes at 2018 levels instead of 2021 levels in the second half of 2023 (feels right? Don’t know the numbers).
Currently, he trails Trump in all swing states, right
To help illustrate: the election is 10 months away. 10 months ago was February 27th. Back then, there was prominent argument and speculation that Ron DeSantis was the future of the Republican Party. Look at his polling now.
2) Abortion rights will be a big part of the election cycle and 60%+ of Americans oppose the Dobbs ruling. Trump has made it clear that he takes credit for Dobbs.
3) Polls (with the caveat that I believe they are flawed currently) suggest conviction switches a non-trivial number of Trump-friendly voters into the undecided or Biden column.
4) Overall poll toplines are currently flawed, many only use registered voter screens, and seem to overstate the number of 2020 non-voters that will vote in 2024. In reality overall turnout will be much lower in 2024. Additionally, about 50% of voters appear to be in denial that the matchup will be Biden vs. Trump.
5) Trump seems to think he has this in the bag [0] and will make even more extreme and reckless statements as the election cycle goes on.
[0]: https://politicalwire.com/2023/12/26/melania-trump-to-step-u...
Tilt Biden, I'd give it a 75% likelihood.
It blew my mind after finishing it, and i learned one hard lesson: All the frameworks are bullshits (they're too complicated for nonsensical reason). That's it.
There well be a large churn of apps/upstarts and incredible progress on so many levels, but the monied are not only another tech-era in, WRT the savvy-ness but now they have AI GOLEMS on BathSalts being tooled up to reap.
Congress will continue to launder, philander and war, and Media will run interference.
Ai gunna make smarts a darn bushell full of crazily creative teens and shenanigans be afoot.
I do hope something profound does occur due to GPTs (Can you create a GPT swarm? to create sophisticated multi-vector attacks/DDOs (What does a GPT ddos look like?)
(
For the US, it will probably be a neck and neck race between an internal Civil War or an external Major International War as to which one happens first.
And the general reaction will be a disbelieving "Huh? Wha'?" As if people can't see what's happening right before their eyes.
It's more likely to play out as Jan 6 did, a riled up mob that turns violent and is squashed.
It becomes more of a police action than a civil war, and frankly, despite all the guns collected by the faithful, its not a fair fight.
Indeed the sides are so unbalanced, outside of a few skirmishes here and there, it's not a "civil war" like the last one.
I think Sanctuary Districts were the most impressive timing so far, it was introduced in the 90s and set in 2024, and now we have sanctuary cities building temporary housing in a similar fashion. The residents would be a bit different though.
I predict that a new social media model will take off soon, with the company that ends up winning the space launching in 2024 (or already launched.)
1. state-space models make transformer based models obsolete
2. Cuda killer gets set loose by AMD
3. The world's first successful head transplant takes place
4. Children of Dune gets greenlit
5. Lex Friedman retires from interviewing
The issue is nobody wants the people.
Increasing house prices.
- Open-source AI models as good as the state-of-the-art closed ones
- Social media is bombarded with AI generated political propaganda from both sides
- More adoption of crypto and decentralized apps
- SOL reaches all time high
- NFTs become popular again
- Argentina's economy starts recovering
- No AI innovation in the EU because of regulation
- X/Twitter will be going strong, grows more than ever
- Linux gaming will improve a ton, but anti-cheat software still won't work
But I am very optimistic about it, and I think Argentina in the next years will recover from its economic crisis.
Biden gets fatal heart attack a week later.
RFK Jr. shot in the head the next day while touring Gaza Strip.
Ivanka Trump fills in, elected next US President, Kim Kardashian as VP. Supreme Court swiftly declares move constitutional.
Kanye claims he's been abducted by aliens, registers as lobbyist for extraterrestrial affairs. Will be found dead down a cliff in Greenland after solar eclipse.
Penguin cultured meat becomes wildly popular in Argentina.
Taylor Swift performs for Kim Jung-Un in North Korea.
Israel expands, seizing neighboring parts in Lebanon and Syria, activates a shielding force field over territory, dubbed as the Israely bubble.
Conspiracy theory about combined primate-pork ancestry for human kind becomes widespread. Pork meat sales plummet.
First trans woman carries fetus, gives birth.
Italian algea pasta startup fails because of AI glitch.
Worldwide emails get all routed to single Gmail account for 48h. Major data center fires ensues. Lost email data never recovered.
Pringles create new bologna-asparagus flavored crisps, which leads to global addiction crisis and instant liver cancer for 2% of world population.
Coca-Cola launches Water 2.0, a new bottled drink that packs 2,800 calories per liquid once, while tasting like regular tap water.
Dubai plans for new massive mile-high pyramid shaped water park.
Panama Canal moves to Costa Rica.
Study finds lecithin emulsifier food additives to be root cause of worldwide diabetes and obesity epidemic. Lead scientists die in a car accident upon publication.
Pet shop puppy get AIDS from ticks in Pennsylvania.
First transgender Iranian Mullah gets out of the closet.
Solve world hunger with water. Genius.
I think Iran actually has a healthcare system that's progressive on just this one issue.
From Google AI: "Iran is the only Islamic country that recognizes sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Sex changes have been legal in Iran since the late 1980s, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, passed a fatwa authorizing them."
I forget why he did that. However, that prediction isn't as absurd as you intended.
See https://www.thepinknews.com/2020/02/22/iran-gay-forced-gende...:
> Shadi Amin, an Iranian-born activist, told The Sun that this homophobic Iranian regime is controlled by religious extremists who view being gay as an "illness". They believe that the only way it can be cured is by changing gender.
> "The government believes that if you are a gay man, your soul is that of a woman and you should change your body," Amin said.
> "We think this is a way [for them] to fight the existence of homosexual people because you change their body and you solve the problem.
> "The regime gives gay people two choices – to be arrested as a homosexual and risk punishment or even execution, or change your body."
> Government data shows that around 4000 gender reassignment surgeries are performed in Iran each year.
> Amin, however, claims that those numbers are actually much higher in reality.
> "They are trying to cleanse the country of homosexuals," she added.
> "They would rather carry out mass surgeries than executions because they know the world is watching them."
These predictions may seem absurd at first glance, but I assure you, they're not, to me at least.
Although, then again, I could absolutely see some members of that party railing against AI in public, then quietly killing all attempts to regulate it. The first analogy that comes to mind is the way the GOP comes out against off-shoring in public but rarely does anything about it.
Politics will start improving around same time.
FED cuts rates for politics but ends up making things worse in the medium term. Timing is off and a mini realestate crash happens.
One major bank goes bust and needs a taxpayer bailout in the US.
A large number of car dealers in the US go bust. Used car prices come down.
Hillary jumps in the presidential race and Biden is forced out.
At least one red state takes the democratic nominee off the ballot.
Supply chain disruptions affect over the counter medication availability.
Social turmoil over immigration increases in Europe and the United States.
Startups based on just prompt engineering go out of favor and funding dries up.
At least one major tech company has to face anti-trust action.
Some other tech company buys Reddit.
Shortages of Raspberry Pi version 5 persist.
- 2024 will likely see a economic rebounding and more positive growth across most sectors. - Social media will be even more toxic and internet will get even more fragmented. Election year ain't gonna be a help in that department. - AI agents performing automated task to be more common. The biggest buzz this year was obviously Auto-GPT, and still kinda miff that it didn't blow up by the end of the year. Next year should see it going mainstream. - Generative video to be an actual thing. There are some progress on it this year, but is generally crap/unusable.
- Trump/Scott P/VP ticket.
- Biden/Trump election is about as close as 2020. Trying to avoid partisanship, but I predict a narrow Biden victory.
- Biden loses Nevada, but keeps Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and very narrowly Michigan.
- Trump repeats his rage and cries of fraud at his second loss. This is taken even less seriously than the first time. Fox News in particular is more measured.
- Regardless of election outcome, lessons learned from J6 and congressional certification is far more protected by DC Police and National Guard. Protests in other cities get quelled without much fanfare. Maybe at most a high-profile shooting death.
- Settlement in Ukraine reached. Ukraine likely loses the Donbas and Crimea, but keeps Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson. Frozen conflict/ceasefire in the vein of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.
- China doesn't invade Taiwan.
- Google Gemini isn't as powerful as expected and Google AI efforts continue to flop.
- Hype around LLMs starts to die down a bit. More adoption, but less hype about AGI about to take over.
- No meaningful impacts to employment from artificial intelligence.
- Some kind of innovation in geothermal energy that increases its prominence above wind.
- Inflation drops to 2%.
- Fed gently drops rates - I'd be utterly shocked if it was more than 1 to 1 and a half basis points.
- Marianne Williamson drops before Super Tuesday.
- RFK Jr. campaign implodes by October with some other controversy on par with Jewish comments.
- End to conflict in Red Sea with the Houthis. Lasts until late spring 2024.
- Another mass school shooting happens in the United States.
- Israel ceases assault on Gaza with minimal progress towards any kind of two-state solution. Back to status quo with a weaker coalition behind Netanyahu.
- Apple Vision pushes VR to decent adoption amongst mainstream consumers.
- New iPhone marginally better than the previous generation.
- Bitcoin hits $70k
- Continued dip in Marvel quality, but no cease in ticket sales.
- (stealing from another comment) Dropbox LLM
- Twitter/X still exists. Advertisers probably return. Elon is still dumb.
- Trump is convicted in one of: classified documents case or defrauding American people. Potential acquittal or settlement in hush money case.
How? It’s $3,500.
- People will be so sick of online dating that "singles culture" will make a come-back, primarily for millennials who are 35+ and freaking out about life priorities (kids, partner, etc.) I expect to see lots of "speed dating" and stuff like that appear out of nowhere as everyone become more sexually open-minded but also wants human connection.
- The US government will begin to talk about 10 year + plans for the first time in over a centry. Biden will do a bragging tour on the infrastructure bill leading into the election and "long termism" will become a meme.
- Cannabis will be re-scheduled to Schedule III and will become basically legal for all Americans.
- Bitcoin will be strong, all other cryptos will flounder. Ethereum will stay alive, and NFTs will make a bit of a come-back, but not like the first wave.
- People will make serious efforts to stop owning cars and demand more transit options from their cities and townships. These plans will be very glamourous and take 10 years to complete (or get started). Some may stop owning phones.
- Alcohol will take on a "weird" place in culture in response to growing cannabis and psychedelics usage. Some people will become very proud of their drinking and others will judge them very harshly. It will probably end up a culture war issue.
- We will see extraordinary acts of public violence in American streets, with responsibility probably shared between citizens, gangs, and the police.
Curious if you can expand on this a bit more?
> "More crypto regulations will be introduced with at least one exchange going down in 2023."
The FCA brought in new crypto regulations around promoting cryptocurrencies [1] and MiCA was enforced in the EU in 2023 [2]:
Bittrex Global announced that they are winding down. [3]
> "Startups MUST now turn a healthy growing profit to qualify for further VC investment rather than from pure hype."
Well this time, hype is not enough to get VC investment anymore due to the cessation of the zero interest rate phenomenon, given the slowing of VC funding in general in 2023 [4] [5]
> "OpenAI will gain further investment, ChatGPT by then will become a paid service with some startups fully sitting on top of the OpenAI API will also raise their prices or shut down."
The first prediction turned true with the first 10 days of 2023 [6], then 72 hours later after that the second prediction became true [7] and a paid service exists and now we have startups sitting on top of the API obviously having to charge more. The best example is Jasper.ai breathlessly comparing against ChatGPT and are charging more than ChatGPT+. (Jasper charges $49 vs $20 for ChatGPT Plus.)
This time I have only one prediction:
* Another war will be started in the east. Most likely China will invade Taiwan due to the weakness of leadership in the US under Biden. If Biden gets elected again, then it will certainly happen. Otherwise, the invasion will be further delayed.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34201706
[1] https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/guidance-crypto-fir...
[2] https://www.esma.europa.eu/esmas-activities/digital-finance-...
[4] https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-venture-funding-i...
[5] https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-funding-slows-nov...