A look back at the four of the weirdest, scariest tech trends of 2024
Introducing four of the weirdest, scariest, and all-round most interesting future signals from 2024…
It’s almost the most wonderful time of the year; Spotify Wrapped time. This must mean it’s also time for a slew of wrap-up articles and newsletters in your feeds. Because I’m no better than that, I’ve pulled together a few of the most interesting signals of change that I came across in 2024; stories you might have missed, and the ones I can’t stop thinking and talking about.
But wait, there’s more. I’ve asked a few futurist friends to share their provocations (not predictions) for 2025, ready for you to mull on over the summer. Keep an eye out for that article.
In the meantime, introducing four of the weirdest, scariest, and all-round most interesting future signals from 2024…
Good, bad, and ugly AI
For every dystopian story of abused AI girlfriends, cloning scams, or hologram husbands that make the press, there are also examples of helpful AI. A recent example is from the UK mobile provider, O2, which has developed an AI ‘Granny’ called Daisy, designed to keep scammers on the phone for a long time (her record is 40 minutes).
Why this is interesting: We’re not even close to seeing the limits of what this technology can do, and we’re still in the phase of a lot of things being built because they can, even if they maybe shouldn’t.
The conversation that seems to be missing in a lot of spaces is one of unintended consequences, as companies rush to keep up/catch up. The caution exercised by brands such as Apple in releasing their AI tools, compared to other tech companies, will make for interesting case studies in years to come.
Mind reading headphones
I included these in last month’s piece about the weird futures of work, but frankly I can’t stop thinking about them. A new set of headphones by Neurable and Master & Dynamic reads your brain waves to track when you lose focus. It then either suggests you take a break, or use its helpful Spotify integration to play a focus-inducing playlist.
The company is working towards a ChatGPT integration with the brain-reading model. This would mean that if a distracting email or text pops up when you’re deep at work, the headphones will read from your brainwaves what you want to reply to that message, and reply for you, without you having to stop the task you’re in the middle of.
Why this is interesting: Nobody is ready for this type of technology to be mainstream. The actions by organisations around monitoring and tracking software are a slippery slope towards tracking biometrics and brain activity. And with rights being rolled back in many countries for a variety of groups, are there some even more 1984-esq possibilities of this technology? Policies and governance at an industry and societal level need to get ahead of technology progress in this area.
Whatever you do, don’t die
Lover of being alive, Bryan Johnson, recently hosted an anti-aging event in San Francisco. The event was complete with extravagant diets, cocktails of pills, and swarms of people trying to avoid the inevitable shuffle off this mortal coil.
Why this is interesting: There’s multiple things to unpack here. Firstly, as Matt Klein put it on Linkedin, “It’s also indicative of a larger cultural illness: Being against things is what now brings us together instead of being for things”. Ageing (read: living) is now something to collectively rally against.
Of course, the daily regimes of pills and procedures promoted by the anti-dying cohort, are really the antithesis of ‘living’. But is the seeming fragility of the egos of the billionaire tech bros caught up in this movement, actually just the next evolution of our trajectory away from our connection with our own humanity? Or is denying dying just the ultimate optimisation and productivity flex?
The future is female philanthropy
This year saw stories of billionaires funding medical schools, distributing their wealth using a democratic process, investing in women’s health at a time when this is under threat in the US, and supporting entrepreneurship and education.
The thing they all have in common?
All of these billionaires are women.
Why this is interesting: All of these make me wonder about the role of billionaires in funding real societal needs and gaps that governments either can’t, or won’t fund. Especially in areas such as healthcare and education.
An extension of this idea is an example from Seattle, where a group of teenagers successfully rallied for some of the wealthiest organisations in the area, to fund US$20 million towards school counsellors in public schools.
These ‘alternative taxes’, are problematic in many ways, and are probably not the ideal scenario for wealth distribution and equality, but are interesting. Will we see more of this happening in more places, and what would these mean for control, governance, political influence, and division around ‘hot’ issues?
Never miss a story: sign up to SmartCompany’s free daily newsletter and find our best stories on LinkedIn.
