CCS Insight predicts a sobering future for generative AI in 2024, citing overwhelming costs, complexity, and impending regulations as potential hindrances to its proliferation.
Key Points
- CCS Insight’s main forecast for 2024 suggests that generative AI will face stark realities due to high costs, complexity, and risks, despite current widespread enthusiasm and adoption from major companies like Google and Amazon.
- The significant financial burden of deploying generative AI models, which require substantial computing power and often utilize GPUs from Nvidia, may deter smaller developers and organizations.
- The European Union’s proposed AI Act, aiming to regulate AI and introduce a risk-based approach to technologies like live facial recognition, will likely be adjusted multiple times before a late 2024 finalization due to the rapid advancements in AI.
- Major AI corporations, including OpenAI and Google, advocate for varied regulatory frameworks, with the former suggesting an independent government official for AI oversight and the latter recommending a multi-stakeholder governance approach.
- Anticipations for 2024 also include an increase in AI-driven identity fraud and an introduction of AI content “watermarking” by search engines to alert users to AI-generated content and mitigate misinformation.
Key Insight
The realization and subsequent navigation of the substantial operational costs, regulatory hurdles, and ethical dilemmas surrounding generative AI will become paramount in 2024, potentially dampening the fervor and optimistic expectations that have defined the technology in prior years.
Why This Matters
The broad and intense enthusiasm for generative AI has catalyzed investments and explorative endeavors across various sectors, yet this prospective deceleration and reality check matter because they signal pivotal adjustments for tech companies, developers, regulators, and end-users alike. The substantial financial, ethical, and regulatory challenges looming in the AI landscape may necessitate a recalibration of strategies, ethical considerations, and anticipatory policies that ensure the responsible and equitable evolution and deployment of these technologies.
