What are your predictions for 2024?

I predict continuation of 2023 trend of enshittification and consolidation in big tech space. I tend to frame things economically, so to me, this trend is directly tied to cost of capital and cost of entry. During zero interest rate policy era, businesses could cheaply borrow to grow market share. There was a race for scale and users benefited tremendously. Now it appears the race is over, and higher cost of capital creates an effective moat preventing new entrants. The race "winners" can safely continue to extract value from users without outsized loss to market share. sad-trombone.wav

Come November, I expect real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...MASS HYSTERIA!

Seriously, and as unfortunate as it is to say, I feel like the best thing that could happen in the US is Trump having a heart attack and just dropping dead. I'm sure that will lead to all sorts of conspiracy theories, but that feels like nothing compared to what I imagine will happen regardless of who wins the election. It would basically just be a press of the reset button. No more worrying about court cases or coups or firing all of the GS employees or anything like that.

But as long as the country doesn't implode, I predict more advances and technology enabling better lives for everyone while people keep thinking things are getting worse. Just the inevitable march of time.

Here is last year's prediction topic.

A fun thing to do is make a list of predictions and then go back in a year and see how well you did. For that to make sense, you need to write them so they will be easy to grade next year.

If you want to get fancy, some people indicate confidence by putting a probability after each prediction.

Neither Doors of Stone nor Winds of Winter will be published nor have a release date announced.

Some details of a screen adaptation of at least one of Brandon Sanderson's books will be announced.

Stormlight 5 will be received as "overall I was disappointed but wow that ending" or something along these lines.

The Mean Girls musical adaptation (as a movie) will be amazing but will ultimately flop.

Mine from last year, analyzed and amended:

Due to crop failures food continues to get more expensive, despire all measures to combat inflation. (80%)

While I'm glad food prices have stabilized a bit here in the US, the trends don't look good worldwide. I'll amend this prediction for this year more in-line with the real problem: Crop failures will continue to get worse due to instability of the climate, and food security will get worse worldwide. 95% confidence.

Stock market has a bottoming out that makes 2022's declines look mild. (60%)

Glad I was wrong. I'm not gonna play the 'time the market' anymore, but I still got those bad vibes. We're not going to see a meaningful improvement to the average person's economic status until wages and taxes increase. We need to improve the public social safety nets, and unless we raise taxes, that ain't happening...especially not in an election year. I predict average person is same or worse than they were this time next year. 80% confidence.

Society fails to meaningfully decrease energy consumption to mitigate global warming. (90%)

Nailed it. We're seeing conversion to green, which is nice...but global energy demand continues to march upward at 3-4% per year. By my math, that means we need to be not just all new power as renewable/nuclear, but also need to be converting existing power on top of that. Considering the USA's green generation held flat at 22%, that tells me renewables are still nowhere near ready to scale up to meet the ever-increasing demand and eat into the base load in 2024. 90% confidence.

I'll amend later with new predictions.

• Democrats will take the 2024 presidency, but only because of infighting by Republicans. (70%)
• Republicans will win way more seats than they should, given all of the treason happening. Including being too close for comfort for taking the presidency (100%). This is cheating a bit because I think the Republican party winning any seats at all is more than they should. But at a bare minimum, I think it would be reasonable to expect them to lose at least 3 Senate seats and 10+ House seats....but I'm almost certain that won't happen.
• I celebrate the death of at least 3 monsters bastards dying of natural or self-inflicted causes (80%). Fingers crossed for Mitch McDonnell and/or a few Supreme Court justices!

Technology:

• Google releases a new chat product / messaging app
• Google shuts down an existing chat product, or removes chat features from an existing product
• YouTube, with the help of Google Chrome, successfully blocks most third party clients and browsers running ad-blockers from accessing its videos. As a result, video hosting alternatives such as Peertube briefly get a large influx of users, but they aren't ready for prime time, so while Peertube and other alternatives have a permanent increase in use, uptake plateaus and does not snowball. At least one new YouTube competitor is launched by some startup bro, but gets no traction and either limps along with a tiny userbase or shuts down.
• Apple removes some feature (software or hardware) from its smartphones, tablets or laptops that was previously considered essential. Nerds like me are furious, but the computing industry realizes they can make more money this way, and soon everyone else copies Apple and it becomes almost impossible to buy a computing device with this vital feature. If I have to guess, I bet they eliminate all external ports & openings, resulting in an iPhone that is a smooth featureless block, and go all-in on wireless charging and data. (Would this violate the EU's law requiring USB-C charging? If yes, then please ignore that prediction and assume some other important feature is eliminated.)
• A (previously) respected figure in tech, such as Linus Torvalds, abruptly begins publicly promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and absurdly harmful ideologies, such as "effective accelerationism". They were previously thought to have left-wing views, or were considered apolitical.
• LLMs lose steam as a fad, like NFTs before them. Because people still need a way to use the hardware they bought for cryptocurrency and LLMs, some new fad using the same hardware becomes popular and VCs require all tech companies to include this fad in their products.
• The GHG emissions of the tech sector continue to increase.

Health:

• COVID deaths in the United States continue to average at least one thousand (1000) deaths per week, according to official statistics. The average may be much higher if a nasty variant gets out of control. The same is true in almost every other country in the world, COVID deaths remain steady or increase when averaged over the year. There continue to be indications that official death counts from COVID are a severe undercount, as the Economist pointed out actual COVID deaths may be double or quadruple the official number, but it becomes increasingly difficult to demonstrate this as mass death from COVID continues to be normalized and ignored, and governments continue to refuse to collect or release data.
• Some previously defeated infectious disease, like polio or measles, becomes a major threat again in developed countries including the United States, due to the rise of anti-vaxxers and the decline of public health. The disease achieves unchecked community spread, authorities shrug and give up, this death toll also becomes normalized & ignored. In 1952, one of the worst polio outbreaks in the US killed 3,145 people. If our society does nothing the face of an illness that continuously kills more than that every month, and also disables people through long COVID, what hope do we have for addressing lesser diseases?
• A novel disease, something like monkeypox, achieves unchecked community spread in developed countries including the USA. No effective policies are put into place to prevent this, the harm from the new disease is normalized & ignored.
• Life expectancy in the USA continues to decline.
• A major technological advancement for preventing infectious disease is made available to the US public, perhaps a vaccine that addresses all COVID variants or an MRNA vaccine for a different disease. Few people take advantage of it, partly because many people cannot easily access it (probably due to affordability, but maybe due to e.g. shortages) and the gov't does not do enough to help them, partly because of general disdain for public health. The technological advancement has little real effect on death tolls life expectancy, or quality of life of the population as a whole, even though it greatly helps the people who use it.
• Some public health infrastructure we take for granted, such as clean drinking water without pathogens in it, or maternity wards in hospitals, suffers catastrophic failure in a major US city. No effective policies are put into place to remedy this, and people just live without that infrastructure for the rest of the year.

Environment:

• Global temperature briefly reaches more than 2.5°C above 1850-1900 (or pre-industrial) levels. (The world already briefly exceeded the 2°C limit in 2023.)
• A major coral reef is discovered to be completely, 100% dead. Attempts to reintroduce coral in that location do not succeed in 2024.
• At COP29, the president-designate of the climate talks spews blatant fossil fuel propaganda that has no basis in reality. The number of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP29 once again increases from the previous year. COP30 is planned to be held in yet another petrostate that is hostile to meaningful climate action.
• A US state that votes for the Democratic nominee in the 2024 election widens a freeway (adding lanes intended for car traffic), even though it is well-known that induced demand prevents this from improving traffic.
• The US federal government approves a major project increasing fossil fuel production.
• A major piece of fossil fuel infrastructure in the USA fails catastrophically, resulting in something like an explosion, oil spill, or toxic gas requiring the evacuation of a town.
• The USA continues fossil fuel subsidies. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies increase.

US Democracy:

• Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president. None of his criminal prosecutions have any significant effect on his ability to run for president (although they may influence public opinion).
• Donald Trump does not accept the results of the 2024 election. Even if he wins the presidential election, he cries voter fraud, and asserts that election results were rigged, including his own. He also campaigns to overturn other election results throughout the USA.
• Win or lose, Donald Trump encourages violence, either through his followers or through the state apparatus. Either he and his followers attempt a coup, or he issues orders to brutally repress protesters and kill or jail people he dislikes.
• A US journalist employed by a mainstream news organization is killed by a representative of the state on US soil (most likely police, but I also include military, intelligence agencies, etc.). The killer(s) suffer(s) no significant repercussions, and remain(s) employed in the same or a similar role.
• A violent attack on a piece of electoral infrastructure (such as people waiting in line to vote) is successfully carried out by a self-described fascist / white supremacist. At least one person is killed.
• SCOTUS continues to advance a blatantly right wing agenda, disregarding precedent. SCOTUS actively harms fair elections in at least one US state, such as by approving a blatantly racially motivated gerrymander. It overturns at least one government function or civil right previously taken for granted, such as the ability of the federal government to charge income tax, or no-fault divorce. The Democrats continue to have no plan for dealing with SCOTUS, aside from waiting for the Republican justices to die.
• Republicans regain control of the Senate, so if a Supreme Court justice does die, even if the president is a Democrat, they will never be able to seat the justice of their choice. This means that the Democrats' only "plan" for dealing with the stolen seats on SCOTUS will not work.

February 11, 2024: the Detroit Lions win Super Bowl LVIII.

I guess this is a great place to plug one of my favorite podcasts, Bad Voltage. It's just about time for their 2024 predictions and the results of their 2023 predictions. The show, and their predictions, are hilariously entertaining.

The following were their predictions for 2023.

• Stuart: the Texas HB20 social media law will come before the US Supreme Court, and the US Supreme Court will uphold it as constitutional

• Stuart: Global daily Twitter users will drop a minimum of 10% by the end of 2023

• Stuart: A song claimed to be composed and performed entirely by AI will get in the charts

• Stuart (Bonus): Apple will either allow sideloading or allow third-party browser engines on iOS

• Stuart (Bonus): Someone buys Netflix

• Jeremy: Tiktok gets banned in the USA

• Jeremy: At least one traditional financial institution will have taken on substantial crypto risk that wasn't fully disclosed

• Jeremy: Netflix is acquired

• Jeremy: The rapid advances in AI slow down in a very obvious way

• Jeremy (Bonus): the web starts fragmenting into 3 distinct blocs: sino, euro, americano

• Jeremy (Bonus): Mastodon usage peaks in the first half and drops steadily from there

• Jeremy (Bonus): someone takes a large equity stake in Canonical

• Jono: Meta will announce significant (1000+ peolpe) layoffs in their Metaverse division

• Jono: Twitter will launch a YouTube competitor. Users will be able to upload long-form videos (1hr+), monetize their videos with ads, and see a video view

• Jono: There will be at least 1 legal regulatory requirement be put into practice in the US or EU that restricts the use of ChatGPT and/or Large Language Models

• Jono (Bonus): Apple will release their AR/VR headset, will garner positive reviews for the product, but press will still question the viability of AR/VR

• Jono (Bonus): Donald Trump will drop out of the election for one of two reasons: (1) claims of persecution, or (2) a legal decision prevents him from running

• Jono (Bonus): Bing will launch with ChatGPT-like functionality and see significantly increased growth. Significantly increased = 30%+

Politics:

• Pennsylvania will go blue in November by an impossibly small margin.
• Biden retains the presidency but Democrats lose control of the Senate.

Transportation:

• Amtrak's new Acela trainsets will have another delay, pushing their release to at least 2025.
• Brightline West high-speed rail construction will begin unimpeded.
• The California High-Speed Rail Merced–Bakersfield IOS is not delayed. Phase 1 cost increases.
• Unnecessary plans to widen I-95 continue at several locations.
• Asian Maglev technology breaks the 375 mph speed record. American uptake is nonexistent.

Environment:

• The levelized cost of solar electricity generation drops faster than expected projections.
• Global renewable energy nameplate capacity increases faster than projections, but below Paris levels.
• Electric automobiles break 13.5% of new auto sales in the United States by Q4.
• Geothermal electricity generation sees a breakthrough meaningfully reducing its levelized cost.
• Northern rockhopper penguin populations decline further.

Somewhat low stakes given the other responses in this thread, but I expect there will be some management shake-up at Google that could very well reach up to Pichai himself.

Relatedly, I also expect LLM progress to plateau, though not because of any technological limitations.

I’m going to go with a very different scope than most predictions I’ve seen here so far…

1. I’ll be given (and I’ll accept) the opportunity to become permanent staff instead of the long-term casual position I’ve been in for the past year
   70%

2. I’ll use my VR headset more than I do currently, but still less than I’d really like to, to justify the cost
   80%

3. I’ll try once again to lose weight, but rather than simply failing, I’ll at least make progress in overall self-discipline and reducing self-indulgence. (Real human behaviour change is hard!)
   50%

4. My savings will grow larger and faster than I’ve ever achieved in my life so far, and home ownership will go from an impossibility, to a distant but achievable dream.
   99%

And I guess I should throw a large scope one in here, just clarifying this is for Australia:
5) Cost of living increases will plateau, household debt for below-median households will increase, the median house price will increase, home ownership as a percentage of the population will decrease substantially, but long term rentals will still be non-existent.
70%

I expect we all turn into robots and forget about being human….

I'm going to eat a really good burger and fries

If Biden lives through the election: he loses the presidency to Trump.

If Biden dies before the election: Biden is replaced by Newsom, Newsom narrowly defeats Trump.