 Coming up on DTNS spoiler alert. We reveal everything that will happen in tech in the year 2024 This is the Daily Tech news for Friday December 29th 2023 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from Studio Cube. I'm Sarah Lane and on the show's producer Roger Chang And of course it is the last daily tech news show of 2023 next time we meet we'll be beginning our 11th year Sarah I Like it. It's a palindrome. Mmm. You do like a palindrome. I know Joining us to predict what is gonna happen in 2024 our final episode of the year is what our predictions are gonna be And we have a great panel Teja Custody youtuber and host of AI named the show and the talk techie to me podcast I predicted you'd be here Thanks so much for having me back guys. We're gonna nail it. We're gonna nail it today. Yes I agree. We're all gonna be perfect in our predictions It's just science and that's because we have dr. Nikki Ackerman's our DTNS science correspondent. Hello. Yes, I will predict the science It's not something we always do but I'll do it today just for you guys Yeah, and rounding out our sure thing of a panel producer journalist and sometimes co-host of Daily Tech headlines Jen Cudder It's good to be back. I'm feeling pretty confident taking one moonshot here, but again gonna nail it Excellent. Excellent. All right. Well, Sarah Lane, you will lead us off leadoff hitter top of the lineup What do you got coming in 2024? Well, I'm actually glad that I was the first to go today because I was kind of worried that other people would have the same prediction, but here goes prediction number one VR will get new life as an office tool and that will be due to Apple's vision Pro Which is expected at the end of January early Feb 2024 now, of course It's going to be a developer product and also very expensive $3,500 So this is not like a consumer thing that's going to change the market overnight But I think this is going to be the You know that the the big Hardware and software boost that makes people who have written off VR is just not for them take another look It's not for gaming. This is for work And I think meta has been wanting that to be true of the meta quest pro But I think you're right Apple Apple always gives things a boost, right? Yeah, you know The the I don't really fault meta for for wanting to get into the game I think meta just made some funny missteps where it was sort of like avatars and cutesy and You know, maybe it's just because people want a ridicule meta for various things because it's meta But it just it never stuck with me. I I love VR. I'm a I'm a quest I was about to say a fishing auto enthusiast But you know, I only play a couple VR games and they're exercise games and I love them And I think you know anybody who's like, yeah, I don't really know I you would even do that. It's like all you need is like an hour and somebody goes, oh, okay I get it But that means that you want to do what I'm doing a lot of people are like I don't have time for that or I have a gym membership or I just don't care but when it comes down to something like working in In a space where you can I don't know get things done Probably in, you know, smaller space than ever for those of us who don't have huge offices This all sort of becomes your office. That's that's at least what I'm I'm thinking in my mind is going to be the case by So there's ready to use that cubicles into your VR headsets. You could just pretend you're in a cubicle That's just right. Yeah a cube on your face Yeah smaller than ever anywhere Right, right, which is it, you know, and there's there's all sorts of I don't know I mean you have people saying like oh VR makes you You know seasick and and I I I have never experienced that I know that's a real thing and I don't exactly know how Trying to focus and work on something like DTNS on a daily basis What you know, is that something I can do with with a vision pro headset? I don't know yet. I think a lot of people are also not knowing for sure, but are going to try And you know developers are going to try to make killer apps for for this new for this new This new normal of ours I think you're right But here's where I see stuff like vision pro is I think of it in terms of having A second screen as large as I want without having to travel with a second screen So like a lot of the times if I'm back and forth between here and Canada and I'm still working and I'm like bringing all my gear Obviously, I never bring my second monitor. So I'll be editing on my macbook pro and I as soon as I saw vision pro I was like Oh to me the target is remote work I was just like I get it when I'm traveling How great would it be to just have everything a touch screen as big as I want And I can do my editing theoretically if this works I get supposed to on a huge second screen and I I only have to bring one headset which Arguably will get smaller in the years to come But that's not for next year. He'll get smaller eventually I also agree in terms I feel like the companies are pricing it so that it would do well in in a way where like companies would purchase them for their Employees because they don't really think about price too much for these kinds of things I wonder if this happens if your prediction comes true if they would get pigeonholed into This is the new office device and then like doesn't get branched out Into other things So that's my double prediction. Yeah. Yeah a little add-on there. I like that I I'm 50 50 because my main problem with vr. Is it doesn't fit my head? Oh my god I swear I'm proportioned fine, but I wear a junior helmet and ice hockey Which is in an extra small cage. So finding a headset that fits my head and doesn't do this I haven't found it yet, but I think apple is pretty accessible and surely they will have something to handle that You know that that is that's a real concern though gen you know, I I I jump around doing exercise games in vr. And I don't know I I just make everything fit, you know by pulling everything as tight as possible But I also look insane when I take it off for an hour if not more I mean to the point where if I'm in public, I have to say to people I'm so sorry. I was just doing vr. Stuff and they go, okay weird You know, but that's that's I mean that that's a real concern kind of like, you know Certain earbuds just aren't going to work If it's something doesn't feel comfortable and or even fit you that that's a real concern Yeah, and that's why you hear so much about apple bringing in their retail arm on this and having fittings Requiring you to go to a store and stuff like that because they they're definitely thinking about whether they'll solve it Or not a whole different thing, but it does sound like they're they're thinking about it Sarah, what is your second prediction for 2024? All right. So this one is a little bit of a Maybe if I speak it into existence it will happen and this is that And I'm talking about social networking Where's the place that I used to hang out that was twitter? Not not the only place, but that was my place twitter now x not the same place Now I don't want to make it seem like oh, it's dead because it isn't But of all of the people that I have followed over the years You're all the it a part of that When I when I have I don't know logged into, you know x.com recently Uh more and more I realized that everyone is gone Or they're not just talking to people anymore Yeah, no, I'm I'm not saying that you know the platform is is dead in any case. It's just that my Carefully curated community of you know a thousand people that I was following I mean following quite a few people some of those, you know journalists that I don't even know some of those friends Etc etc family members It's just it is feeling like a dead zone for me now I have uh reasons that I would like threads to become the new place because I just want the new place to happen Somewhere and thread seems to have the most momentum, but of course you've got mastodon You've got blue sky. You've got a variety of other options. I was thinking all right, uh, if if I'm looking at a year from today end of 2024 I am going to predict that x will no longer be it will be sold off for parts I thought maybe the blue sky team Um, now I know jack dorsi, uh twitter co-founder and former ceo Um a couple times Moved over to blue sky is no longer active at blue sky But I have to assume that and blue sky is not doing activity pub Which threads is doing and mastodon is doing so I don't know it kind of an outlier But I would think that there are probably people working on the blue sky Uh platform protocol that have deep twitter roots that would care Yeah, the blue sky team was created within twitter when dorsi was in charge So there's a lot of former twitter people there that that's totally you would you would think that would be That would be the platform where people would go like yeah, we could we could make something of this Now I realize a lot of stuff has to happen for this to be the case So this is a little bit of a shot in the dark shot in the dark here But if advertising revenue continues to fall, um, which it has Across lots of aspects of tech Um, but certainly, you know x is is not exempt from that I could see Someone like elan musk saying I don't really want to do this anymore. You know, I've got other projects which he does and um and and other folks go into greener pastures Who can separate their emotions? from from their analysis of this And because I predicted this last year. I said oh by the by the end of 2023 Sales force or somebody will come in and and buy up twitter So I think it's smart sarah to go like oh you were wrong last year, but maybe you'll maybe it'll happen this year Well, and I mean this was definitely not some own on you tom I actually thought it here ago that you might be right Yeah, yeah, it's just it's just been a pretty chaotic year for x You know, so well, I guess what I would say is if I thought that could happen last year when it was doing all right Like seems even more likely now, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I so I guess my question to the panel is You know, if you if you don't think this is the case then you don't think this is the case But if it is, you know, what what would What what does x become is it really sold for parts? Um, you know, which kind of I don't know. It's kind of sad. I don't necessarily want that to happen But is that is that the best path forward for you know, all the people who have built it into something that didn't work perfectly but has certainly Um been part of our lives for for decades I should have worn my twitter shirt Sad it's not going anywhere and you're gonna pry it for my cold dead hands There you go. There you go. Yeah bring back the fail. Well, come on I know iconic I I don't know man. I think it just it's missing I'm not detaching my emotions from this But I think it's just missing that little spark if blue sky can replicate that and the people all actually go there That could be the new twitter and or x and that one just dies But I don't know if that little magic can happen. I don't know anyone knows how to make it happen That's the key though is like exactly what you just said is then if people go there Like sarah you mentioned threads and it's like threads is already dead to me Threads was like quick get on in the first day when everybody went on and then I literally never signed on again in my life And so it's like I don't need another spot to go So it's exactly like what you're saying dr. Nikki is like But I already have a spot to go. So like unless we're just like redoing the spot and everybody joins And it's then it's the same thing we already had and it's a nostalgia thing Oh, no, you're saying x marks the spot Listen, I'm still calling it twitter because it is twitter.com and you will Not get me to change that until that changes until it becomes x.com So I fluctuate I go twitter x twitter. It's twitter Yeah, I think it's around there's we talk about this regularly on the show and uh it's I guess the question is sort of like does x die and Get reborn as something else That's super fun Or do we just all do other things and say Social networking is not you know the thing that it used to be anymore and we don't need that I don't really know what the answer is yet Well, they're all the same at the end of the day. Yeah Uh, the one thing twitter still has for me that the other places don't is hockey twitter I guess because like the sports community hasn't moved yet. I've got all my movie people on blue sky I've got all my infosec people on mastodon threads I'm kind of personally offended by at this moment because I still don't have hashtags I update every day and for some reason I thought it's not even a canadian thing my canadian friends have them I don't so that's my beef with threads right now But I need hockey twitter to go somewhere and that that's going to be a place. I check more often K-pop twitter hasn't moved either All right, so those are my predictions uh tasia. We're going to move on to you next Uh, hit us. What's number one? Okay guys and mine are so unrelated to each other, but my first one is That ai is going to revolutionize the healthcare industry in I'm going to get very specific for you guys in vaccine development Getting ahead of the next pandemic and maybe perhaps I'm going to shoot shoot for the stars here fighting antibiotic resistance Question mark on that one, but sure. I'll put it in 2024 and not to sound like a doomer you guys like when I'm talking about getting ahead of the next pandemic, but I think we already saw such huge developments like when we were talking about like mRNA technology and all this kind of stuff and like most people just Acquaint that with like the covid vaccine, but it's been in development Years before covid was even oh god In our vernacular if you will so it's really Helped already in terms of like how we were able to do such quick vaccine deployment if you think about it Like i'm pretty sure madonna was able to like Get a vaccine ready in 42 days for trials. That's nuts. So I'm expecting more of that but even quicker and faster just like we're seeing all kinds of other ai developments happening and you know when you think of things like how I think it's like G7 and g20 they're they started like this whole 100 days mission thing Which is basically like they want to establish like a global vaccine library Which i'm really hoping this happens like next year so we can get ahead of the next pandemic To freak everybody out and think I mean I am a germaphobe, but still It might happen though Yeah, if we can use this technology to be developing things Sooner and then and then use it to like I'm not the scientist here But use it to like segment and make predictions and say we think this is where like the next like whatever x thing Is coming from so like how do we get ahead of it? What's our preparedness plan? So I think there's a lot of layers to it But that's my general first Prediction and by the way before you guys tell me what you think I just want to say I am in good company here because mr. Bill Gates himself also thinks there's going to be a lot of developments However, his was like in the next decade. So I'm really shooting for the stars here you guys No, it's next year. It's not the next decade. It's next year, sir We have to manifest it. I mean you got it right ai has has uh transformed life Very rapidly. I I'd be inclined to go with you Nikki, you know being the scientist of the group, you know, what what what do you think about that? So I would have to ask a more precise question like what specifically About the vaccine would a AI be influencing because there's lots of different areas where it could impact. Which one do you think? Is gonna cause this this is acceleration. I know you said like predicting the future pandemic, which I could see but I need more details Yeah, I don't I and I really don't even know if it's like a combination of all of it if it's maybe You know, how the technology works in terms of how it can detect specific things on a molecule of a whatever I don't know and again not a scientist, but like is that going to help so like if we're talking about antibiotic resistance Is it going to be something where that's going to be able to detect and say, okay? We know why this is happening and like here's the little minute piece like the molecule piece that's causing this and here's what We can do to just very quickly tweak an antibiotic so that you're no longer resistant to it or something I mean, I don't know no I think that's right, especially in terms of viruses if we stick with viruses They mutate so frequently and all the a million potential variations of them Happening is something that the human brain would have a lot of hard time predicting and even a regular computer would have a hard time predicting So I think ai on that front. Um, I don't know if it's actively been used to help us predict You know new covid variants. It probably has I just haven't read the papers But I would assume that that's a tool that is just actively being used and we don't even hear about it Because it sounds boring to the everyday, you know schmo, but it's actually A nice defense mechanism almost Yeah, like I know hundred percent right. Oh, okay. Good. Thanks. Yeah Well, we all can't be wrong. Yes Well, I heard about trials where they've been using it to detect cancer early with a decent success rate And I want to see more of that. It's the one place where I think ai is really going to do the most good So yes, I'm also gonna manifest my prediction. I'm hoping you're right Yay Yeah, I was what I was hearing you talking about this texia. I was just thinking that uh, the the fact that you know We think of covet as the pandemic, but there were pandemics before covet Oh, yeah, they weren't as intense as covet as far as lockdowns and effects Uh, but there are always pandemics. There's other SARS the the reason it's not SARS one is because there have been other SARS So so yeah Being ready for those pandemics and making sure to keep them from maybe even becoming pandemics Uh is something that that I think these kinds of models can be really helpful in predicting and then matching up potential vaccines These models are not good at creating stuff, but they're really good at sorting through endless possibilities and that's what you need here Agreed All right texia. What is prediction number two? Completely switching gears for everybody. Um, and I think minds may be more of like a hope and a prayer than a prediction necessarily but YouTube will finally kill shorts because they should have Never been there in the first place and just stick to being really great at one thing You don't have to be all things to all people This is like a personal hang up for me and I'm really just manifesting this like please can we have an end of shorts I stopped trading them. I actually deleted all of them from my channel I've never like really watched anybody short. So I'm very curious to know is this just me being like A negative anger bubble over the platform trying to be all things or do you guys love shorts? Am I completely wrong? As a content creator What what do you not like about shorts because to hear youtube talk about it shorts is on the up and up You know, lot lots of views You know gonna run ads on shorts etc etc I mean, there's multiple things I'm not a big vertical video person anyway Like I understood it when it kind of came to instagram because So much of our content consumption on there is just like Small device and maybe I do look at it a bit different Because I create on youtube. So I'm very used to horizontal long form content And that is how I like to watch things even now when I'm consuming youtube most of the time like It's again. I'm turning my device horizontal. I'm watching it on my tv I'm watching it on my macbook. So it's that's how I'm consuming I'm not using youtube for the quick scroll like when I'm in bed And I want to just like zone out and instead of reading my book And I'm just like on instagram reels I'm not using youtube in that way like I go to youtube for people that I subscribe to And typically longer form helpful content. So I think for me, I've been confused from the get with Why they thought they had to make this big push That's kind of the first thing and then the second thing so like it ruined the feel for me But then the second thing is as a creator There's no money to be made in that anyway because it's short content And the third thing is their music library still sucks for shorts and they've claimed in this whole year that Oh, we're getting like actual popular music and trending music and it's still terrible And you really don't have many options and you're capped at a certain length If you are using one of the popular songs whereas like on instagram, whatever you can do longer So I have a lot of beef with shorts and I would like to see it die And I'll add another thing they keep sending me emails about it to push it They keep sending all this stuff and it's like if you have to push it this hard, it's not working, honey I'm so sorry to tell you. So I'm trying to make this happen Yes Thank you Pretty much Yeah I don't know. I mean I I'm with you teja. I I don't even watch instagram Stories all that much Because I don't know there's an ephemeral thing where I'm like too much pressure. I'm busy You know just like if you like a photo or a video just post it and I'll come back to it at some point YouTube even more so However There are other people I've talked to who are like, yeah, but youtube is kind of like where all my people are You know, it's it's the creators that I follow. I like the short form stuff I mean, this is the tiktok revolution, right? All the platforms have to at least try it But I but I'm with you it it has never felt like The the the place Where short form content will thrive the most again I'm not really a youtube I'm certainly not a creator and I don't hang out on youtube enough to know I I don't know if anybody else on this panel feels differently I First of all, I prefer pants, but I've been waiting to make I have never seen a short nor been sent a short nor even kind of I know they exist because of dts, but I've never they've never crossed my radar at all And that must be telling and I spend quite a bit of time on tiktok to the point that I have parental controls But yeah shorts has never even Gone anywhere near my screen. So maybe Maybe that's something that's all so I agree. I'll say that. Yes Well, I'm going to be the contrarian then I hated shorts to start. I absolutely hated them I hated how they were pushed. I hated how it took over my dashboard But I am watching them a lot more recently And more of them than I did do generally on tiktok because tiktok videos for vertical video I find are too long. I'm not going to watch a 10 minute vertical video I'd rather you just made a youtube but for the actual shorts on youtube They are short enough that's like, yeah, I'll scroll for a little bit or In my case, I tend to go for the specific content creators I like because I know they're going to hit exactly what I want But I don't know how long youtube will stick with it, but I don't think it'll die next year I really want to support teja. So I feel bad saying that I I think shorts are working really well for dcms They don't make money although I you know, my friend Lamar wilson would disagree about short video Not making money because he has his entire career built on that And it's tiktok shorts instagram stories, etc But but for us it's it's just been really good promotion We get a lot more engagement there and I and I think That I too agreed with you out of the gate and it sounds like gen did too We're like, this is not youtube's thing. Why are they pushing this? But it really does seem like it's working and it seems like, you know, maybe I was wrong about that so I don't know. Maybe we're just bullies I don't know. It's so content dependent and it's interesting gen like how you're consuming shorts because I think that's like a key difference between The short form content platforms if you will because like on a tiktok or an instagram For me and for millions of users. We're just like basing on an algorithm It's not like I'm going to a specific person that I follow and then I'm scrolling to see like their reels tab Like I'm just going to reels and I'm just going through and I'm fed random stuff Whereas it seems like you're consuming shorts in a much more curated Way, which would make sense We've been trying it for like one of my clients to like push her longer form content. It's not hurting her channel It's not helping it at all. It's like very it's like cricket. So I really think it's like Content style content type dependent if you will yeah, that makes sense No, that makes that does make sense because there's the it really comes from tiktok And there are a lot of things like tiktok on youtube, but there's a lot of stuff on youtube That's not And it would make sense that that that kind of stuff wouldn't work as well All right, let's turn to dr. Nikki Who teased one of her predictions earlier? What's your first prediction for 2024? Nikki? Yeah, so surprisingly. I also went with ai I mean I I thought we would all just say like it's all going to be ai everywhere. So um, I think There's gonna be it's a very vague prediction, but there's gonna be way more ai in science It's almost the only science news that is like the first line today But I went in like two different categories. I think in terms of research There's going to increase discovery in areas that require a lot of computing Uh quantum physics like coming up with theories for quantum physics because it's just too much for at least my brain So I would need an ai But also things like protein structure and this is something that's already happening with google's alpha fold And I've had people at work come up to me and say that they have used alpha fold to predict protein structure. So More of that and more precision in that because it's still not necessarily trustable um, and then the other half of this two-parted prediction is Getting ai used way more in medical diagnosis. And I think this has a pro and a con Um, it's actually probably already being implemented in cases. If you remember during covid There was a big ai the thing that came out about Looking at lung x-rays and seeing covid patients identifying them using an ai based on those images Um, another thing that's going on right now is like looking at cells And if they have a specific shape that you could detect Alzheimer's disease So predictions like that where you just have a ton of data and you just need it to match patterns like tom was saying earlier And lots of numbers. That's where ai is good And I think we'll be seeing that in terms of like regular patient diagnosis and not just research But then the problem with this is if it starts to get integrated with like healthcare and then it amplifies our biases and things like that That's where i'm a little bit concerned. So that's my number one prediction Tejo kind of goes along with what you were saying earlier. What do you think of this? Great. Yeah, I I do completely agree because especially since we are already seeing so many developments in the healthcare field with ai But I do kind of mirror what dr. Nikki saying in terms of the concerns like i'm here for the You know anything that can get people better care quicker I'm absolutely here for as long as it's like accurate care the another concern I have is in that healthcare space like there's a lot of stuff already happening with Helping like I want to say it's maybe like the male clinic has been doing this where they're using like ai algorithms and systems to basically Couple the data from like a patient So like a doctor doesn't have to go to a million different places internally I don't mean like their personal external to gather like the history of a patient So if somebody presents at the hospital with something and you need to know immediately like if you're treating them like You know, they're not conscious like what what are they on like what's their medical history? They're able to like pull from this data set already, which I think stuff like that is really really gay I just get concerned in terms of like privacy and like dr. Nikki saying Accuracy and also the biases in that as well and like a lot of the biases come from the people that are building these And the medical structure as it exists already. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly There's a really interesting discussion on this on the economist about bias Where one of their guests was saying Are we are noisy as humans? We're kind of unpredictable and consistent and that covers our biases and the reason we're seeing bias in ai more Is because it's not noisy And so all the human biases that it was trained on because it's just trained on what we do show up clearer because of that Yeah, if you say something like, you know, um Accidentally more red heads get a high blood pressure This is completely fictional and it could just be that in that one hospital There's just a lot of red heads that live nearby But then like ai would amplify that because it's feeding off of that data set and then I'll say like oh your blood pressure is bad But that that's the kind of thing I'm a little bit worried about to clarify Jen, what do you think? Dr. Nikki, you made me so happy saying that they're working on it for Alzheimer's because that affects my family greatly And yeah, like any kind of early detection on that would be truly amazing So I'm gonna go with yay 100 percent. Let's go Go ahead. Oh go ahead I'm actually I do some Alzheimer's very farly related Alzheimer's work and early detection is the thing that NIH is dumping money into as much as they can so Hopefully that money dump helps and I know there's going to be ai projects in in the grant requests coming up So that's the nitty gritty of that All right, let's get to your second prediction. Dr. Nikki. What do you think's going to happen in 2024? So this is my more out-in-space one But it's related to a detain us topic that I covered this year And I think we're going to have more nanobots mostly because people love nanobots So I was like I got to talk about them But when we brought them up earlier in the year I think they were be using actually being used for antibiotic resistance, which we talked about already in the show Um, and I think that They were still kind of figuring out how to get them into the body Without getting rejected and then basically once you get nanobots into the body once you pass that hurdle You can do so many things with them. So you could um, for example, do antibiotic resistant bacterial infections and treat those um Drug delivery you could like get one in there. That's a mechanical nanobot that could like cut out a blood clot Uh, you could help with IVF you could do all these things But the the problem to solve is fixing getting them into the body and not getting rejected So I'm predicting that we fix this next year and then it's going to be an exploding field. Um Also, not necessarily in the human body But nasa has a plan for an autonomous nanotechnology swarm called ants that are going to go into space And I thought that was cool. So I'm going to add that to my nanobot prediction as well So, okay. So Talking about nanobots, let's say I have a life threatening brain clot, right? What are my options now and how would the nanobot revolution? Uh, Help me going for a very good question I think and I'm not a surgeon or a human doctor So I think the option now would be surgery or laparoscopic like you go in through an artery I don't you probably shouldn't do that up into the brain. I don't really know But I'm right right and so nanobots you just inject them into your bloodstream And they'll have they'll be programmed for a specific target So like I don't know probably there's a protein in blood clots that it can target for and it'll like zoom up into there And then like mechanically destroy that blood clot without having to have any kind of surgery. That's amazing Yeah, I mean that would be potentially. Yeah. Yeah, if that's maybe I want this I want this for us Yeah, we all do I don't know if there's downsides to nanobots though like they take over your body I don't know. Oh, no They're hacked Yeah, or or or they just like cholesterol is crazy. Oh the nanobots are mad Yeah, they just start synthesizing cholesterol to get back at you because they're angry Yeah, I could see the downside being some some kind of unintended side effect of them being in your system possibly But they're early early indications or there's nothing alarming about that, right? Just rejection Um that the body will rejection which is surprising because they're very small. They're nano scaled But still the body like can find them and and then pretends like it's an infection. So it's just getting past that stage Why is the human body so amazing? A trial and error and because we died a lot before we got this part Yeah I mean, I would say amazingly Half the time but also still amazing. I mean here we all are How about that? I know I hear about getting in the nanobots and my brain's going like, okay, but after they do their thing Then how did they get out? Hopefully you could just like pee them out or something. Yeah, you pee them out like everything else No, you just ask them nicely to leave and they say, okay a really big magnet Don't say pee them out and a big magnet Uh, yeah, there's gonna be there's gonna be nanobot pollution from everybody Yeah, that micro plastic that's gonna be the problem. Yeah, add more pollution Uh, well folks, uh, we know you've got predictions if you have feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show Get in touch with us. Let us know on the social networks. You know, we're we're sitting here on the holiday break Waiting to hear from you dtns show on x dtns show at mastodon mstdn.social At daily tech news show on tiktok and dtns picks on instagram and threads All right, gen cutter. It's time for your predictions. What's up first? The first one is my depressing one Video game layoffs. It's been bad this year. And I think it's also going to be dire next year I had to write these numbers down because I didn't want to get them wrong So in the last few months we had epic with around 830 people twitch, which I'm counting as gaming not just iRL stuff They gave up a big percentage amazon games 180 Newverse a bite dance the tiktok company dropped about a thousand people recently And then unity had their 265 people recently But also people are forgetting that back in may they dropped Another 600 people And that's not even counting the smaller studios like paradox. I'm going to count ubi is like a medium-sized studio these days EA had theirs There's a site called video game layoffs.com which has been keeping track of it if you want to be really depressed about the state of gaming So I think next year is going to also be bad I think the big companies are going to continue to scale down Companies chasing trends are going to launch then die, which has happened a couple of times this year And even a lot of the companies who let go of senior people who went on to build their own story their own dev shops I think they're going to run into trouble with the vc and private equity money that they brought in Because they're not going to want to wait two three years for a game that Is a maybe so I think there's going to be a lot of bloodletting there and that is my very sad prediction What now do you do you feel like You know and gen I know you follow this pretty closely. I mean do you feel like A lot of these companies were just Bloated with too many employees because sometimes that does happen You know you have a little bit of a market correction and all of a sudden people go Wait a sec, you know who who are all these middle managers who maybe weren't Contributing directly to something that you know too much hiring in the good times, right? Right, right, you know and not that You know I I wouldn't pretend to understand what really happens inside a gaming studio, but It does seem like gaming is on the up and up It's not that people don't care about games. They care about games more than ever And yet people are still losing their jobs There was definitely a bit of a hiring boom during covid when everybody tripled down and had access to more talent Because a lot of studios went fully remote but I think as a result of that Yes, some people had to let go and I think a lot of the trend chasing has hurt people And I think the unionization efforts have also caused some companies to be like, oh I see who's doing this. We're going to find a reason to let them go It's been making me happy how many studios are trying to unionize and qa especially who never get any credit And we would not have functional video games without qa They've had a lot of losses this year My question is What about I thought this year we had like so many massive games. We had the new zelda game. We had balder's gate We had another one star link. I think no star field Sorry, um, is that not helping bring new people on those massive successes or are those different companies like what what's going on with that Those are great examples of what happens when a company stands behind their devs There's still crunch problems But those games took years and years of extremely talented people Nintendo's especially they're known for keeping dev teams together There are people who worked on uh tears of the kingdom Who worked on the original zelda like that's just incredible But that kind of seniority is getting more and more rare across the industry and I think Games are gonna suffer for that a bit. It's why I'm rooting for the newer smaller shops to see if they can Bring that kind of magic and continuity of their experience because an average uh game developer career If you last 10 years you're a grandpa. That is a miracle worse than sports Well, uh gen what is your next prediction? Well as we're all going for moonshots my moonshot is ai related in a bit of a different tact uh, I am Trying to again will into existence that next year search engines will have a better way to filter ai sludge So that they do not become fully useless when looking for things I'm sure I am not alone in being the tech support for an extended group of people And it has been harder to teach them how to sort out the ai stuff from actual product reviews My dad's been trying to buy a camera. He sends me all these links that are Not real. So I've had to teach him. Okay, search the name of the camera plus reddit So far reddit seems to be or at least is so far holding out from being all astroturfed And uh, yeah, I'm just finding it such a mess online and I want to clean up, please Yeah, and they can use large language models and add other kinds of models to help clean it up right fight fire with fire I want this to happen so bad So I will agree with you that this will happen because it's such a pain How is it? How is it so backwards that we have to google everything with reddit at the end to find an actual answer? Like isn't google supposed to be powerful and they're just looping themselves into ai nonsense? Yeah, please make this happen. Yeah image searches, especially as he heavily affected like there was back in the day when you know Etsy and Pinterest were taking over google images and there was ways that you could work around sorting that But right now I don't know a good way to sort around the ai images, especially for you know, historical events because You can't do minus ai Not yet not yet Nobody uses google for search anymore. It's all you just use tiktok I do that too though It's so hard finding like product like you said it with your dad products or product reviews like I can't trust anything It's just ads or or ai images. Yeah, I'm still clearly birds I'm still unclear on how tiktok is a great search engine Because we're old Sarah. Well, I know I I know I I feel old and I have you know people who are older than me, you know On earth um being like, oh, yeah tiktok is like where I find all my news. I'm like How in the same way that reddit is it's because you can Mostly tell that it's like a person and this person's opinion and sometimes you can tell that they're paid But at least you get more than just like yes, this camera is best camera ever made Please buy camera at least The internet can't stop talking about this camera back in stock No, I like this gen. I think it's a good one And and I think if you look at bard and what they've been doing in search and google search engine The g yet the google search experience With bringing in some of that that that magic to it You can see how it helps like I I've already noticed some of those those generated summaries Are much more useful than some of the search results below And there'll be a battle over that for sure All right, let's finish it up with my predictions I'm going to go a little different direction here and make a prediction around large language models So Bucking the trend of of everyone AI you say I just won't say AI when I say it I think we're going to get large language model specialization I think that will be a big trend in 2024 So this idea of having a monolithic model like oh, it's chat ept. Oh, it's gemini. Oh, it's anthropic Will be seen as unwieldy and unnecessary and oversimplifying Getting llms that are trained for a specific purpose Like looking for good images for instance that aren't AI generated More llms that can be run on your device so that you don't have to send it to a cloud and use a data center Some of that will become more popular But I think we'll shift from thinking like oh chat ept should do everything to To specialized models that you're you use for purposes that you need them for A hundred percent. Mm-hmm. That's a very smart prediction. Could not be more right Well, you're singing my tune, but yeah It's true But like look at like I mean there's already a bunch of say like on device specific ones out like even like gemini nano I think it's the one made specifically for mobile devices, but Uh, yeah, we are just still like if you guys think about it We're only 13 months from chat. Yeah becoming available to the public. So like how much we've Boom like exploded in just that amount of time and all of the competition, which is really great to see Um, it's how do we do it all safely? And with that with the llms tom. I'm not gonna say Yeah, I'm looking the system and not duking an AI prediction here. I'm doing an llm prediction. Um, Yeah, I I I think a lot of the problems that we talk about with chat gpt And even bard and bings version of chat gpt are because we're trying to have it be everything to everybody And that's that's a lot harder to police. It's a lot harder to have quality But if you have a specific model that's like, oh, this is meant for this Then it's it becomes way easier to keep it from doing unexpected things and monitor hallucinations and all that stuff Yeah, I I think we spend an inordinate amount of time being like, well, look how it got it wrong Yeah, look at this You know, which is it's true. I mean, it's not perfect and and no and no model is Um, but a little bit a little bit less of Oh, well, this is not good for all things and a little bit more of this is where this is Really good for that kind of query. Yeah. Yeah, and we as humans are gonna have to get used to that too In that zone, do you think a LLM that's good at predicting if things came from LLM like an LLM detector A better one would happen because a silly example of just like us grading students at the university None of our actual detectors work. And so we cannot really Prove that they've used in a an LLM for making text That would that we need that. Yeah, I think you have a better shot at that Especially if it's this is an LLM trained on papers We know we're handed in in an academic setting and generated by another model Then like well, let's just run it through gmt4 and it's like using the entire training set of the world Right, like I think I think we can get more specialized and and those those tools might end up be better At least that's the prediction. Well to borrow from sarah and your point I don't know if anyone followed the stories of the lawyers who use chat tpt To make up cases and those cases ended up before a judge and obviously opposing counsel was like wait a minute These do not exist But as tom was saying if they made a space a very specific law one Would they be able to put that problem behind them? Yeah, potentially, right? There's certainly a better chance of it. I think I mean, I think what you're referring to jen is just like that lawyer should have checked his work Yeah, his problem was lawyers now like they just go oh, well, this is what chat gbt told me. So It's accurate instead of just doing a quick search to see. Yeah. Is this a real thing? Reducing hallucinations is what? Yeah, we're just in hallucinations for sure. I was right there with you niki And and remembering that they're not perfect and that the human is still responsible They should put a disclaimer on Yeah Well, you can't get rid of all hallucinations though because It's like you the whole point of these llms and like we want this to be conversational We want them to be able to Think and eventually develop like little nuances and sometimes when you're being creative you might say something Silly. Yeah in their case. It's incorrect. I just look for it like correctly Yeah, I just refer to it like, you know, it's everybody's like favorite sociopath like your llm is like Favorite little sociopaths. So take everything with a grain of salt and fact check. Yeah And if and if you trained it just on legal cases, it's going to hallucinate less It's still going to hallucinate you need it to But you're trying to reduce it that's all and yes humans should take responsibility at the end of the day for whatever They're using this stuff for All right, my last prediction regards streaming tv Uh, I think one of these streaming services stars max or paramount plus Is going to merge into one of these streaming services either peacock disney plus or amazon by the end of this year I've been saying for years that as soon as comcast and disney figured out the ownership of hulu and settled that And as soon as the restrictions on warner brothers being able to sell itself ends at the end of april Which was a stipulation of at&t's divestment and merger to discovery We're going to see consolidation theater and we already had earlier this month The reports that paramount and warner were talking to each other about maybe merging So I think by the end of this year One of the smaller streaming services is definitely going to get gobbled up One of the smaller studios is going to get gobbled up by a bigger one And I think it's either stars max or paramount plus that you will see Rolled into peacock disney plus or amazon just because it's three smaller and three bigger Well, that was what I was going to ask because I I think of stars max and paramount plus as not being like little players Yeah, but their studios are right lion's date is the smallest of these that stars max's warner brothers discovery and as soon as april hits They're going to be like who wants to buy us? And paramount is small too. It's it's paramount and cbs But it's way smaller than disney amazon netflix apple Comcast like those are giants compared to them God, I hope you're right I'm so tired of all these different streaming platforms. Just one fewer. Yeah, I don't want to And that's that's an interesting Take uh teja because some people are like, I don't want all, you know, I don't want it to just be cable again Yeah, right, you know, I want to pick and choose my a la carte services And I will pay for the ones that I want accordingly Then you get people being like, yeah, but if you do that you end up paying a lot of money Exactly. So and competition is healthy for driving the prices down and increasing kind of like Creating more interesting content of pulling people to each platform But yeah, how many platforms are out there right now? Like maybe 10 I think we've got the big ones too many platforms right now, which is part part of an experimental early market Consolidation is normal. I don't want it to get too consolidated, right? So I'm fine with a little bit of consolidation As long as it doesn't end up with just one or two options. Just one consolidation is what you want Just a couple. Yeah, just a little bit, you know, give give me four or five big studios. Maybe maybe maybe up to 10 max, you know, so somewhere in there Amazon felt like the real dark horse to me not that long ago And now it's like, if there's in-eyed football now American American football not everybody's cup of tea, but pretty big deal Um, the first time the first time my mom, you know fired up her amazon prime video Apple tv app. I was like, what are you watching on amazon prime? She's like football I was like, oh, yeah, of course, of course You know and and that was only but you know a couple months ago. Um, because you know football season But uh that kind of stuff changes things and I think it I think it will change things Pretty dramatically over the next year. I think I think sports rights is a big part of this That's the biggest issue sara. So like for me The reason I'm like annoyed with all the different streamers is because we're still the dumb dumps that have that pay for Like direct tv because I need the nhl network That is how I watch all my hockey games. So it's like I need that So now we have that then we've got like, I don't know four or five different streaming servers And it's like what has happened like our bill instead of getting better and being like we're cutting the cutting the court Remember when that was a little quaint little idea way back in the day and it was like no We've got the court and then some so if they can figure out the sports thing for me Game changer. Do you have direct tv satellite or direct tv now the streaming version tv? I don't know. Do you have a do you need a satellite dish or you just oh, I do have a satellite dish Yeah, yeah, because you can get the streaming version direct tv now, which has the nhl network because that's how I get it Um and the nhl network is the hard one to find Yes It really is in fact the only reason I have direct tv now is I think you can get nhl network on one other streaming service in the u.s. And you can't get sports net l.a. Which has the dodgers Anywhere that isn't cable except direct tv now This is the issue with all the blackouts Which is the other thing that happens are like rolling blackouts, but and amazon is talking to diamond sports group Which has the ballet sports? Networks in the u.s. Uh, and they're in bankruptcy So it's going to be a lot to unwind all that but amazon might be able to to help, you know Undo some of those blackouts. We'll see peacock also has a ton of sports stuff They might they might absorb some of that. I watch some of the international stuff like the rugby and stuff on there They always oh, yeah, it's soccer and stuff. Yeah, indeed All right, so there we go. We have predicted 2024 for you everybody Hey Well, we couldn't have done it without You dr. Nikki Ackerman's teja custodi and jen cutter. Nikki will start with you Where can folks keep up with your work if people are interested in finding me? I'm at nickle ackerman's is my website dot com and ackerman's nickle on twitter and x and nickle ackerman's on Blue sky I said it right this time You did. Yeah Teja custodi, thank you so much for joining us super fun to have you let folks know where they can give Your latest You can find me at teja custodi.com teja is just asia with a t by the way, so if you're worried about spelling I'm at teja custodi on literally all of the things. I have a podcast called a i named this show with friend of this show tristan jutra So you can find us at a i named this show dot com or wherever you get your podcasts And lastly head on over to my youtube channel, which surprise surprise is at teja custodi Yeah, no shorts, but no shorts. No shorts That's only baby Uh gen cutter so nice to have you on our prediction show not your first time here Hopefully not your last let folks know where they can keep up with your latest Well, I am gen cutter on every single Network that is social and also youtube at gen cutter That's all gen with two ends where I am launching a series in january talking about the final fantasy mmo's And the difference between 11 and 14 over the years Final fantasy 11 is 20 years old, so it's been fun to revisit that back in games hated players Well, we cannot thank you all enough for being part of our predictions show Looking forward to next year right around this time. Let's all come back and see how we did But just a reminder patrons, uh, that is it for dtns in 2023. Thank you all so much for supporting us We literally could not do this show without you So holiday break. Hope everybody has a good time. We return to live shows next tuesday, january 2nd 2024 with nikah monford joining us. You can see the details at daily tech news show dot com slash live See you next year This week's special episodes of daily tech news show were created by the following people host producer and writer tom merit Host producer writer sarah lane executive producer and booker roger chang Producer writer and co-host rob dunwood video producer and twitch producer joe coons Technical producer anthony lamell's spanish language host writer and producer dan compost science corresponded dr nicky ackerman's social media producer and moderator zoe deadarding our mods beatmaster w scottis one bio cow captain kipper steve guadorama paul reese matthew j stevens aka gadget virtuoso and jd galloway modern video hosting by dan christensen music and art provided by martin bell dan looters mustapha a a cast and len peralta A cast add support from tatiana matias patreon support from tom mcneill Contributors for this week's shows included gen cutter and aya's aktar our guest this week were will smith to andrea jones roey tasia custodi george sang tom d aka captain jack 913 and gary fischer And thank you patrons for making this year of daily tech news show possible This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program