As I prepare this year’s review and predictions posts, here’s a grading of my tech predictions from a year ago.

Search begins its long decline (Grade: A)

I think this prediction was mostly accurate. Firstly, there is now broad awareness that the entire web is filled with junk, with the phenomenon conveniently given its own label. Below is Google Trend results for “Dead Internet Theory” (yes I get the irony of using Google data). Awareness rose sharply, and while we can’t really be sure how many bots are out there, anecdotes abound from both social media and the broader web at large. Google and dead Internet theory https://www.wsj.com/tech/googling-is-for-old-people-thats-a-problem-for-google-5188a6ed As for search itself, Perplexity has attracted continuing interest from users and raised no less than four successive rounds in 2024, taking it reportedly to a $9B series E. ChatGPT launched SearchGPT and is steadily orienting the core product towards search. Here’s a screenshot of a session I began recently on regular ChatGPT - look familiar? ChatGPT had incredible early adoption, but many of those people generated a funny poem and went back to Google. I can’t see how students and knowledge workers don’t return to a ChatGPT that has the same familiar interface as search, but is vastly more capable and no longer prone to hallucination. It will be a slow adoption to be sure, as habits are hard to break, which is why I predicted 2024 to be just the start of this A counterpoint is that Google continues to see search revenue increase, but this is just as likely to be part of the general improvement in the economy, which advertising is highly sensitive to (Meta’s ad business has also thrived). Even Google has had to bite the bullet and introduce its own AI results, which only furthers the decline of traditional search.

Industrial AI FUD Campaigns (Grade: C)

Anti-AI campaigns didn’t feature as much as I expected on the back of the 2023 Hollywood writers strike. The most notable set of events were the Pause AI protests in multiple locations, but there wasn’t much of a coordinated effort from industry groups. Nor was AI even a consideration in the US election. This may be in part because of a fairly robust economy or a lag in adoption, but regardless AI stayed out of any major crosshairs in 2024.

IPOs are back (Grade: B)

There were 154 US IPOs in 2023 and 2024 is set for approximately 212 IPOs, an increase of 38%. It wasn’t a resounding bubble year, with the highest-profile IPO being Reddit while the elephants in the room sat it out. Still, a marked increase and a turning of the tide that looks set to continue. The 2024 extrapolation is based on 204 to date and 7 more occurred after today’s date in 2023, so using the same ratio, we get to a further 8 this year.

Calls for TikTok Spinoff (Grade: B)

Congress indeed passed Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in April, then signed by President Biden. The bill explicitly called out TikTok and would effectively require ByteDance to divest it. However, ByteDance/TikTok responded by bringing a first-amendment case against the US Government. So it didn’t eventuate, not in 2024 anyway.

Video bots (Grade: C)

As I mentioned in this prediction, this one is kind of hard to verify. What does appear to have strong evidence is there’s been a major trend towards AI influencers using a cocktail of text, images, and videos … disclosed or otherwise, deepfake or purely synthetic. On the other hand, I don’t see a proliferation of YouTube videos, like news or documentaries, presented by synthetic visual humans (many use AI voices though). Nor have I noticed any major trend in deepfake video scams (also limited to audio for the most part, apparently). So this is a mixed bag at best.

Normalisation of smart glasses (Grade: A)

Meta glasses are becoming fairly normal, now. You don’t see anything like the wrath Google incurred back in the day with Glass. A good demonstration of the positive sentiment is the boldness with which Meta announced a clear model of their Ray-Ban glasses. They’re going out of their way to poke the bear, making the camera blatantly obvious, and no-one’s complaining. The tech media response to Meta’s XR announcements were overwhelmingly positive and there’s a genuine sense of anticipation for their Orion project, which has taken some of the wind out of Apple’s Vision Pro by promising to deliver AR through actual glasses instead of headset.