Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2024. Read them in this 16th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Two Key Ways AI Will Change Our World in 2024
By Kiran Bhageshpur, CTO at Qumulo
I doubt there will be many predictions this year that don’t reference AI. This blog is no different. But neither of these AI predictions are obvious – in fact, both are somewhat counterintuitive. Let’s start with how AI will make humans think more.
Prediction One: In 2024, AI will make humans think more than ever before
There was a study published in Nature a few years back that foreshadowed the true impact of AI. The study showed that AI performed on par with human radiologists in identifying breast cancers in mammograms, but when AI was combined with human interpretation, the accuracy improved significantly. In effect, AI-enabled humans to be smarter.
I believe we’ll see precisely this in 2024 with information workers. Before AI, workers spent a large percentage of their workday doing fairly unimaginative things. Parsing their email inbox, writing simple email responses, summarizing meetings, handling simple, routine technical support questions, etc.
AI can perform these tasks faster and (often) better than the average human. But AI cannot (yet) handle complex information worker tasks, such as creating strategic plans, providing true leadership that inspires, motivates, and holds staff accountable, coming up with groundbreaking ideas, and producing truly unique, effective creative content.
AI will remove the burden of low-level “grunt work” from our plates, enabling us to tackle these truly creative, strategic, uniquely human endeavors. The irony is that the more intelligent AI becomes; the more intelligent humans will be.
Prediction Two: 2024 is the year we will start reducing the size of our information stores
This one is counter-intuitive. After all, it is well established that data is growing exponentially. But that’s data, not information. One of my favorite quotes – and a quote that will come into its own in 2024 – is “Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom.”
Clifford Stoll, an American astronomer, author, and teacher, made this statement nearly a half-century ago, but because of AI, it will be as apropos in 2024 as it has ever been. Why? Because AI has the power to turn data into information; in fact, that is its existential purpose. And, increasingly, AI will turn information into knowledge.
Understanding and wisdom? We’re a long way from that, but here is the kicker. Every transformation – from data to information and from information to knowledge, reduces the volume of storage dramatically.
For example, it might take an exabyte of raw data to create a model that “understands” what was said on your last Zoom call. But the storage you’ll need to power that AI model will be many orders of magnitude smaller.
I believe 2023 is our “Peak Data” year. Starting in 2024, the focus shifts from data to information. And that will have a profound impact on our world.
So, that’s it. Two AI predictions for 2024. The big question this leaves us with is who will write the 2025 predictions in one year? Me, or our AI bot?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bhageshpur is a 30-year veteran of the high-tech world. He has been a CEO, hands-on engineer, engineering leader, customer advocate, and “product guy.” His experience spans from pre-product start-ups to hyper growth companies, to multi-billion dollar mature tech businesses like EMC and Lucent Technologies.
He is currently CTO at Qumulo, where he leads all product management and product development efforts at the company.
Prior to Qumulo, he was CEO and cofounder of Igneous Kiran Bhageshpur whose unstructured data management solution was deployed across many fortune 500 companies. Previously, Bhageshpur was an engineering leader at Isilon Systems and the VP of Engineering at the Isilon Storage Division at EMC through its growth to over $1B in revenue.
Prior to Isilon, he led engineering teams at Questra (now part of Parametric Technology), Lucent Technologies, and Latitude Communications (acquired by Cisco). Early in his career, Bhageshpur was an engineer at ABB-Systems Controls.
Bhageshpur received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Bangalore University and his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas, Arlington.
Kiran has also spent close to two decades whitewater kayaking at all levels and has navigated multiple Class V rapids throughout the world.
