There’s a saying that goes as follows: change is the only constant thing in life. As it turns out, this is even more true when it comes to technology.
The world of tech is blazing fast, brutal, and sometimes overwhelming for some people who may constantly find themselves playing catch-up with newer versions of everyday technologies and the adoption of totally new and innovative ones that promise to change the way we see and interact with our world.
In this article, My goal is to help you identify some of the major paradigm shifting events happening in tech that’s currently affecting your life. I want to help you to envision what our world will look like in the near future when these events fully come into place.
Massive IT workforce retraining
Startup founders can testify to the recent drive towards retraining their workforce. The increasingly rapid acceptability of AI tools means that companies are forced to adopt it as a competitive edge and in cases like this where companies have made the adoption of AI technology a business priority, company personnel have been massively retrained to make use of those technologies.
In fact, about 14% and growing out of 49% of the employees asked in a recent survey acknowledged that they have received or will be receiving the needed training on using AI tools like ChatGPT to do their job.
In stark contrast to this, most businesses rarely retrain or offer training credit to employees anymore. At least, not at the same pace as their willingness to do so like we are noticing presently.
The Age of Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT is like a desktop computer in the 1990s…In about 5-10 years [redacted], it will be absolutely essential and people will wonder how we ever lived without it. — Random internet user.
There is only a handful of times in modern history where big tech companies have unanimously adopted or favored a technology like they have AI presently— specifically generative artificial intelligence.
And it’s not just tech companies’ management. 36% of employees across industries surveyed in a recent study also found ChatGPT useful for writing content, 33% for analyzing data and information, 30% for customer support and 27% found it useful for brainstorming new ideas.
By every indication of the current discussion and opinion around technologies like ChatGPT and other AI tools, it’s safe to say that we are now very close to the era where AI takes prominence and every company and its workers and the general public at large will fully embrace it.
The rise of GPUs
The less talked about part of the AI revolution we’re currently witnessing is the commercial use of Graphics processing chips that are orders of magnitude faster than CPUs in the computers these AI programs run on.
In an interesting interview with CNBC, Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and CEO recalled how his company’s chip became the brain behind the supercomputer ChatGPT lives in. Its founders at OpenAI had ordered Nvidia’s graphics chips in the early stages of ChatGPT development to provide additional computing power to the CPUs of the computers that the application was first trained on.
Given the important role Nvidia GPU chips play in crypto and gaming industry we can conclude that the use of GPUs can only become more mainstream than it presently is.
Quantum computing
The exciting thing about quantum computing is that it allows us to explore a new frontier of computing power and to tackle problems that were previously thought impossible.” – Chad Rigetti, CEO of Rigetti Computing
Aside from the commercial use of GPUs, another effect the AI revolution may have on us would be to grow people’s interest in quantum computing. As more and more people are captivated by the scale and speed of what AI could do, it’s easy to see how public interest and the desire for more might move us one step closer to finally developing commercial quantum computers that these AI models and programs can run on.
What this means in essence is that these AI programs will become exponentially more powerful in ways that would make future AI much more radical and perhaps cheaper.
A consolidated socials
Finally the last and perhaps the biggest paradigm shift taking place in technology today is the consolidation of the numerous social media platforms. As it is today, there are clear favorites. And the emerging trend from our pattern of use of these platforms suggest that apps like Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok are much more likely to still exist in ten years time as opposed to an app like Facebook.
Researchers of the two major app stores also believed that It has become much harder for newer apps to break through the ranks and make their way into people’s smartphones so the wider social media app market can be considered mature.
Final thougths
Although this is not an exhaustive list, these five paradigm shifting events represent the most obvious ones currently happening in tech with a high likelihood of changing our world view over the next few decades.
I hope this list provides you with an idea of the changes that may occur in the way we see and interact with our world in the near future and help you prepare for it.
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