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December 9, 2024
December 10, 2024
Predicting the future can be a whimsical pursuit, but prognostications are an important part of how industries track and project trends and investments of funds, time, and capital as the calendar flips from December to January each year.
In PR, that usually involves ensuring that our client’s industry predictions reach primed audiences. We mine for input from our esteemed executive clients before the year is through, and then pitch their well-educated guesses to journalists who cover their industry beats. Knowing that they have a great sense of their various industry landscapes, this year, we decided to take on our predictions practice, but with a twist — by asking reporters and editors for their bird’s eye view of what they think is to come in 2024.
Here’s what journalists at The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Fast Company, VentureBeat, QSR/FSR Magazine, Restaurant Dive, and Supply Chain & Demand Executive had to say about the future of tech*:
Anne-Marie Alcantara, WSJ internet reporter: Creator cash for everyone
“We're all creators now — no, really this time! More than previous years, we're going to see more ‘everyday people,’ whether it's your friend or family member or coworker, dive into the creator space, hosting link-in-bios filled with Amazon storefronts and affiliate links.
For so many people, it seems silly not to try and generate some extra cash — especially as shrinkflation and other cost of living prices increase. These people may never have thousands of followers, and they don't want it — they simply want to join in on what seems an endless supply of money to earn by peddling things you're recommending for free anyways.”
Lauren Johnson, Business Insider senior advertising reporter: AI bolsters ads
“Generative AI tools will help with creating images and copy for ads, and AI will also help advertisers more effectively place ads. AI is appealing to advertisers who have to do more with less resources, but transparency will continue to be an issue for advertisers to feel comfortable with handing over their advertising to AI.”
Mark Sullivan, Fast Company senior writer: AI fatigue cometh
“I think consumers, investors, and corporations will all grow weary of the glaring limitations of large language models like the AI models that power chatbots such as ChatGPT. With plenty of human supervision, AI chatbots are useful for things like generating email drafts and summarizing documents, but they ‘hallucinate’ facts and [are] not yet good at learning and reasoning. Researchers will have to achieve a number of breakthroughs — such as enabling continual learning instead of periodic training — to make AI chatbots less like language parrots and more like smart assistants that can take some of life's drudge work off your plate.”
Sharon Goldman, VentureBeat senior editor: AI advances present new challenges
“My 2024 prediction is that the speed of AI development is going to blow past the ability of companies, consumers and regulators to keep up. That's probably going to create a lot of backlash, but I'm hoping a positive outcome will be more efforts and investments in understanding the technologies and how to make sure adoption is done carefully and responsibly. That said, I do think some of the hype will die down as people realize that AI — especially models — are not magic, but human-created technology with lots of pros and cons.”
Dom Nicastro, CMSWire managing editor: Improved CX makes for better EX
“2024 will be the year that customer experience professionals find tangible ways to connect their efforts to employee experience. The tools are already there. The skills are there. It's time to move toward ‘experience’ vs. ‘customer experience’ or ‘employee experience.’ We'll begin to see measurable ways to do this, and customer experience leadership is the one to drive this.”
Danny Klein, QSR and FSR editorial director: Tech drives ‘value’ with restaurant patrons
“As Chick-fil-A continues to prove with its drive-thru, the perception of a [fast-casual restaurant] experience boils down to whether or not somebody walks away feeling what they got was worth what they paid for it — and that could be monetary as well as how they spent their time. Guests continue to report Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru speed as ‘fast’ in our studies despite the reality it takes longer than all of the other brands we mystery shop — thanks to how busy the brand is.
What this shows speaks to a broader technology point — whether its AI, automation in the back of the house or even tablets to take orders, operators have more tools now to influence the ‘perception of value’ by delivering omnichannel experience at the order point. But it has to work, make sense for the customer base, and improve the dining journey rather than replace something for the sake of efficiency.”
Aneurin Canham-Clyne, Restaurant Dive reporter: Tech splits customers generationally
“In on-premise dining, we'll continue to see the adoption and refinement of technology that displaces labor and costs onto the consumer. QR codes, mobile-order-and-pay, and other such forms of digital interaction enlist customers to perform duties i.e., distribution of menus etc., historically performed by workers, while generating data that can be harvested and processed, and simultaneously producing a sense of autonomy and control for consumers.
There is an inherent tension between hospitality and technology… [reducing] the moments of interaction between customers and workers to the bare minimum. That tension is important in producing a consumer demographic that is alienated from hospitality at the experiential level — Gen Z and younger millennials. While older demographics tend to accept technological changes to the hospitality process because of its greater convenience, younger demographics embrace technological changes for their own sake, as a preferable alternative to the unpredictable sociality required by traditional restaurant hospitality.”
Marina Mayer, EIC at Supply Chain & Demand Executive and Food Logistics: automation drives innovation
“Automation is expected to be a driving factor in the progression of the supply chain industry. Several research studies have shown emerging technologies such as Internet of Things, sensors, cloud data storage and artificial intelligence and machine learning prediction models to be more commonplace to improve efficiency, visibility and traceability. Automation will be a critical asset to supply chain resiliency in 2024.
As it pertains to trucking, automation will still be key in further enhancing driver safety, route mapping, demand planning and tracking temperature-controlled products. Plus, with the influx of electrification, any kind of automation will be an asset to enhancing the way companies move product from Point A to Point B.”
*Some comments were edited for length
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